Engineer. Leader. Builder.
Thirteen years building for the web, the last one mostly not by typing. Agents handle the implementation; I decide what should happen, check whether it did, and catch the thing that would have broken production on a Friday. Senior engineer at BuildOps on financial systems, and founder of two products built the same way.
The story
I started building for the web in 2013 in Yerevan, Armenia. jQuery first, then React early — I was rewriting Silverlight modules to React in 2017, the same year Hooks were a year out. By 2019 I was leading a 5-person team rewriting Renderforest’s Video Maker, a product that has since served 10M+ users and produced 30M+ projects.
In 2020 I joined EPAM. Over four-and-a-half years there I went from Senior to Team Leader, architecting micro-frontend systems, running a 12-engineer front-end team, and shipping streaming features for a major client 15% ahead of schedule. WCAG 2.1 AA was a constant theme — I cared about accessibility long before it was a punch-list item for AI tools.
In April 2025 I joined BuildOps in Santa Monica as IC5. Same engineering rigor, new domain (vertical SaaS for the trades), and a way of working that changed underneath me: for the past year most of the code has been written by agents, and my job moved to deciding what should happen and proving it did.
The domain was genuinely new — the engineering wasn’t. I had to learn how accounting periods, close semantics, enforcement across fiscal years and ledger integrity actually work before I could be trusted to change any of it. I now spec and review changes in that area and coordinate its releases. That turned out to be the part the agents can’t do for you — the judgment about what should happen lives in understanding the domain, not in typing the code.
Leadership philosophy
The most useful question I can ask an engineer on my team is, “What’s the version of you that you want to be?” My job is to clear the path to that version — through 1:1s, code reviews, and the sometimes-uncomfortable conversation about scope or quality. I’ve mentored 30+ engineers; the ones I’m proudest of all share the same trait — they’ve since taught their own teams.
On hiring: 15+ candidates interviewed across loops, with onboarding cut by 30%. The trick is hiring for the team you want, not the one you have. That means fewer rockstars and more compound interest.
Engineering with AI
At BuildOps the practice has compounded into something concrete: I haven’t hand-written implementation code in roughly six months. The day is spent orchestrating coding agents, custom skills, and slash commands rather than typing the work myself. Higher throughput, more consistent architectural choices, audit-grade tests and accessibility by default.
What that looks like in practice:
- Agents, skills & commands — reusable Claude Code agents and slash commands for code review, a11y audits, architecture analysis, and design-to-code translation. Team conventions captured as durable tooling.
- AI-driven research & architecture — deep-research agents pressure-test trade-offs before any code is written. Decisions stay auditable.
- AI-paired testing and code review — tests, refactors, and PR reviews are agent-paired by default. The agent proposes; the human owns the merge.
- WCAG 2.1 AA at CI quality — AI-led audit workflows surface a11y issues before they ship, not at the end of a compliance cycle.
- Design-to-code via MCP — Figma + design-system integrations turn hand-offs into production components without boilerplate.
Rigor still belongs to the engineer. The agent suggests; the human owns.
Career git log
* 2025-04 (HEAD -> main, BuildOps) IC5 Software Engineer · Santa Monica
* 2023-11 (epam/team-leader) Team Leader · 12-engineer front-end team · Glendale
* 2022-03 (epam/lead-glendale) Lead Software Engineer · Glendale
* 2020-11 (epam/lead-yerevan) Lead Software Engineer · promoted · Yerevan
* 2020-09 (epam/senior) Senior Software Engineer · joined EPAM · Armenia
* 2019-05 (renderforest/team-lead) Team Lead · Video Maker rewrite · 10M+ users
* 2018-12 (eventgeek/senior) Senior Software Engineer
* 2017-04 (apollobytes/team-lead) Team Lead · Cloud Fleet Manager · Maersk
* 2016-12 (apollobytes/senior) Senior Software Engineer
* 2016-07 (cyclop/dev) JavaScript Developer · MegaMarket
* 2013-12 (freelance) Web Developer · Freelance
* 2013-08 (instigate/junior) Junior Web Developer · Armath
Credentials
- Education:Bachelor’s, Computer Science · Cyber Security · National Polytechnic University of Armenia · 2013–2017
- Languages: English (Full Pro) · Armenian (Native) · Russian (Full Pro)
- Based in: Glendale, California
- Open to: Remote · Engineering leadership · AI-augmented builds