Sign in Subscribe

Professional Bio

I'm Vlad Khitov. My software engineering path started in September 2014, when I immersed myself in formal Computer Science education. Since those days, I have been writing code almost daily, except for a recent sabbatical. I have over 7 years of commercial experience as a web developer and the head of the front-end department in a European outsourcing company.

Contacts

As a programmer

While I have a relatively broad knowledge in the software engineering domain due to my curiosity, my strongest, expert skills are in TypeScript, React, and most of the related open-source ecosystem developed over the last ten years.

My abstract knowledge and areas of interest encompass:

  • Software architecture and design
  • Functional programming
  • Theory of programming languages

My experience within Agile teams includes UX expertise, business analysis, quality assurance, and project coordination.

I'm comfortable with cloud computing (AWS, GCP), SQL and document databases, traditional backend architectures, and the modern AI stack (LLMs, agents, RAG).

It's important to emphasize that all my commercial experience is about building applications that solve direct business problems. I'm NOT an expert in at least these areas: system programming, low-level networking, distributed computing, machine learning, cryptography, blockchain, heavy cloud operations.

As a manager

Having gained enough experience in development, I proposed and executed a transition into a management role, a.k.a. Chapter Lead. It allowed me to gain visibility into the company's internal processes and directly influence them.

My typical working day in a management position included: conducting interviews, mentoring chapter members (performance reviews, one-on-ones, etc.), liaising with clients, auditing projects, maintaining internal policies, and architecting systems.

On the "love-hate" spectrum of my relationship with management responsibilities, I'm mostly on the "love" side. I'm happy to have the opportunity to act as a mediator and use strategic leverage to make a team more productive and engaged.

Sabbatical

In 2025, I left my job to focus on other aspects of my life. It's not burnout, but an intellectual recalibration. I explained the rationale for this decision in this article.

I'm still monitoring all the trends in IT to stay valuable. I'm still educating myself broadly as the mission of being a comprehensive architect remains a core focus. However, now I spend significantly more time on a healthy lifestyle, independent research, philosophical study, writing, and travel.

Work experience

Front-end Chapter Lead

Axon – (Mar 2020 - Jan 2025)

  • Established best practices of front-end development throughout the company with research, forecasting, and analysis, which made it possible to build apps that survived significant shifts in the front-end ecosystem.
  • Managed chapter members (10–20 people), including: including: recruitment, terminations, onboarding, performance reviews, project assignments, one-on-ones.
  • Created a trainee program, which allowed the company to hire and grow great engineering students from universities in Ukraine and Georgia.
  • Provided research, audits, and consulting for upcoming and potential projects, which allowed the company to attract new clients and win tender contracts.
  • Conducted about 500 interviews, effectively hiring everyone in the front-end department.
  • Contributed to the company's knowledge center with policies, articles, and guidelines about engineering and internal processes.
  • Architected and developed projects alongside management duties, solving technical challenges across the full web stack.

These are the last two long-term projects:

  • Remaker (strength tracking system for athletes and personal trainers). I architected and implemented the software part (mobile app, back-end, web) from scratch, including math algorithms that transform physical sensor data into meaningful metrics. Collaborated closely with hardware specialists and physics engineers from the UK. TypeScript, React, React Native, Firebase.
  • Kikokushijo Academy (web platform that connects English teachers with students). I architected the web platform (course scheduling, content management, membership, learning system) that we later built from scratch for release. TypeScript, Next.js, Postgres, AWS, Zoom.

Full-Stack Engineer

Axon – (Oct 2017 - Mar 2020)

Before being promoted to a management position, I worked as a full-time developer (80% frontend, 20% backend), mostly gaining experience in various domains and architectures.

Domains: EdTech, Insurance, Finance, Fitness, Property management, CMS.

  • Participated in ~25 projects as a developer.
  • Ran the internal React course consisting of 15 lectures.
  • Participated in internal offline tech meetups as a speaker.
  • Published my own articles on the corporate blog.
  • Built internal TypeScript libraries with full type inference like react-query and redux-toolkit before they became mainstream.

Articles and Talks

Languages

  • Ukrainian & Russian — native.
  • English — professional working proficiency.

Education

National Technical University of Ukraine 'Kyiv Polytechnic Institute'
Bachelor's degree, Computer Science
2014 – 2018

I graduated with honors. My coursework focused on: calculus, statistics, discrete mathematics, SQL, programming languages, object-oriented and functional programming.

Short-term contracts and self-study

  • Developed a website for the National Register of Records (client and admin modules) from scratch using the LAMP stack.
  • Applied SciPy and visualization tools in IPython Notebooks for statistical analysis and forecasting.
  • Created and improved an interactive educational system for data engineers, including Apache Spark with the Python scientific stack.
  • Participated in hackathons (one, two).
  • Created dozens of pet projects (one, two, three).
  • Learned computer science (one, two, three, four, five, six).

Personal preferences

Things in tech that I love:

  • TypeScript, Rust, ReScript.
  • React, Vue.
  • Functional programming.
  • Ethical domains: fitness, finance, education, etc.
  • Innovations, heavy R&D, startups.
  • Influencing strategic business decisions.

Things in tech that I'm not a big fan of:

  • Solving any coding problem with an OOP hammer.
  • Unethical domains: gambling, adult content, low-value digital media.
Inquire about business opportunities