Alex is available for hire
Hire AlexAlex Bezhan
Verified Expert in Engineering
Scala Developer
London, United Kingdom
Toptal member since March 11, 2015
Bio
Alex is a polyglot software engineer with a proven record of building complex systems in banking, trading, gaming, and media. He co-founded AMS Pilot, the agency that manages Amazon brands, currently with $20 million under management. Alex also created custom software that helps Amazon brands scale.
Portfolio
AMS Pilot
Management, Business to Business (B2B), Goal Management, Strategy...
Under NDA
Vert.x, Ktor, HTTP, Gradle, Kotlin
UnimedPlus
Shape Up, Basecamp, JavaScript, Node.js
Experience
Availability
Part-time
Preferred Environment
OS X, Sublime Text 3, Terminal
The most amazing...
...projects: building a 25-person team managing $20 million annually with a 250% growth rate at AMS Pilot and programming a real-time online game, Scatter Poker.
Work Experience
Co-founder
2019 - PRESENT
AMS Pilot
- Co-founded an advertising agency managing $20+ million in revenue for Amazon brands, with a 250% annual growth rate.
- Built a team of 25 people, achieving high-performance results and ensuring customer satisfaction.
- Worked on the company-wide vision, strategic decisions, hiring, and marketing.
- Built custom software to scale Amazon brands. The tech stack included Node.js and SQLite.
Technologies: Management, Business to Business (B2B), Goal Management, Strategy, Growth Strategy, Business Strategy
Senior Kotlin Developer
2019 - PRESENT
Under NDA
- Created a Vert.x clustered solution to coordinate between different components of the ticket purchasing system.
- Implemented an advanced HTTP client that simulates browser-like behavior reusing Vert.x and KTOR HTTP clients.
- Refactored and cleaned up the architecture of the system.
- Implemented features and added support for new websites.
- Simulated fingerprints of unique website visitors and improved tickets' purchase success rate.
Technologies: Vert.x, Ktor, HTTP, Gradle, Kotlin
Product Owner and Co-founder
2020 - 2021
UnimedPlus
- Owned customer development, product boundaries shaping, and sets' featuring using Basecamp's Shape Up workflow to deliver an MVP—a platform for pharmaceutical reps and MDs—in a short-time period (one month).
- Managed the project with daily and weekly meetings, ensuring we reached the goal within a fixed budget and timeframe.
- Created the product presentation and attended sales meetings to learn about customers' needs.
Technologies: Shape Up, Basecamp, JavaScript, Node.js
Lead Full-stack Elixir Developer and Product Owner
2020 - 2020
reviews.amspilot.com
- Identified customers' needs. Designed the product's full feature set and boundaries. The platform is a job marketplace for Amazon Kindle publishers with an accountability system and multi-role user management.
- Set up the production environment and Sentry incidents tracking. Tracked production incidents and fixed bugs as they arise.
- Developed the full stack for all screens. Coded the entire system from scratch in 40 days. Received customer feedback and applied changes in iterations.
Technologies: Ecto, Phoenix, Elixir
Senior Back-end Scala Developer
2018 - 2019
Dealermade
- Created a copying task for Cassandra and Elasticsearch clusters from production to all QA environments using AWS Fargate, Elastic Beanstalk, Instaclustr, and Docker.
- Generated code for domain objects using ScalaMeta with SBT.
- Built a single generic API for accessing and modifying data in Cassandra and Elasticsearch for all domain objects.
- Architected a GraphQL API authentication and authorization, and security layer.
- Made a generic partial-updated API for Cassandra and Elasticsearch to reduce database load and the chance of conflicting updates.
- Replaced legacy CQL migrations with migrations using Scala code.
- Cleaned up and refactored code as well as improved architecture.
Technologies: Akka, Play, GraphQL, Cassandra, Elasticsearch, Scala
Senior Back-end Scala Developer
2017 - 2018
Murka
- Added new features to the online poker gaming engine.
- Investigated and fixed the production incidents happening in the game engine.
- Added a set of performance metrics and anomaly detection triggers to monitor via Datadog.
- Wrote tests to ensure we have all the corner cases covered in the game engine.
- Reviewed team members' code to improve code quality.
Technologies: ScalaTest, Ansible, GitLab, Scalaz, Construction Audit Tracking System (CATS), Datadog, Kamon.io, Akka, Scala
Back-end Scala Developer
2015 - 2016
Catch App, Ltd.
- Created a Twitter publishing module that uses Twitter accounts to promote the project's pages.
- Created an NLP module that analyzes text on web pages.
- Supported a web-scraping module using Jsoup and Snacktory for text extraction.
- Created a web-scraping module using PhantomJS and an algorithm similar to the one used in Evernote Clearly.
- Developed project architecture and organized SBT structure.
- Developed an admin UI for back-end testing.
- Deployed applications using AWS OpsWorks.
- Implemented DynamoDB integration.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon DynamoDB, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), Play Framework, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, Akka Cluster, SBT, Scala
Full-stack Scala Developer
2013 - 2015
Luxoft
- Developed a highly-configurable internal administration web application that relies heavily on ZooKeeper via Curator API.
- Built a custom module for ZooKeeper changes' synchronization through a Git repository using JGit API.
- Improved system quality and reliability by implementing a real-time financial information monitoring module.
- Improved the development iteration and release process by refactoring a legacy monolithic SBT project into separate, independent modules.
- Implemented a statistics usage collection module for better hot-zone detection and further web app improvement.
- Implemented a web-based terminal emulator executing SH commands on the server.
Technologies: JMS, Lift, SBT, Oracle Coherence, Apache ZooKeeper, AngularJS, JavaScript, Scala
Java Developer
2011 - 2013
D8 Corporation Ukraine
- Developed enterprise financial applications with an open-source technology stack.
- Built a reusable GWT components library with rich customization capabilities.
- Wrote UI, unit, and integration tests.
- Programmed OSGi back-end services.
Technologies: Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Spring, Hibernate, JMS, GWT, OSGi, Java
Junior Java Developer
2010 - 2011
Mercator Web Studio
- Developed an online site building tool that generates custom web applications using the Tomcat API with preprocessing and customization based on a web app template.
- Tuned PostgreSQL queries.
- Developed an accounting automation system for company activities: Staff and client management, activity analysis, automation of bookings (receipt and fulfillment), automatic report generation, etc.
- Built web apps using a custom web framework based on Servlets, JSP, and XSLT.
Technologies: XSLT, PostgreSQL, Apache Tomcat, Servlet, jQuery, Java
Experience
Firebase Events App
A sample application built to learn the Firebase back-end platform.
Dealermade
https://dealermade-next.comA Scala back end for an automated photo studio integration system for dealerships. It is managing photo studios across the US and handles image processing and distribution. It also provides GraphQL API for different front ends.
Functional Programming in Scala
An implementation of exercises from a book "Functional programming in Scala."
MeetUA
A Meetup-style platform that helps organize events in the Ukraine. Written in Node.js.
Source code https://github.com/siman/meetua
Features:
- Authentication/authorization using Facebook OAuth 2
- Events management
- Locating events on the map using Google Maps API
- Mailing lists
- REST API written in Node.js (Express)
- Client-side written using AngularJS
- Persistence in MongoDB
- Event search
- Integration with Facebook API: authentication, friends
Source code https://github.com/siman/meetua
Features:
- Authentication/authorization using Facebook OAuth 2
- Events management
- Locating events on the map using Google Maps API
- Mailing lists
- REST API written in Node.js (Express)
- Client-side written using AngularJS
- Persistence in MongoDB
- Event search
- Integration with Facebook API: authentication, friends
Golang vs. Play Framework 1
Links:
http://gochtopr.appspot.com/recipes - Golang implementation
http://chtopr.appspot.com/recipes - Play Framework 1 implementation
Implemented two similar sites in Go and Play 1 to learn and compare these two platforms in action. Hosted on Google App Engine.
http://gochtopr.appspot.com/recipes - Golang implementation
http://chtopr.appspot.com/recipes - Play Framework 1 implementation
Implemented two similar sites in Go and Play 1 to learn and compare these two platforms in action. Hosted on Google App Engine.
Personal Website
My personal website, written in Kotlin. I made it for fun to teach students how to program in Kotlin. It has multi-role user management, content management system, payment system, and paywall.
Besides that, I also produced content for YouTube videos and performed tests and production deployment.
Besides that, I also produced content for YouTube videos and performed tests and production deployment.
Instagram Clone App
https://github.com/alexbezhan/Instagram-Clone-KotlinAn Android application written in Kotlin that I made to teach people how to write Kotlin code professionally and then refactoring it step by step.
I also recorded a screencast series of 38 videos and published them on my Youtube channel.
I also recorded a screencast series of 38 videos and published them on my Youtube channel.
Amazon Review Swap Platform
An invite-only job marketplace and accountability system for Amazon Kindle publishers and their teams written in Elixir/Phoenix.
I was a product owner and lead full-stack developer. I performed the entire feature-set development and iteration on customer feedback.
I was a product owner and lead full-stack developer. I performed the entire feature-set development and iteration on customer feedback.
Ticket Purchasing Bot System
A clustered system that simulates real user behavior to purchase tickets on different events: football, rugby, and more. Written in Kotlin, it uses a combination of WebDriver and HTTP clients. It has both on-demand and automated purchase.
I implemented cluster features, advanced HTTP clients, user account management, and other vital components of the system as well as unit and integration tests.
I implemented cluster features, advanced HTTP clients, user account management, and other vital components of the system as well as unit and integration tests.
Programming Blog
https://alexbezhan.substack.com/Outlined an innovative approach to solving problems in programming, from architecture and design to hiring and team building. I created a YouTube channel with $1,700 subscribers: youtube.com/@AlexBezhan.
AMS Pilot
http://amspilot.comCo-founded an advertising agency managing $20+ million in revenue for Amazon brands, with a 250% annual growth rate. I built a team of 25 people, achieving high-performance results and ensuring customer satisfaction. I also worked on company-wide vision, strategic decisions, hiring, and marketing. I built custom software to scale Amazon brands. The tech stack included Node.js and SQLite.
Education
2011 - 2013
Master's Degree in Decision Support Systems
Kyiv National Economic University - Kyiv, Ukraine
2007 - 2011
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
Kyiv National Economic University - Kyiv, Ukraine
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Node.js, X (formerly Twitter) API, jQuery, JMS, Scalaz, Sangria, WebDriver
Tools
Servlet, Apache Tomcat, Git, SBT, Gradle, ScalaTest, Apache Maven, Oracle Coherence, IntelliJ IDEA, Akka Cluster, Construction Audit Tracking System (CATS), GitLab, Ansible, Basecamp, Apache ZooKeeper, MongoDB Atlas, Sublime Text 3, Terminal
Frameworks
Play Framework, Akka, Spring Boot, Spring, Spring MVC, Bootstrap, AngularJS, OSGi, GWT, Lift, Play, Ktor, Phoenix, Vert.x, Hibernate
Paradigms
Reactive Programming, Functional Programming, Concurrent Programming, Asynchronous Programming, REST, Test-driven Development (TDD), Management
Platforms
Amazon EC2, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Oracle, OS X, Docker, Android, DigitalOcean, Netlify, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), YouTube
Storage
MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, MySQL, Cassandra, Microsoft SQL Server, Datadog, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon S3 (AWS S3)
Languages
Java, JavaScript, Scala, GraphQL, XSLT, Kotlin, Elixir
Other
Serverless, Business Strategy, MVP Design, Startup Growth Strategy Development, Startups, Domain-driven Design (DDD), Growth Strategy, Kamon.io, HTTP, Ecto, ShapeUp, Product Ownership, Shape Up, Web Scraping, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Apache Cassandra, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), Business to Business (B2B), Goal Management, Strategy, Programming, Content Marketing
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