Sergei Plevko

Director Of Engineering @ PandaDoc

About

Engineering leader with over 20 years of experience, including 7+ years growing high-performing teams (up to 60+) and driving product innovation in fast-paced B2B SaaS environments. I specialize in building stable, scalable platforms (achieving 99.99% platform stability at PandaDoc) and love guiding engineering orgs through complexity and growth. Key strengths: distributed systems architecture, API design, SaaS product delivery, incident management, and building teams grounded in empathy, autonomy, and accountability. I thrive in environments where strategy, people, and code come together to deliver real user value.

Country

Portugal

City

Lisbon Metropolitan Area

Industry

Computer Software

Skill

SaaS Platform Architecture, User-Centric Development, Incident Management, Observability & Monitoring, Platform Stability, Performance Management, Cross-functional Team Leadership, Scaling Teams, Software Quality Management, Resiliency, Engineering Leadership, Engineering Culture, Change Management, Problem Solving, Java, Spring, Hibernate, JUnit, Ant, Maven

Experience

Director Of Engineering

PandaDoc

2021-2 - Present · 5 yrs 8 mos

Lisbon, Portugal

I lead multiple engineering teams (60+ people) across three major product domains at PandaDoc: - Document App (core product experience) - API & Integrations (external developer platform) - Incubation (early-stage product experiments) Key outcomes: - Launched the Document App — now the foundation of PandaDoc's editor experience - Introduced “API as a Product” vision, creating monetization opportunities via external access - Achieved 99.99% platform stability and drove product bug count to zero - Led org-wide improvements in service ownership and incident management - Built a strong culture of trust, ownership, and product-aligned engineering

Senior Engineering Manager

PandaDoc

2019-1 - 2021-2 · 2 yrs 2 mos

Minsk, Belarus

Managed several cross-functional teams focused on delivering new enterprise and monetization features. - Delivered PandaDoc Payments, processing $5M+ in payment volume - Led development of SSO, roles & permissions, and audit features - Scaled engineering management practices across a growing org

Java Team Lead

PandaDoc

2017-8 - 2018-12 · 1 yr 5 mos

Minsk, Belarus

Led the Java backend team through critical early-stage platform evolution. - Built backend systems for payments, PDF/DocX import, and authentication - Brought maturity to Java infrastructure, enabling PandaDoc’s SaaS growth - Mentored engineers and contributed to tech strategy and architectural decisions

Lead Java Developer

Exadel

2013-2 - 2017-8 · 4 yrs 7 mos

Minsk, Belarus

Led backend development and architecture across multiple large-scale projects in finance, retail, and insurance. - Architected and built the core of Veo One, a unified platform for financial advisors, with deep third-party integrations (Salesforce, Docusign, Redtail, etc.) - Delivered backend for iOS-based mobile point-of-sale system using modular plugin architecture - Migrated legacy business rules to Drools and implemented SAML-based SSO - Wrote technical documentation, led estimations, and managed a team of up to 10 engineers - Regularly traveled to US clients and collaborated on-site Tech: Java, Spring, JBoss, Jetty, Hibernate, MSSQL, REST, Drools, Maven

Senior Java Developer

Akavita

2012-11 - 2013-2 · 4 mos

Minsk, Belarus

- Designed backend for a national-scale search engine indexing 70M+ web pages - Implemented non-blocking architecture using Play Framework and integrated ElasticSearch - Set up Jenkins-based CI pipeline and optimized Maven builds Tech: Java, Play Framework, Hadoop, HBase, ElasticSearch, Solr, MySQL

Senior Java Developer

TouchSoft

2012-6 - 2012-12 · 7 mos

Minsk, Belarus

- Enhanced performance and reliability of backend and frontend layers in a real-time customer conversion platform - Wrote and automated functional tests, fixed cross-layer issues (Java, Flex, JS) Tech: Java, Flex, Resin, Spring, Hibernate, JS

Team Leader, Senior Java Developer

SaM Solutions

2003-10 - 2012-6 · 8 yrs 9 mos

Minsk, Belarus

Held multiple roles across enterprise software projects for hardware management, healthcare, and networking. - Led development of ServerView Platform Manager, a centralized server control suite using SNMP/IPMI protocols - Built x10sure, a Swing-based desktop app for server lifecycle management - Worked on hospital automation (UI/UX, calendar logic, Swing components) - Migrated legacy EJB 2.0 systems to EJB 3.0 and built custom authentication flows with Spring Security - Frequently visited clients and handled production debugging Tech: Java, Spring, Hibernate, Wicket, EJB, Swing, JBoss, BEA Weblogic, MSSQL, Sybase, Metro, CXF