Open to opportunities

Vladimir Novik

@vladimirnovik

Message

Hands-on Tech Lead: Python & Rust backends, LLM/RAG integration, teams up to 20. Remote from Italy (CET).

Italy

Message

What I'm looking for

A remote Tech Lead / Team Lead or hands-on Senior Backend role in a product company, where I own the architecture and delivery of backend systems in Python and/or Rust while leading a small team. Most interested in data-heavy platforms, integrations and applied LLM products. Full-time or B2B contract, with working hours overlapping CET.

Tech Lead and Senior Backend Engineer with 10+ years of commercial Python development, production Rust experience and 8+ years leading engineering teams of up to 20 people.

I build backend systems and integrations in Python and Rust (FastAPI, Axum, PostgreSQL, ClickHouse, Kafka, gRPC) and set up the engineering processes around them: code review, testing, CI/CD, observability and predictable delivery. Recently I've been bringing LLMs, RAG and vector search into products — with cost control and a deterministic calculation layer where it matters.

Selected results:

- Moved my team from releases every 2–3 weeks to 2–3 times a week

- Cut deal assessment time from 60 to 5 minutes with an end-to-end scoring pipeline (Rust, PostgreSQL)

- Reduced LLM costs by 20% with batch API and prompt caching

- Cut incident detection time from 30 to 5 minutes with Prometheus/Grafana observability

Open to remote Tech Lead / Team Lead and hands-on Senior Backend roles — full-time or B2B contract. Based in Italy (CET).

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Tech Lead (Python)

Current

ITProject

Jun 2022 - Present (4 years 3 months)

Hands-on Tech Lead of a 5–8 developer team (formerly Smartfox).
- Releases: every 2–3 weeks → 2–3 times a week; hired 3 developers
- Observability (Prometheus, Grafana): incident detection 30 → 5 min
- Norvo (Rust/Axum, ClickHouse): LLM costs cut by 20%
- Credit scoring (Rust, PostgreSQL): deal assessment 60 → 5 min
- RAG stack (Qdrant, Ollama), MCP server in Rust

Python Rust fastAPI PostgreSQL Clickhouse Kafka gRPC HashiCorp Vault Docker Gitlab CI Pytest Prometheus Grafana LLM RAG

Senior Backend Developer (Python)

Fork IT

Aug 2021 - Jun 2022 (10 months)

Built backend services automating the production cycle of a mineral processing plant, including quality forecasting and automated data collection. Implemented foreign object detection on conveyor belts using camera video streams.

Python fastAPI PostgreSQL OpenCV FFMPEG Pytest Prometheus Grafana

Team Lead

Servicepipe

Jul 2020 - May 2021 (10 months)

Built and led a team of 6 developers, handling hiring, task assignment, code review, and releases. Designed and implemented Bitrix24 CRM integration and reduced support tickets by 40% through automation.

Python fastAPI DRF PostgreSQL Redis RabbitMQ Kafka Docker Pytest Prometheus Grafana

Team Lead (hands-on)

RossTel

Jul 2015 - Jun 2020 (4 years 11 months)

Led a team of 15 developers and engineers while continuing to write code, including hiring, planning, and process improvement. Designed and built a Python platform for network infrastructure automation, cutting costs by 35% and raising availability to 99.5%.

Python BASH Ansible Docker AWS Zabbix Git