Michael Ratnikov

Developed a CRM and online sales platform for US life insurance agencies. Agents manage contacts, quotes, deals, e-signatures, calls, SMS, email, video meetings, and live chat in one place. Customers can get quotes and buy life insurance online without an agent.

As the lead architect in a team of 5, I built the new platform from scratch to replace the client's legacy system. I designed the AWS architecture: each agency runs in its own isolated environment, with its own database, login system, and domain, and is launched automatically with Terraform. I designed the security controls, including automatic logging of every data change and a required reason to access sensitive health data, and the platform passed SOC 2 and HIPAA audits. I also built the Assurity carrier and CompuLife quote engine integrations, AI deal scoring with ML.NET, and a ChatGPT live chat bot limited to answering agency-approved questions.

In total, I led the delivery of 5 AI features.

TESTIMONIAL
Paul Janisko, CEO of Rendered Source, wrote: "Working with Michael is in the top 1% of any experience my company has had with hundreds of developers."

Created a marketplace where car owners get an instant price for parts and labor and book a repair online.

As the CTO, I built it from scratch. I hired and led a team of 4 plus a designer, and set up the development process, coding standards, and QA. We launched the MVP in 6 months, including a product pivot during the build, and the full platform in 1.5 years, including 6 web apps for customers, repair shops, and internal teams on 8 .NET services over a shared PostgreSQL core.

I designed the integration layer for 10+ external APIs, including 5 parts suppliers, 2 payment providers, 2 fiscal services, a CRM, SMS, and geocoding. Supplier catalogs of about 150 million spare-part records were synced into PostgreSQL and Redis in the background, so a customer quote never waited on a supplier. A 7-state order lifecycle with distributed locking made sure a double-submitted booking could not be charged twice.

Built a B2C booking platform for countryside hotels and tours from scratch as the CTO.

I chose the stack, hired and mentored 2 full-stack developers, and ran 2-week Agile sprints. We launched the MVP in 3 months on a tight budget, which helped the company secure its next funding round, and completed the full platform within a year. I designed 2 apps on a shared domain model and database. The guest booking site and an admin back office with the hotel catalog, an SEO CMS, a lightweight CRM, and order management. I built a pricing engine with seasonal and weekday rates, per-bed and per-room modes, early-booking discounts, and cancellation policies.

Hotel owners confirmed bookings through secure email links, so they needed no extra software. I also built an internal UI framework that let the team quickly create new admin screens.