Yuriy Babak

Part of T-Bank’s technology leadership team, responsible for Payments, Cross-Border Transfers, and high-load processing platforms (1,500+ TPS). Led a cross-functional organization of up to 150 people spanning engineering, product, marketing, sales, and support. Key results: ▸ Launched “My Home” and “My Auto” ecosystem products, live in the banking app since v7.0 ▸ Built and launched a payment aggregator platform generating billions in turnover ▸ Integrated AI into workflows: built RAG-based LLM bots, cutting maintenance costs by 15% ▸ Reduced Lead Time from 60 to under 30 days across all teams ▸ Implemented SSR for mobile payment screens, improving multi-step UX ▸ Owned P&L with cost-to-income ratio as primary KPI ▸ Participated in M&A IT due diligence for housing & utilities targets ▸ Mentored and promoted multiple engineers into Team Lead and Engineering Manager roles

Led a unit of three cross-functional teams owning two core products at Russia’s largest classifieds platform: • Avito Messenger — high-load messaging platform, 5M DAU, 17K messages/sec • “Flower” Chatbot Platform — no-code bot builder for text & voice, 70K DAU, 300K+ bot launches/day Key results: ▸ Launched SBC (Seller-Buyer Communication) product generating 1B+ RUB net revenue with up to 15% lead-to-deal conversion ▸ Automated 68% of support requests via the Flower platform, significantly cutting operational costs ▸ Reduced messenger database costs by 3x through architectural optimization ▸ Improved availability from 99% to 99.9% ▸ Scaled the Flower platform 20x in bot launch volume ▸ Increased sprint goal completion from 60% to 95%; reduced scope drop from 35% to 20% ▸ Achieved 100% staffing — closed all open positions ▸ Participated in forming and executing the technical strategy for the entire Communication Cluster

Managed three development departments (50+ developers, QA, analysts) within the Software Solutions Center at Russia’s national payment card infrastructure operator (Mir card network). Directed development and maintenance of 12 payment products including authorization, clearing, and anti-fraud systems. Key results: ▸ Built a new anti-fraud platform from scratch, replacing the incumbent vendor solution — defended the business case and secured committee approval for the strategic transition ▸ Achieved 99.999% availability across all products ▸ Implemented real-time monitoring via Kafka Streaming ▸ Introduced stress/load testing, achieving a 2.5x performance reserve for peak loads ▸ Modularized the platform on Spring Boot, accelerating startup time and shrinking artifact size ▸ Built and launched fully remote teams; created hiring/onboarding processes for distributed work ▸ Developed career grading system and competency matrices for engineering progression ▸ Led migration of the entire Development Center from Oracle JDK 8 to Liberica JDK 11

Dual Product Owner + Tech Lead for the ML Platform at GridGain (commercial distribution of Apache Ignite). Responsible for product strategy, backlog, architecture, and hands-on development. Key results: ▸ Developed a distributed ML module for Apache Ignite, enabling scalable machine learning on distributed data ▸ Built the ML platform team from scratch — hiring, onboarding, and establishing engineering culture ▸ Participated in pre-sales, created proof-of-concept projects for tenders, and closed deals with technical demos ▸ Technical evangelist: presented at 10 events (4 local, 6 international), authored marketing articles

R&D engineer working directly with the CTO/co-founder on research-intensive distributed systems and machine learning projects. ▸ Developed the distributed ML module that became the foundation for GridGain’s ML product line ▸ Created an automated cost estimation tool for Oracle Coherence → Apache Ignite migrations ▸ Published GridGain images to Microsoft Azure Marketplace and AWS EC2

Active contribution to opensource project - Apache Ignite. Focused on Apache Ignite ML Grid.