Open to opportunities

Michael Ratnikov

@michaelratnikov

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CTO and architect who delivers zero-to-shipped products fast—secure, AI-ready, and audit-proof.

Zimbabwe

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What I'm looking for

I’m looking for a CTO role where I can lead zero-to-one delivery, build security-first, audit-ready architectures, and apply practical AI judgment to ship fast—then scale with reliable engineering processes.

I take companies from “zero codebase” to shipped product in 3–6 months, then help them scale—by hiring the team, designing the architecture, and writing code alongside them. With 18 years in software engineering and 10 years of CTO-level leadership, I’ve built and shipped fast without sacrificing quality or compliance.

I’m especially proud of the regulated work: I designed security-first AWS architecture for a SOC2/HIPAA-compliant US insurance CRM (Quote-Bot) and led the engineering through production stability across 5 years and multiple isolated per-agency environments. I integrated AI across the product with ChatGPT API, ML.NET, and SageMaker—and used strong AI judgment to replace or remove tools when compliance constraints or cost made them the wrong fit.

I’ve also built startups from scratch: founding CTO of a hospitality booking platform (Ecoplaces) and an automotive marketplace (YEZ). Across these roles, I set up Agile, CI/CD, and code-quality standards from zero, led teams of 2–5, and delivered MVPs quickly—even through major mid-build pivots.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Vice President of Education

Toastmasters International

Jan 2024 - Jan 2026 (2 years)

Led the chapter education program and mentored new members to help them develop public-speaking skills. Coordinated ongoing learning and training initiatives through Toastmasters International.

Public Speaking Mentorship Coaching Program Management Member Onboarding Community Building

Lead Architect

Quote-Bot

Jan 2020 - Jan 2025 (5 years)

Designed security-first AWS architecture for an omni-channel insurance CRM built for SOC2 and HIPAA (Fargate, Aurora, Cognito) with per-agency isolation and audit logging. Integrated ChatGPT API, ML.NET predictive scoring, and SageMaker model training, and led a 5-person product team to deliver CI/CD-driven, zero-downtime reliability over five years.

AWS Fargate Cognito Aurora Audit Logs ChatGpt ML.NET Sagemaker ASP.NET Core

Founding CTO

YEZ

Jan 2017 - Jan 2019 (2 years)

Built a car repair booking platform from scratch, architecting a real-time pricing engine integrating 10 supplier APIs and calculating prices across 150M+ records. Shipped six customer-facing and operations web applications in 6 months after a mid-build pivot, and established Agile processes, CI/CD, and engineering leadership for a team of 4.

.NET Core Real Time Pricing Systems Data Normalization Angular PostgreSQL Docker Jenkins Nginx Agile Scrum

Senior Software Engineer

Microteh

Jan 2014 - Jan 2017 (3 years)

Owned development for transport automation products, including a train ticket sales gateway API used by multiple mobile client applications. Built a real-time monitoring web app and implemented end-of-day reconciliation with audit trails and role-based access control, while mentoring junior developers and owning releases.

.NET C#WCF T SQL MS SQL Server Angular Release Ownership Mentorship

Founding CTO

Ecoplaces

Jan 2015 - Jan 2016 (1 year)

Founded a B2C hotel booking platform and delivered the end-to-end system (booking engine, hotel dashboard, SEO CMS, customer CRM, and payment processing) within 12 months on a 2-person team. Delivered a production MVP in 3 months and owned the full technical operation from architecture to infrastructure.

ASP.NET MS SQL Server Payment Processing CMS CRM TypeScript Infrastructure Architecture DurandalJS

Middle Software Engineer

Inteltelecom

Jan 2011 - Jan 2015 (4 years)

Built taxi-dispatch desktop and mobile solutions, including an orders exchange protocol (XML over HTTP) and integrations with Yandex.Taxi, RBTaxi, and NowTaxi. Developed a Xamarin Android booking terminal, implemented hot-backup database failover for production resilience, and refactored legacy code paths to improve performance and maintainability.

.NET C#WinForms Xamarin PostgreSQL Yandex.Taxi Integration Refactoring

Junior Software Engineer

Moscow Stock Exchange

Jan 2008 - Jan 2011 (3 years)

Developed internal desktop applications to automate financial business processes, including the clearing system front-end used by exchange operations. Implemented report generation front-ends and shipped internal tooling (import/export, log analyzers, and operations helpers), improving quality with unit tests across a WinForms portfolio.

.NET C#WinForms Desktop Tools Unit Testing Report Automation UserControls Code Quality