SPEED AND FUNCTION - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Alex Lep / DevOps Engineer
Alex was working on a PhD in genetics and teaching college-level anatomy classes, supporting his studies through a job at a maritime agency, when he realized that he was actually an artist.
Not the Van Gogh type, for he wanted to create something beautiful and useful, preferably without any risk to his bodily integrity. Alex found his calling in software engineering and Ruby on Rails, and is currently focusing on the back end, with an eye towards becoming an indispensable Fullstack CMS developer.
Alex is valued in the S&F team for his lack of preconception and prejudice, high trainability, and attention to detail. He charms our clients with the way he cares about how the projects he contributes to will turn out, as well as with his surprisingly minute reports. Unlike many others, Alex is impatient to turn 45, the blissful moment when he releases his kids into the world. While he considers them his main source of pride and motivation, he does look forward to the time when he can finally enjoy all his favorite animated features, especially Japanese anime, in uninterrupted peace and quiet.
Alexander works on the front end (typesetting and coding in ReactJS) helping our clients turn a picture into a web-app, a website, or a prototype.
He has a master's degree in information systems and management and previously worked as a user interface developer with Yandex. On weekends, Alexander likes to go for car rides with his wife and, when he has more time on his hands, to play video games, his Bengal cat at his side.
Job Titles:
- Alisa Baidakova / Translator
Anastasia sees her mission in life as "living happily and helping others do the same." That is why when S&F was looking for someone who could create and nurture a welcoming, warm, and comfortable working environment at our office, we struck gold when we found her.
Kind, empathetic, optimistic, and creative, Anastasia loves people and has an uncommonly high level of emotional intelligence. In addition to taking care of all kinds of household matters at our office, Anastasia plays an important role in HR management by helping onboard new staff, facilitating internal communications, and organizing corporate events, trainings, team building activities, and birthday celebrations. She also helps our overseas staff develop their English language skills and arranges tutoring, speaking clubs, and testing support.
Anastasia values the atmosphere at S&F where everyone can express their opinions freely and be heard, and draws her inspiration to grow from working with the team of bright individuals. It is easy to see how neither would have been there without Anastasia. A win-win! (Incidentally, it is one of the principles promoted by her favorite book - Stephen Covey's "7 Habits of Highly-Effective People"). True to the first part of her mission, Anastasia does not spend all of her time being a "mom" to everyone at S&F. Some of the things that make her life a happy one are raising her young daughter, taking fitness classes, and studying psychology.
Anatoliy likes to feel useful and in-demand and enjoys the opportunity to work with cutting-edge technology in a supportive team while dealing with something new and unexpected every day. That is not, however, why Anatoly wakes up early every morning; like many parents of young children, he has to go through a considerable "to-do" list to get his two kids ready for school before he can dive into coding.
Persistent and meticulous, Anatoly can figure out anything that interests him, even if it is completely unrelated to his profession. Almost anything, that is - as long as he knows where he's going with his research. (In one instance, just like Jules Verne's Jacque Paganel, Anatoliy learned how to say a few phrases in perfect Portuguese, where what he actually needed was Spanish!).
Anna's own record of innumerable completed projects, quality products, and contented clients, is largely due to her ability to get fully immersed in her work, identify priorities, learn fast, and persevere in the face of challenges. She admits that none of her multiple certificates (ISTQB, QA automation, test management, and test analytics, to name a few), although a definite achievement, give her as much pride and satisfaction as a job well done. As one of our most experienced team members, she often takes a leading role and coaches younger colleagues, infusing them with her ceaseless excitement for new projects and ideas.
Easy-going and communicative, Anna finds joy in surrounding herself with good people and interesting events. She is proud of being a mother and a homeowner. Her free time is divided among drawing, dance, sports, hiking, reading, and watching fairy tale adaptations. With so much going on, one thing Anna never seems to find time for is getting a decent hairband: her long hair is often seen being precariously held together by a pen or a pencil. (Quite possibly, she just wants to be always prepared to sketch something - or to add another party to her diary.)
Job Titles:
- Enterprise Department Manager
As Enterprise Department Manager at S&F, Anna ensures high-quality service and a sense of security for her clients and team members - while balancing her passion for the loved ones in her life.
As the mother of two daughters, she's been able to fine-tune her already strong skills of curiosity, empathy, and problem-solving. Anna enjoys learning from her surroundings and the intelligent and creative people that are her co-workers and clients. This love of learning can also be seen in her frequent travels and how, when at home, she likes to explore new landscapes in fiction. Anna has committed herself to creating and maintaining a nurturing space for her team members, so they can be proud of what they've accomplished. Creating a sense of family within the company is at the core of her work, which comes from her Ukrainian heritage and her experience as a mother
Job Titles:
- Fullstack Department Manager
Anri grew up in a family of mathematicians and followed the lead of his older brother in familiarizing himself with computers and programming from an early age. Even though he now says that his origins left him no choice but to become a software engineer, before moving into tech, he first got a master's degree in economics.
That came in handy later when Anri worked on e-commerce projects as a lead web developer with a digital marketing agency, prior to joining S&F as an Engineering Lead. Now, after more than seven years with us, Anri describes himself as "the shepherd and the priest" for our software developers in their mission to convert our clients' needs into solid products. He is, in turn, much valued by the team for his proficiency in everything JavaScript, approachability, patience, reliability, and his inquiring mind.
Anri is exceedingly modest and does not like the concept of being "proud" of anything. He does admit though to a superb collection of funny stories, sufficient for a good book (we add, much anticipated if he ever decides to go ahead with it!). For now, it, however, remains a project of the distant future, while Anri is busy traveling and hiking with his wife, being an avid music fan, playing guitar, and watching his favorite TV shows.
Job Titles:
- Department Manager
- CMS Department Manager
CMS Department Manager Dima brings an adaptive, flexible and open-minded approach to S&F. He loves everything that comes with working with a team, and his adventurous attitude helps him be a compassionate leader.
Dima finds a sense of family within S&F, and enjoys the connections that he's been able to make with his colleagues. His passions extend to extreme sports, cars, and reality-based films. Organization plays a big role in Dima's life and work is no exception. Yet he also values an atmosphere of transparency and professionalism.
Job Titles:
- Dmitry Isayenko / UI / UX Designer
Eleni is our chief accountant, a professional in her field. She is an example of a person who deliberately works and improves within the specialty she studied for.
She likes accounting; she could stay at university to educate others on this topic but "teaching is not mine," says Eleni. After graduating, she went to work at a bank and later got into the IT industry.
A notable fact: Eleni was so open in the community that HRs chatted with her frequently. That's how she knew about the vacancy at S&F. Eleni joined the team when it was 2-3 times smaller. Now, Eleni is one of those people who develop together with the company. She truly loves her job, her two children, and the quality time with the family. And when there's some free time, she goes into nature to paint a landscape in serenity.
While studying psychology in college, Ellen took an opportunity to do a QA engineering internship with a startup and was inspired to try a variety of software development roles, including project management.
She went on to lead a number of projects from inception to finish, mastering myriad tech skills along the way. Not surprisingly, when a friend introduced Ellen to S&F, she felt like it was a match made in heaven. Open-minded, extraverted, flexible, and self-motivated, she found a perfect environment to set free her infinite curiosity and realize her versatile potential.
Outside of work, Ellen maintains a strong interest in her original field of studies and reads extensively on psychology, medicine, and nutrition. These come in particularly handy now, as she and her husband recently became parents for the first time.
Job Titles:
- Devops Department Manager
Eugene leads the DevOps team, mentoring fellow engineers and ensuring they move toward project objectives in a healthy working environment. Eugene collaborates with clients directly and helps them estimate the scope of work, making each solution highly secure, scalable, and cost-effective.
Eugene considers himself to be a highly disciplined person, and the level of self-organization he maintains in his personal life proves to be quite helpful at work. But not only that makes him a confident team leader, but he also has a fair share of experience under his belt. Eugene has worked on many projects in various niches, both building them from scratch and improving what was already there. He's particularly enthusiastic about contributing to challenging assignments that have a real impact on human lives.
What drives him most about his job at S&F is a great team and the ability to keep up with the best engineering practices while maintaining a positive, friendly environment. He enjoys working with self-starters who know what they're doing and facilitating others' jobs with automation tools. Eugene is motivated to make the world a better place: as ambitious as it sounds, he believes that our society can grow to be kinder and have a higher quality of life. On a personal level, he makes his living better by taking regular trips, at least once in two weeks. Besides getting away from it all to enjoy the sea, mountains, or forests, he spends time reading history books and watching documentaries.
Inna has a bachelor's degree in computer science and had worked as a UI Engineer before deciding to look for an occupation that would help her grow as an entrepreneur and a project manager.
Her search led her in 2016 to Speed and Function's team of producers where Inna finally got a chance to convert her creativity, positive mindset, and drive for quality, into an extensive portfolio of successful projects. Always in pursuit of a challenge, and detesting routine, Inna prides herself on having taken on (and won over) some of our most demanding clients.
Independent since an early age, and with a travel record of over 20 countries (including experience living in three of those), Inna is full of the most amusing and bizarre stories (none, however, are fit for print). Fearless as she may seem, Inna does admit to keeping her eyes half-closed when watching horror movies and occasionally hiding behind her cat Simba if the action on-screen becomes too frightening.
Job Titles:
- Irena Mali / Software Engineer
With a background in aquatic ecology and paleobiology, Irina brings a scientific perspective to her role as CFO and owner of Speed & Function; her research skills, attention to detail and commitment to quality are among her strongest skills.
Irina's interest in information design was initially sparked by her experiences of creating presentations for scientific conferences. She made the shift to web development in 2003, leading a team of designers, engineers, copywriters, and front-end developers in an e-commerce environment. Three years later, she co-founded Speed & Function with Nick Gluzdov.
In recent years, Irina has turned her attention to taking a developmental approach. She gets to apply a scientific approach to her roles by doing experiments to further her own development and growth. She has led multiple Developmental Sprints® within S&F and also trained as a Sprint Leader with Minds at Work, a Robert Kegan company.
She's incredibly inspired about seeing developmental approaches being brought to the younger generation, teaching the leaders of the future that they can change themselves and can help others change.
Much like her favorite book character, George Sand's Consuelo, Kristina is a self-made woman. She has a master's degree in computer graphics and web design and is proud of having been accepted to university solely on the merit of her portfolio.
Before recently joining S&F, Kristina worked on web development and tech solutions for music education, with a strong emphasis on graphic design, interactive features, and animation. In the meantime, she learned English by watching TV shows and YouTube videos, while also developing a keen interest in languages less widely spoken (her most recent fascination is Irish).
Kristina likes myths and adventure in all shapes and forms, especially if they are a product of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. When not immersed in the latest Avengers installment, she enjoys alternative rock, watches TV shows (her favorites include The Office, Parks and Recreation, Doctor Who, and Breaking Bad), and cheers for ManU.
Max's goal is to develop in many different spheres, both professionally and personally, and he does not waste time pursuing it.
Within the past ten years, he has ventured into a variety of web development and e-commerce directions, and now holds certificates in web design, e-commerce, database development, and web layout, on top of his degrees in engineering, applied science, and management. With S&F, Max is currently focusing on User Interface engineering, with an eye towards taking responsibility for entire projects (and their teams) sometime in the near future. Outside of the office, he has dabbled in snowboarding, kitesurfing, paragliding, surfing and photography, among other things, while constantly trying something new.
Despite his hankering for novelty, Max is endearingly pedantic in his daily habits. He wakes up with the sun and takes his Scotch terrier for a walk. Once he gets to the office, he makes sure that none of the windows are draped and that there is as much light in the room as there can be. Then he brews himself a cup of tea, the first of about twenty he drinks while working (or of about a hundred if he is having a stressful day). He is very precise in how his desk should be organized and knows immediately if anyone has touched it. Max's favorite aspects of his work are socializing with clients and colleagues and finding optimal solutions to people's needs and problems. Together with his adventurous and punctilious nature, his well-developed communication skills make him particularly good at it.
When asked about the meaning of life, Mike's gut reaction was "yikes!" because he wasn't really sure what he could answer to such an important, broad question.
But he does know a thing or two about more concrete matters, like hitting the keyboard and writing clean and organized code. As a tech lead, Mike enjoys solving problems that are both technical and human in nature. He spent a lot of time around senior developers, learning the ropes of the craft (enough to make him think Angular was easy to learn). He has also worked in teams that were creating spaghetti code and understood the pain of having to deal with the aftermath of such scenarios. These hardships taught him the value of being disciplined with his coding concepts.
His master skill is recognizing each person's potential. Right from the start, Mike likes to notice what people are made of and pair them up with the tasks that he knows they'll excel at. He's almost always right about this. His trickster attitude gives him a curious edge over others and makes him a fun team member to be around. In his spare time, you'll find Mike composing his own music or touring with his rock band, Eye on Attraction, around the world.
Job Titles:
- Associate Delivery / Operations Manager
Taking a proactive approach to her role, she sees herself in the position of a Head of Delivery one day. Natalie has tried different things throughout her education and career, and there's no end to how she can extend her knowledge and skills. She graduated from two different programs and switched to HR from a background in sales. Having worked as a Business Development Manager, Natalie discovered she could be great at finding the right people for the right job. That's when she decided to unleash her potential in recruitment and HR. Unsurprisingly, this type of work comes naturally to her - the ability to listen and understand any team member is one of Natalie's strongest skills.
Intellectually curious, Natalie always finds some time to brush up her spoken English or listen to industry-related lectures. You can also find her horseback riding, doing CrossFit, reading, or playing chess (nobody knows how she manages to keep so many hobbies!). In fact, practicing sports and keeping a healthy lifestyle has become her second nature. With a spirit of gratitude to life and a flexible mind that never stops learning, Natalie is a great fit for our ambitious company. She knows for sure that to work with people and tune up the processes across different teams, you need to be mindful about what you're doing and easily adaptable to a changing environment.
Job Titles:
- PM Practice Lead
- Speed & Function in 2018 As a Producer
Navi joined Speed & Function in 2018 as a Producer and was promoted to her current role just two months later. She describes herself as the warden of the company's processes, and alongside training the company's managers and junior producers, she keeps a constant eye out for weaknesses and risks in projects to make sure client projects run smoothly and successfully.
With a flair for problem solving, project management and strategic thinking, she is the go-to person at S&F when people have ideas for improving how projects are managed. Born in Uzbekistan, Navi comes from a diverse background of Central Asian ancestry and speaks seven languages, including three dialects of Ossetian. Her childhood dream was to become a wrestler, which she has fulfilled through practising the martial art of Sambo. She also loves horseback riding.
Despite being a Sambo champion in her hometown and her valuable contributions to S&F, Navi's proudest accomplishment to date is her agricultural investment startup, Fermopolis, which she founded because of a lack of quality local produce in Innopolis in Russia, where she now lives. Navi works full time at S&F but somehow manages to run her business alongside this, too. Her aim is to go global and one day, to spearhead a unicorn. For now, she's proud that more and more people have heard Navi has a BSc in business information systems from Westminster University and a masters degree in software engineering from Innopolis University. She loves sharing her knowledge, creating beautiful, engaging presentations and proposals, and growing as a trainer and a coach in her role at Speed & Function.
As well as being Speed & Function's CEO and a seasoned software engineer, Nick is a partner and father of 3 with a passion for personal and professional development, and pours many hours into developing himself as a leader.
Nick grew up in a family of professional artists in the city of Kiev, which at the time was part of the Communist USSR. He studied and practiced graphic design early in his career before moving his focus to user interface design and engineering.He co-founded S&F in 2006 with his partner, Irina, and has a wealth of experience delivering value to clients in multiple industries such as large, high-traffic web portals, online retail, education and entertainment. Over the last few years, Nick has poured his focus into creating the most collaborative experience possible for clients alongside prioritising state-of-the-art software development.
He's part of several developmental communities, such as Integral Life, Deliberately Developmental Practitioner's Network, and Carol Sanford's CAD, and he's focused on evolving Speed & Function's culture so that it becomes a Deliberately Developmental Organization®. He believes in the power of transparency and reflection, meditation and of course, good strong coffee.
Olga is one of our most prolific globetrotters and is the only team member to have met everyone at S&F in real life. She has a masters in biology and experience as a lecturer and academic advisor in forestry and horticulture.
Olga's love of science fiction and desire to be at the leading edge of things brought her to the tech industry, where she joined us initially as an intern. She quickly progressed to becoming a project manager and then almost single-handedly built up our Account Management Department from scratch. She now leads the customer success department and is passionate about the personal and professional development each new role and project offers.
In early 2020, Olga completed the three-day Developmental Sprint Leader Training with Bob Kegan, which gave her further tools to tackle the inevitable challenges of working in software development as growth opportunities in disguise.
She's excited about the ongoing learning curve that being part of a DDO provides. Olga's story with S&F is a living testimony to what she considers to be our core strengths - the meritocratic approach, the wide range of opportunities for growth, flexibility, and the great team spirit. Her life goals include seeing the nearby planets, achieving some great things for her descendants, and retiring to a tropical island.
Job Titles:
- Ostap Smolar / Software Engineer
Paul is a versatile professional who can take on a variety of roles, including those of a tester, a lead, or a QA, drawing from his broad scope of experience with leading the US- and EU-based companies.
His current focus is on enhancing the testing processes and products as a whole from the consumer's point of view, adopting an approach which Paul himself describes as "pedantic" and "quality manic".
Having chosen S&F for the opportunity to work remotely, Paul is highly valued for his confidence, strong understanding of business and product development, and the ability to effectively communicate with anyone. Paul loves the routine and simplicity of home life with his wife and three-year-old daughter and works continuously on improving its quality, too. His free time is dedicated to professional photography.
Job Titles:
- Chief Technology Officer
- S & F As a PHP Engineer
Peter joined S&F as a PHP engineer in late 2019, and has since been promoted to Head of Delivery/CTO. His skills lie in two key areas: first, creating environments where products, projects and even entire startups can flourish both technically and in the market; and second, supporting people to adapt products and change direction easily in order to meet the users' needs.
Alongside this, he loves being at the leading edge of innovation and is passionate about finding ways to dramatically increase a startup's chances of success. He firmly believes that alongside a solid idea, what influences a product or business's level of success is how flexible, adaptable and able to pivot you are.
Peter has travelled much of Europe on two wheels, including through Germany, Austria, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro and Hungary. Unsurprisingly, having the mind of an engineer led him to set up a side business selling bespoke bike equipment that's designed for long-distance bikepacking, which he runs in his spare time with his wife.
A Philosophy major and a Brooklyn native, Sam spent the majority of his career in Southern California, working with tech startups, non-profits, and state government organizations.
His 14 years of product and project management experience ranges from helping create a freelancer social network, leading an international community in crowdsourced educational game design, working as a manager and a lobbyist for the expansion of a California water utility, and learning freight and logistics to aid the design of an LA based Alibaba competitor platform.
Sam's professional strengths include a focus on creative user onboarding, system gamification, contract negotiations, and operational processes improvement. In his free time Sam likes to garden with his kids, or indulge his inner game design geek by building up a role playing game that he hopes will help teach positive psychology concepts and self-awareness to teenagers.
Job Titles:
- Leadgen Manager / Sales Operations Manager
A teacher by education, Stacy was pretty sure that was her true calling-until she started her career in sales.
Interestingly, she finds these two domains quite similar. At S&F, Stacy is responsible for generating new qualified leads and building relationships with existing ones. With a love of learning and trying new things, she is always keen to take on a multirole position and enjoys stretching herself by taking on new opportunities, such as getting involved in marketing and developing her agile management skills as a qualified Scrum Master.
Stacy is both career-driven (she couldn't help working on the third day after giving birth) and a dedicated mom, and she thinks of her relationships with husband and daughter as her biggest accomplishment. What she loves the most about S&F is the team support and excitement that comes from being a part of truly interesting, challenging projects. Stacy doesn't want to miss out on any opportunities and always shares her enthusiasm with everyone around her.
Stephan is happy to wake up every day to the prospect of doing what he loves. (This includes about a hundred things - from writing code to creating estimates, assisting the sales team, and everything else, both at the front-end and server-side!).
Goal-oriented, persistent, and curious, Stephan prides himself on his multifaceted skill set and ability to make quick decisions. He appreciates the opportunity to take up challenging tasks in a team of interesting individuals, which he has found at S&F.
Stephan describes his personal goal simply - "to see the world". We suspect he wants to do that as a touring rock star, knowing that he plays guitar and is learning to play piano, or, as an amateur detective investigating macabre mysteries - considering his love of crime novels, especially those of Edgar Allan Poe.
Job Titles:
- Vit Nechai / Office Manager
Vlad is an S&F Middle Software Engineer who improves and writes code for projects. He makes sure that each project stays afloat and is an effective multitasker with a passion for businesses and IT.
He enjoys road trips, learning new development languages, and annual ski trips. Driven by his sense of achievement when he successfully finishes a project, Vlad has ambitions to become a senior developer and to dive deeper into specific languages such as Python. Vlad is always up for learning about development architecture and enhancing his technical skills, as well as discovering new things about his surroundings.