Illia Shkurenko
Warsaw,Poland
Summary
Product & Engineering Leader with 10+ years of experience building and scaling software across multiple domains. Strong background in system architecture, cloud infrastructure, AI and full-cycle product development. Experienced in hiring and leading engineering teams, aligning technical execution with business strategy, and supporting go-to-market efforts. Proven ability to deliver reliable, cost-efficient platforms in fast-changing environments.
Overview
10
10
years of professional experience
Work history
Founding CTO
Solo1 AI
2026.02 - 2026.07
- Worked directly with customers to understand their workflows, identify operational gaps, and translate business needs into product improvements.
- Shipped web, mobile, backend, and automation features across the product stack
- Built an agent driven feedback loop that collected customer conversations, extracted communication patterns, generated regression tests, and updated prompts to help the AI assistant reproduce customers' behavior.
- Proposed and implemented process improvements based on customer feedback, usage patterns, and operational bottlenecks.
- Created financial and operational models
- Built internal dashboards and metrics to track customer interactions, AI behaviour, feature gaps, AI usage etc
- Collaborated with founders and share holders to turn requirements into product changes.
Founding CTO
Papaya
2025.01 - 2026.01
- Led end-to-end development of AI-driven food-tech platform from early prototype to production, defining technical strategy and system architecture.
- Worked directly with CEO on product strategy, GTM, technical roadmap, and R&D execution.
- Built internal AI benchmarking system to track model performance, cost dynamics, and scaling trajectory.
- Integrated AI workflows across hiring, engineering, and product design, accelerating delivery and reducing manual overhead.
- Built agent-based systems aligned with domain models to improve task execution and reliability.
- Built and scaled early-stage team through hands-on hiring, onboarding, and mentoring.
- Delivered AI productivity tooling saving ~7,300 engineering hours annually.
co-founder | CTO
Tict
2024.05 - 2025.11
- Co-founded and led development of AI-powered travel platform from concept to early market launch.
- Defined product, technical, and business strategy based on continuous user feedback and market validation.
- Worked closely with marketing and growth teams to develop content strategy and early acquisition channels.
- Partnered with product and operations teams to define core metrics and validate early traction.
- Coordinated technical integrations and partner certifications to enable external distribution channels.
- Built and deployed cross-platform mobile application (Flutter) and core backend infrastructure.
- Led early go-to-market efforts, including positioning, pricing, and initial customer acquisition.
Technical Team Lead, AI & Product Systems
Zizo
2023.10 - 2024.05
- Led BI engineering team delivering analytics and automation solutions, increasing employee productivity by ~20%.
- Worked closely with clients and internal stakeholders to translate business requirements into scalable data and AI systems.
- Partnered with product and operations teams to define core KPIs and success metrics for BI platforms.
- Designed data and AI pipelines to support decision-making and operational automation.
- Engineered automation systems streamlining internal workflows, improving operational efficiency by ~30%.
- Managed project timelines, priorities, and resource allocation across multiple BI initiatives.
- Designed and implemented serverless, event-driven data platform on AWS using Lambda, SNS/SQS, and Data Lake architecture to support scalable ETL/ELT pipelines and analytics workloads.
Senior Software Engineer (Full Stack, AI)
Universa AI
2022.02 - 2023.07
- Modified Avalanche blockchain fork to streamline mining operations, wallet transfers, and trading workflows.
- Built and scaled decentralized marketplace and NFT trading platform for gaming ecosystem.
- Designed microservice architecture for high-throughput crypto and financial workloads.
- Developed AI-powered user interaction and automation features integrated into core product workflows.
- Implemented cloud-native deployment infrastructure on GCP (GKE, Docker) for scalable AI and backend services.
- Built and trained machine learning models using TensorFlow for fraud detection, improving model accuracy by ~20% and reducing training time by ~15% through optimized pipeline design.
Senior Full Stack Engineer
Mpower
2018.04 - 2022.02
- Built platform enabling distributors to create customizable online stores similar to Wix and WordPress.
- Helped design and implement microservices architecture using Kubernetes, Kafka, and PostgreSQL.
- Developed and maintained full-stack features across frontend, backend, and data layers.
- Improved development workflows and release cycles, reducing delivery time by ~25%.
- Contributed to building and scaling company’s e-commerce platform.
- Supported production systems through testing, monitoring, and ongoing maintenance.
- Built home management platform using Vue.js, Node.js, and MongoDB, optimized for performance and scalability.
- Developed and integrated task management features improving user productivity.
- Optimized application and database performance, reducing latency by 20–30% under high load.
- Supported deployment, monitoring, and ongoing maintenance of production systems.
Full Stack Developer
NUAH
2017.04 - 2018.04
- Built clean, well-structured front-end and back-end code using Clean and FSD architectures.
- Documented each application, detailing functions, capabilities, and features to enhance cross-team collaboration and facilitate future maintenance.
- Developed web crypto platform using MERN stack, Redux, Nest.js, and front-end technologies (HTML/CSS/SCSS/Bootstrap/Material), customising solution to address platform's unique requirements and challenges.
Front-End Developer
Softevol
2016.05 - 2017.04
- Built and maintained efficient, robust, and scalable front-end systems using Vue.js and JavaScript, ensuring high performance and long-term stability.
- Collaborated with design and backend teams to deliver seamless, intuitive user experiences, streamlining front-end and back-end integration for optimal functionality.
- Rapidly identified and resolved bugs, improving platform stability and reducing issue resolution times by ~30%.
Education
Bachelor - Software Engineering and Computer Systems
NTUU "Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute"
Kyiv, UkraineSkills
Leadership & Company Building
- Hiring, team scaling, mentoring and technical leadership
- Engineering culture, delivery processes, and execution ownership
- Technical roadmap planning and cross-functional collaboration
- Infrastructure budgeting, cost control, and resource allocation
- Go-to-market support and collaboration with marketing and sales
- Speaking the language of founders, engineers, investors and customers
Architecture & Systems Design
- Event-driven, serverless microservices, monolithic/modular monolith, SOA, distributed systems, and data-centric architectures
- Domain-driven design, modular and clean architectures
- Scalable backend, data, and AI system design
- Backend & Platform Engineering: Nodejs (NestJS, Fastify, ExpressJs, Bun), Python
- API design (REST, GraphQL, gRPC), messaging systems
AI & LLM Systems
- LLM-based applications, RAG pipelines, and agent systems
- Production deployment and cost/performance optimization
- Model orchestration and evaluation frameworks
Cloud & Infrastructure
- AWS, GCP, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform
- CI/CD, infrastructure automation, monitoring
Data & Storage
- PostgreSQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB, Redis, Elasticsearch, Neo4j
- Vector databases and analytical data stores
Frontend & Product Engineering
- React, React Native, Nextjs, Nuxtjs Vue, Flutter
- Cross-platform and mobile-first applications
Quality & Reliability
- Automated testing, monitoring and incident response
- Performance tuning and system observability
Hobbies and Interests
- Football
- AI
- Music
- Weightlifting
- Reading
- History
Timeline
Founding CTO
Solo1 AI
2026.02 - 2026.07
Founding CTO
Papaya
2025.01 - 2026.01
co-founder | CTO
Tict
2024.05 - 2025.11
Technical Team Lead, AI & Product Systems
Zizo
2023.10 - 2024.05
Senior Software Engineer (Full Stack, AI)
Universa AI
2022.02 - 2023.07
Senior Full Stack Engineer
Mpower
2018.04 - 2022.02
Full Stack Developer
NUAH
2017.04 - 2018.04
Front-End Developer
Softevol
2016.05 - 2017.04
Bachelor - Software Engineering and Computer Systems
NTUU "Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute"