I’m Viach Kakovskyi (Ukrainian: Вячеслав Каковський), a backend software engineer, technical leader of a geo-distributed team, speaker and reader :). I live, work and enjoy BBQ in Austin, Tech Capital of The Lone Star State.
As a backend software engineer, I’ve been focused on the development of instant messaging software, ETL data services, Near-Real Time embedded system for road traffic analysis, network applications for CCTV video systems. Far ago and long away I was working on e-commerce solutions as a full-stack web developer.
Today Python is the primary programming language for me. I also have a bit of commercial production experience using Java, Ruby, PHP, Perl, and JavaScript.
As a technical leader I’ve coordinated work of several teams:
- Geo-Distributed American-Ukrainian (and sometimes Australian) team; my awesome current one.
- Built and led a team of Python developers from scratch for a company focused on video surveillance. I was the first Python engineer joined the company.
- Partnered with Misha Behersky for KPIdata - a social project for accessing the quality of higher education in Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. The team was expanded to 10 core members and eventually, 180+ individual contributors helped us to deliver the project. We enjoyed that effort and gave 50+ swag items to the community. Good times!
- At the department where I was studying Software Engineering, we had various course projects in groups of students. I had the honor to lead teams of my classmates, and I believe that it helped to build a good foundation for our collaborative skills.
As a speaker, I occasionally give talks at Texan and Ukrainian Python events. It helps me to structure my knowledge and get feedback about the approaches which I follow. And, you know, I just enjoy it. Interesting, but when I was in school, I had a fear of public speaking. To develop the skill I gave 40 public speeches over a year during studying in university. So, do not fear, just do it!
I adore of reading technical books. I’ve recently started using Goodreads as the reading list. I publish detailed review and notes of the most interesting books here in the blog. Feel free to suggest me a book about computers.
I have extensive theoretical and practical interest in data storages. I hold an MSc Honours degree in Software Engineering and wrote master’s thesis on topic “Database structure refactoring method for the speeding up SQL queries processing”.
Other areas of my professional interest are:
- asynchronous programming
- distributed systems
- highload projects
- load testing and gaps analysis
- monitoring and troubleshooting
- performance optimizations
- technical mentoring
Therefore, in the blog, you should expect posts on the topics described above.
I send monthly summaries with my findings of backend software engineering. I can add you to my mailing list if you wish. Let me know which things about backend engineering are the most exciting for you.
You always can unsubscribe from the updates.