Andrey Tabakov
Head of Engineering

Head of Engineering at Lookstream, building a distributed platform that brings social, commerce, and creator ownership into a single product. An engineer first — the architecture is mine, and so is a fair share of the code.


Before that, CTO of Tabula.io, an AI-driven data pipeline platform, solving a core data-engineering problem: giving a no-code product the power, control, and performance people expect from code-first systems.


My background is high-load systems in domains where failure is expensive — clinical decision support in healthcare, and large-scale data processing for business intelligence. The thread running through all of it is resilient architecture that holds up under real-world pressure, not just in design.


The work I like best is the messy infrastructure problem with no clean answer, turned into something practical and well engineered.



Education: Master of Computer Science. Saint Petersburg State Electrotechnical University "LETI".

Interests: Backend, Frontend, Mobile, AI, NLP. Check out my Github profile. I contribute to open-source projects.

EXPERIENCE
Lookstream
Head of Engineer
February 2026 - Now
Tabula
Lead Software Engineer
Chief Technology Officer
July 2021 - December 2025
Aluna Health
Middle Software Engineer
Senior Software Engineer
Lead Software Engineer
November 2017 - July 2021
Prism HR
Remote Full-Stack Developer
May 2019 - February 2020
Biarum
Junior Backend Developer
Middle Full-Stack Developer
Senior Full-Stack Developer
July 2017 - July 2021
Siemens
Intern Software Developer
July 2016 - July 2017
Lookstream
  • Position: Head of Engineer
  • Since: February 2026
  • Until: Now
My work covers the architecture and delivery of a distributed platform of around forty Kotlin services: social, e-commerce, creator ownership, messaging, and identity - built on Spring WebFlux with coroutines, hexagonal module boundaries, jOOQ over PostgreSQL, and event-driven integration over Redpanda with Avro contracts.

Leading engineering across backend, mobile, web, infrastructure, and QA means coordinating delivery over roughly ninety repositories, so much of the role is making cross-repository change safe: impact analysis first, dependency-ordered landing, then reconciliation.

The cloud platform is mine end to end: managed Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, and Redpanda on Yandex Cloud, described entirely in Terraform and delivered through GitOps with ArgoCD and GitLab CI.

Alongside that, I established the architecture knowledge base the product is designed against - decision records, service contracts, and explicit business invariants - and built the internal AI engineering toolchain: a code knowledge graph and cross-repository impact harness that let engineers trace the blast radius of a change before touching a published contract.

Beyond technical leadership, the role includes hiring, budget planning, and ongoing people management, including regular one-on-one meetings.
Tabula
  • Position: Lead Software Engineer
  • Since: July 2021
  • Until: December 2025
I designed and developed high-load microservices using Kotlin and Ktor, focusing on scalable and reliable system architecture.

I led a cross-functional engineering team consisting of frontend, backend, and QA specialists, coordinating development across disciplines and ensuring timely delivery of complex features.

My work included building a no-code system for integrating external data sources and constructing data pipelines, with execution powered by SQL both locally and in the cloud. I also implemented a paid API Gateway, including cost-aware services, and designed a subscription and token-based access system that enabled secure API usage without requiring users to manage their own service keys.

In addition, I developed a cloud-based server that allowed multiple users to collaboratively edit data pipelines in real time. I was responsible for designing, maintaining, and scaling the AWS infrastructure, fully managed through Terraform.

Beyond technical leadership, I handled hiring, budget planning, and ongoing people management, including regular one-on-one meetings.
Learn More
Aluna Health
  • Position: Lead Software Engineer
  • Since: November 2017
  • Until: July 2021
As the lead software engineer, I designed and built a cloud-based data platform from the ground up, focusing on high-load, scalable architecture. I developed backend microservices using Kotlin and Ktor, and was responsible for the overall system design and technical direction.

I led a cross-functional engineering team of frontend, backend, and QA engineers, coordinating delivery across disciplines and ensuring alignment between technical implementation and product goals.

I built a no-code system for integrating external data sources and constructing data pipelines, with execution powered by SQL both locally and in the cloud. I implemented a paid API Gateway, including cost-aware services, and designed a subscription- and token-based access model that enabled secure API usage without requiring users to manage their own service keys.

In addition, I developed a cloud-based collaboration server that allowed multiple users to edit data pipelines concurrently. I designed, deployed, and maintained the AWS infrastructure, fully managed with Terraform.

Beyond hands-on engineering, I was responsible for hiring, budget planning, and people management, including regular one-on-one meetings, as well as code reviews, technical design discussions, and delivery planning.
Website
PrismHR
  • Position: Remote Full-Stack Developer
  • Since: May 2019
  • Until: February 2020
As a remote web developer at BIARUM, I contributed to the development of new features for the Benefit Enrollment module, working on a modern web architecture built with React, GraphQL, Node.js, AWS Lambda, and the Serverless framework.

I played a key role in migrating the legacy system from Unibasic, Scala, Unidata, and AngularJS to the new technology stack. This involved analyzing and restructuring complex enrollment forms to ensure data integrity and functional parity throughout the migration process.

I collaborated with a distributed team of product owners, a scrum master, QA engineers, a team lead, and UI/UX designers, participating in daily remote stand-ups and sprint ceremonies. The team followed the Scrum methodology, with task tracking and delivery managed through Atlassian Jira.
Website
Biarum
  • Position: Full-Stack Developer
  • Since: July 2017
  • Until: July 2021
As a full-stack web developer at Biarum, I worked on healthcare and traffic data projects, building and refactoring systems using Java, Spring Boot, Angular, PostgreSQL, Redis, and PostGIS. I implemented automated PPTX report generation with Apache POI and developed map-based algorithms for working with geospatial data.

In addition to development, I set up and maintained server environments across multiple operating systems, supported CI/CD with TeamCity, ensured code quality with SonarQube, and contributed through code reviews, technical consulting, and conducting technical interviews.
Website
Siemens
  • Position: Intern Java Developer
  • Since: July 2016
  • Until: July 2017
As a web development intern at Siemens, I worked on both backend and frontend development for two enterprise applications using Java, Spring, AngularJS, and PostgreSQL. One project focused on rail traffic systems, where I rewrote a heuristic algorithm from Python to Java, while the other involved designing power network planning software from scratch.

I gained hands-on experience with debugging, testing, and CI/CD by setting up and integrating Jenkins and TeamCity, collaborated using Git, and worked within Scrum with elements of XP, using Redmine for project tracking.
Website
SKILLS
  • Programming Languages
    Strong: Kotlin, Java, JavaScript/TS
    Good: C/C++, Python, Intersystems Caché
  • Backend Frameworks
    Strong: Spring Boot / WebFlux, Kotlin Coroutines, Ktor, jOOQ
    Good: Hibernate/JPA, Spring Security, OAuth2 / OIDC
  • AI-Assisted Engineering
    Strong: LLM agent tooling, MCP servers, RAG over codebases, code knowledge graphs, agent-driven code review and cross-repository automation
  • Infrastructure & DevOps
    Strong: Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD pipelines, GitOps (ArgoCD), Gradle, AWS, Observability (Prometheus, Grafana, Micrometer)
    Good: Bash, Maven, Yandex Cloud, OpenTelemetry
  • Data & Messaging
    Strong: SQL, PostgreSQL, Kafka / Redpanda, Avro & schema governance
    Good: NoSQL, Redis / Valkey, YugabyteDB, Liquibase
  • Software Design
    Strong: Distributed systems, Microservices, Event-Driven Architecture, Hexagonal and Layered patterns, Client-server, Cloud computing, High-load system design
    Good: Domain-Driven Design
What else do you know?
Android development in Kotlin and Java, some Swift on iOS, and map-based products built on PostGIS. Earlier healthcare work ran on InterSystems Caché and IRIS.
Also used along the way: Git, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, SonarQube, REST, GraphQL, WebSockets, RabbitMQ, Testcontainers, Gatling, dbt, Airflow.