As the team grows, products multiply, and the engineering organization evolves - the CTO role often shifts from a technical leader to a manager staring at spreadsheets and dashboards. And that’s when it becomes truly challenging: to stay in the technical loop, remain close to the architecture and systems, and keep a real sense of what’s happening on the ground. In this talk, I’ll share my experience on how to stay a Hands-on CTO - maintaining deep technical understanding, influencing architecture, and scaling the company at the same time, without losing touch with the code and core systems. Key topics we’ll cover: - How the CTO role evolves as the company grows - from coder to system-level leader. - The most common traps: loss of architectural memory, disconnect between business and engineering, dependency on a few key people. - Healthy habits that help keep technical context: code reviews, architecture stand-ups, "walk the code" sessions, CTO R&D sprints. - Decision-making systems: how ADRs and RFCs help maintain clarity and traceability. - Communication with tech leads: building effective 1:1s, technical syncs, and knowledge-sharing loops. - Tools and platforms that preserve context - dashboards, monitoring systems, and architecture reviews.
Ihor Zakutynskyi
(CTO, FORMA, Universe),Being a team lead is like piloting a spaceship where every crew member has their own temperament and trajectory. The DISC model is your GPS that helps you avoid burning up in the atmosphere of “storming” and guides your team into the stable orbit of “performing.”
Hanna Likhtman
(Snotor, Solution Architect),Innovative cyber threats require CTO to adopt innovative approaches to response and counteraction. The development of the darknet as a marketplace for compromised credentials necessitates the implementation of new protection methods. We will discuss authorization security in SaaS services. I will talk about current threats, how 2FA can protect against the use of leaked data, what to do if cookies are compromised along with session tokens, and we will look at cases where darknet monitoring automation helps CTOs ensure the security of not only their own products, but also third-party supply chain services (Slack, GitLab, Jira, CRM), partners, C-level executives, and so on.
Dima Ashkinazi
(Alerts Bar Inc., CEO),A mistake during an interview can either become a reason to laugh — or cost you an offer. I invite you to take a closer look at both the obvious and hidden mistakes that candidates often make before, during, and after a technical interview. I can’t promise you’ll stop making them instantly after my talk — but you’ll definitely start noticing them.
Serhii Babich
(Senior Frontend Developer at DataRobot),We are used to trusting our feelings: it seems that the processes are working and the product is of high quality. But feelings cannot be scaled. In this report, I will show how we moved from intuitive decisions to a system of metrics that measures the quality of products and processes in real time. How teams, with a “dashboard,” manage the development of their products in terms of quality. And most importantly, how technical metrics become understandable to the business, help to talk about risks in one language, and make decisions on a large scale.
Igor Drozd
(CTO, Silpo(E-commerce)),Every engineer has their own path in IT. Mine didn’t start with polished presentations or clear plans — it started with me being lifted by a crane to fix a screen at the Metalist Stadium. Then came telecom projects, autotests, Red Hat, OpenStack, OpenShift — and a constant search for where to move next. Over time, the rough scripts I wrote just to save myself a few hours started holding production systems together. “Fires” turned into opportunities for new solutions, and experiments became experience that truly worked. And somewhere along the way, there were moments when I wanted to leave IT. But instead, DevOps01 appeared — then a community, and eventually AWS and HashiCorp ambassadorships. In this talk, I’ll share how the ongoing search for myself in the profession — and for the profession within myself — became the driving force that changed not only my career but also my life. How small initiatives grow into big systems, and how the community opens new doors.
Artem Hrechanychenko
(Lead SRE Engineer, TemaBit),The AI revolution is in full swing... everyone understands that. But how can AI be used effectively? What does it actually offer right now? I will explain why Temabit is moving towards building AI-assisted SDLC, rather than “buy an AI license and AI will build everything,” as we see the interaction between humans, AI agents, and various AI tools. I will show the development of AI-assisted SDLC using the example of GitHub Spec Kit, which we are actively implementing in various projects. Why are we talking about a 10-20-30-40% development boost? Is this realistic? The main thing is that what we see today is definitely not the end point, everything is moving fast... The IT we have known for the last 20 years is already dead, but what is coming instead? Let's talk about this using the example of Temabit. See you at the conference!
Sergiy Medvedyev
(Fozzy Group, Chief IT Architect),In his presentation, Vadym will cover: - Goals of the strategy process - Forecasting and goal setting (Foresight, Top-Down + Bottom-Up) - Lean A3: structuring problems and metrics - Strategy implementation and cascading goals - Tracking results (time cycles, OKRs, monitoring, adaptation) - Practical A3 examples
Vadym Pospielov
(VP of Engineering at Uklon),Vsevolod will share how he managed to build a profitable B2B SaaS without investments, which is used by top scientific publishers and grant agencies. What decisions were correct and helped to build everything in conditions of limited resources? What decisions were wrong? He will also talk about how to best organize teamwork in such conditions and what microservices have to do with it.
Vsevolod Solovyov
(prophy.ai),In the age of AI, anyone can generate code — even your team lead or the baker next door. But who ensures its quality? This talk will show why TDD is more relevant than ever, how to tell a good test from a bad one, make AI write proper code from the start, and why discipline and architectural thinking save both your nerves and your projects.
Stanislav Dolgachov
(EPAM, Senior Software Engineer),