Recommendations

Ivan Braun

Manager, LinkedIn

He worked hard as a developer and managed the team effectively. We hired him because the team members knew him from their previous job and wanted him as their manager. As a developer, he performed at the level of multiple other developers. As a manager, he was proactive in finding inefficiencies not only in his team, but across the company.

He found inefficiencies in our software licenses, cloud spending, hiring, and, the hardest part, firing too. Most importantly, he worked to improve our efficiency, not just raise the alarm.

Pavel Malai

Chief Technology Officer, Icons8, LinkedIn

I worked with Sergey at Icons8, where he quietly became one of the people the whole company relied on to keep things running.

What impressed me most is his initiative. He doesn't wait to be told. He spots problems, fixes them, and communicates clearly, always flagging what's urgent and what isn't so you can prioritize. He is also one of the sharpest people I know on the AI side. He thinks deeply about LLM systems, prompt design, and AI agents, and consistently brought practical ideas that were ahead of the curve.

Sergey is dependable, humble, and technically excellent. Any team would be lucky to have him, and I recommend him without reservation.

Alexander Khristoforov

Team Lead at Icons8, LinkedIn

Sergey is a talented developer and an exceptional leader. In my experience, he exemplifies professionalism, dedication, and genuine commitment to the product.

Under Sergey's leadership, his team transformed an app with a bare-bones feature set into a full-fledged professional tool capable of competing with industry leaders worldwide.

Beyond his own department, Sergey has also helped streamline numerous processes across the company as a whole.

Elena L

Head Of Customer Service, Icons8, LinkedIn

I worked with Sergey for many years, and he is one of those people I would genuinely be happy to recommend.

He was leading the development team, and what always stood out to me was how well everything worked on their side. The processes were clear, tasks were handled efficiently, bugs were fixed without unnecessary delays, and customer issues never got lost. As someone from the support team, I really appreciated that whenever we escalated something important, Sergey and his team were always responsive and helpful.

I also think the way a team works says a lot about its lead, and Sergey's team was a great example of that. The processes were well organized, everyone worked well together, and it always felt like the team knew what they were doing and could be trusted. Over the years, I never had a situation where something critical was ignored or forgotten.

On a personal level, Sergey is calm, very knowledgeable, easy to talk to, and good at solving problems. He is the kind of person you can trust with difficult tasks and important decisions.

Pavel Pavlyuchik

Staff Product Designer at MTS, ex. Icons8, LinkedIn

I've known Sergey for a long time, and he's the kind of person you want on your team when things get complicated.

He doesn't panic under pressure. While others might start stressing out, he stays calm, digs into the problem, and finds a solution that actually makes sense. He's a strong lead, but not the bossy type; he's genuinely helpful, supports his team, and is easy to talk to.

If you're looking for a solid lead who knows his stuff, doesn't make excuses, and is just a great person to work with, I highly recommend him.

Dinara Gabdullina

QA teammate, Habr Career

I am writing this recommendation for Sergey as someone who worked with him for three years on Lunacy. I was in QA, and Sergey was the team lead and lead developer. I recommend him as a highly qualified specialist and team lead because he personally solves the hardest technical problems. He digs deeply into bugs and consistently finds the real root cause. At the same time, he manages the team while remaining an active developer.

Sergey led a 12-person Scrum team and personally closed around half of the team's tasks. He explains complex technical topics clearly, stays open to reasoned discussion, and welcomes ideas that improve the product. The results of his work on Lunacy speak for themselves: GPU rendering, migration to Avalonia UI with a real App Store release and a web release through WASM, plus stable releases on Windows and Linux. Sergey writes code himself, fixes the hardest bugs, and builds strong communication between development and QA. I recommend him for roles where it is not enough to simply manage people, but where someone needs to understand the substance of the work, lead by example, and make the product better.

Alex Vasylev

Colleague, Habr Career

I have known Sergey for almost five years. For the first couple of years I honestly thought he was a robot. His work capacity was astonishing. He is a rare kind of technical leader who combines both sides at a very high level: architect and deeply skilled developer at the same time. The speed and depth with which he learns new technologies are extraordinary, and he can explain almost anything clearly and simply without unnecessary words.

As a manager, Sergey sets up development, testing, and delivery processes in a very structured way. He treats the product as if he owns it. He never does anything carelessly. He is highly responsive and always available when needed. It may sound exaggerated, but in Sergey’s case it is true. If it were up to me, I would keep working with him all the time.

Vyacheslav Naboychenko

Colleague, Habr Career

Sergey was our team lead at Icons8 on Lunacy. As a developer, he is an exceptional specialist who fully understands the codebase. You could go to him with any engineering question. He laid down many architecturally sound solutions whose benefits were visible throughout the product. One of his main strengths is speed: work that might take someone else a week, Sergey could often complete in one or two days without sacrificing quality or performance.

He frequently optimized the product, which kept the application extremely lean and very fast, improving both user experience and the daily work of the development team. Sergey also cared about development speed and created generators and scripts that significantly simplified the workflow. He is valuable not only as a developer but also as a team leader. He maintained a healthy working atmosphere, resolved tensions quickly, and acted as a mentor. I learned a lot from him. He often explained best practices, gave detailed code reviews, and organized educational calls so the whole team could grow. Sergey made an enormous contribution to Lunacy and its level of quality.

Artavazd Harutyunyan

Direct report, Habr Career and LinkedIn

I worked with Sergey on the same team for more than three years, and I can confidently say that he was a strong team lead who genuinely cared about the product. He consistently worked to improve and optimize existing processes, and when building new features he always focused on high-quality implementation rather than quick temporary solutions.

In addition to having a deep understanding of his technical stack and area of responsibility, Sergey actively supported other team members, including both developers and QA engineers. He never shifted responsibility to others and was always ready to step in and solve problems personally. His communication and leadership skills are also worth highlighting: he created a calm and comfortable environment built on trust and open communication, which directly improved productivity. Sergey was attentive to people and context, and it was both comfortable and valuable to work with him. I can confidently recommend him as a strong team lead.

Kseniia Zezegova

QA teammate, Habr Career

We worked together for almost seven years at Icons8, where Sergey served as lead developer, team lead, and product owner. From the QA side, I interacted with him constantly. Sergey is that rare type of leader who understands software architecture, the needs of the testing team, and the needs of the user equally well. He knows that product quality is the responsibility of the whole team, so he actively helped QA localize difficult bugs instead of simply handing tasks over to testing.

His most valuable qualities, in my view, are communication, reliability, and impact. He kept management-related questions moving, stayed available, and often taught teammates or explained difficult areas clearly. He also had major product impact, supporting a large portion of the functionality while efficiently developing new features. When a workflow could be improved with tools or utilities, he could build those quickly. He also handled non-functional requirements, including major performance improvements. Sergey studies new technologies and recommends them when appropriate; for example, Lunacy moved to Avalonia under his leadership and shipped on several operating systems. I recommend him for any role requiring technical depth, leadership, and readiness to solve hard problems personally.

Diana Filazop

Manager / QA lead, Habr Career and LinkedIn

We worked with Sergey at Icons8, where he was the QA team lead and lead developer of Lunacy. Throughout the time we worked together, he showed himself to be a very calm and balanced leader. Even in difficult situations, he always tried to understand the problem first rather than look for someone to blame.

What also impressed me was how quickly Sergey fixed bugs. Sometimes it felt like he solved them faster than we could even report them. At the same time, he was always open to discussion, helped the team work through difficult issues, and supported the people around him. It was genuinely comfortable to work with him, and you could feel that he truly cared about both the product and the team.

Konstantin Evgenov

Colleague, Habr Career

I recommend Sergey as a strong engineering manager and technical leader. I worked with him for more than four years and can confidently say that he always worked to improve not only the Lunacy application but also the team as a whole. Sergey provided clear task definitions, thoughtful prioritization, and reliable schedule execution, all of which improved the overall result.

As a developer, I especially want to mention his support in making difficult technical decisions. That support contributed to the team’s professional growth, improved code quality, and increased application efficiency. I also want to highlight his willingness to study new technologies and share what he learns with colleagues in simple, accessible language.

Artem Kosikov

Team Lead, Engineering Manager, LinkedIn

We worked on the same team for about two years. During that time, Sergey proved himself to be a very smart and curious colleague. No matter what task was assigned to him, he always found elegant and lightweight solutions.

He also authored many ideas for improving the team’s products, and many of those ideas produced meaningful results. Sergey is always broadening his horizons and willingly shares knowledge with colleagues. He was a strong player on our team, and it was easy and pleasant for everyone to work with him. Sergey’s strongest qualities are openness, honesty, directness, and reliability.

Vitaliy Kuzmin

AI-first Head of Delivery, LinkedIn

Sergey is our secret weapon for unusual tasks and cases where other developers got stuck. If you need a developer with a good eye for fresh solutions and a non-trivial approach to development, I highly recommend reaching out to him.

One more thing I value highly in Sergey is that he looks for ways to solve a problem instead of looking for excuses why the task is impossible.

Alexander Porechnov

Senior Game Designer, Arkadium, LinkedIn

I worked with Sergey on several Microsoft Games Studio projects. As a game design lead, I can point out the following strengths that he demonstrated in real development work: a proactive approach, ideas for improving the application beyond code-only concerns, fast prototyping for features and fixes, and strong problem-solving in difficult cases.

Sergey is very positive, flexible, and creative.

Nataliia Bublyk

Game Producer, LinkedIn

I worked with Sergey on several projects and can say that he is one of those people who shows enthusiasm in almost any task. That applies to projects, processes, news, events, and change in general.

Sergey also has a positive attitude and a constant desire to learn, both independently and from other people. He has a quick and flexible mind, is keen on innovation, and looks for ways to apply new ideas to improve his current project.

Oleksiy Dolgykh

AI/ML Systems Architect, LinkedIn

As a self-motivated and self-disciplined software engineer, Sergey was chosen as a member of a small group implementing an innovative software development process. He is a deep and fast programmer, and at the same time he is oriented toward business value.

Vladimir Egorov

Senior Software Engineer, LinkedIn

Sergey is fast at work, proactive, creative, and passionate. His strongest sides are XAML UI and prototyping.