// senior php developer & team lead
open to new opportunities
Mikhail
Ekaterinichev
12+ years building fintech systems, leading engineering teams, and shipping production-grade software that handles real money.
About Me
I've spent over 12 years building software, with a deep focus on the financial sector — fintech platforms, banking systems, insurance, and credit services. The systems I work on process real transactions and real money, where reliability and precision aren't just nice-to-haves — they're requirements.
I'm equally comfortable writing code as I am leading a team. I've led two teams of 5 engineers, owned hiring processes, and made the architectural calls that shaped how products evolved. Whether the role calls for hands-on development, technical leadership, or bridging the gap between dev and ops — I bring the full picture.
PHP is my primary language — 12 years of commercial work, PHP 8.x in recent years, mostly on Yii2 and Symfony with PostgreSQL. On the front end, my commercial work has been templating and jQuery. TypeScript, JavaScript and Python are tools I use day to day — scripts, tooling, reading and fixing code — rather than languages I've shipped commercial products in. Go: about a year owning one module inside a production project; useful, but not my primary language. I pick up new stacks quickly because strong fundamentals transfer everywhere. I'm also a strong advocate for AI-augmented development — not generating throwaway code, but building proper validation pipelines where AI output is reviewed, tested, and production-safe.
Selected Results
Concrete outcomes I can walk you through in detail.
1 hour → 300 ms
PostgreSQL · Equifax Credit Services
Rewrote an analytical query with 17 joins over a ~30M-row table: from over an hour to ~300 ms. Read the plan with EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS), fixed the join order so rows are filtered early, and added indexes for the actual conditions. Plan review then became a mandatory step for any heavy query.
PHP 7.2 → 8.4, no downtime
Platform migration · FlagmanCrowd
Migrated a live crowdlending platform from PHP 7.2 to 8.4 without interrupting business operations: dependency inventory, a risk map starting from the money-handling code, tests ahead of refactoring, PHPStan with a rising threshold, and only reversible steps with a rollback plan.
AI in the review loop
Team process · FlagmanCrowd
Introduced AI-assisted code review as the first pass on every pull request before a human, plus AI-generated integration tests. Human review now focuses on the design rather than formatting; responsibility for the merge stays with a person.
CI/CD & code review from zero
GitHub Actions · FlagmanCrowd
Built the CI/CD pipeline on GitHub Actions and the team’s code review process from scratch for a team of 5 working on a platform with real money flows.
What I Bring
Technical Leadership
Leading teams of 5 engineers, conducting technical interviews, establishing code review processes, and leading sprint planning. I make architectural decisions that balance technical excellence with business reality.
Backend Architecture
High-load fintech systems built to handle real financial data reliably. Microservice and monolith architectures, message queues, database optimization, and caching strategies that keep things fast under pressure.
DevOps & CI/CD
Docker containerization, Ansible automation, GitHub Actions pipelines, and automated testing integration. I bridge the gap between development and operations — setting up workflows that let teams ship with confidence.
AI-Augmented Development
Practical integration of LLMs into development workflows: automated code review, intelligent task management, and quality-checked AI-assisted coding. Building processes where AI is a powerful tool with proper guardrails.
Tech Stack
$ core
$ infrastructure
$ languages
applied = day-to-day use and scripting; commercial product development is in PHP
$ tools & practices
Experience
FlagmanCrowd
Team Lead
- Led a team of 5 developers on a crowdlending platform with real money flows: hiring, onboarding, sprint planning, 1-on-1s
- Migrated the platform from PHP 7.2 to 8.4 without interrupting business operations
- Built CI/CD on GitHub Actions and the code review process from scratch
- Introduced AI-assisted code review (first pass on every PR before a human) and AI-generated integration tests
- Stack: PHP 8, Yii2 (primary framework), PostgreSQL, Redis, Docker, GitHub Actions; Symfony in a supporting role
FlexyTech
Senior PHP Developer
- Extended payment modules on Symfony with PostgreSQL, Redis and RabbitMQ
- Developed and extended financial products in a microservice architecture, working across Symfony and Yii2 services
- Stack: PHP, Symfony, Yii2, PostgreSQL, Redis, RabbitMQ
AST LLC
Team Lead
- Led a team of 5 on a B2B mortgage insurance broker system
- Owned technical decisions, code review, sprint planning, and DevOps
- Designed a two-level access model: role defines allowed actions, object ownership (organization / deal) defines visible records
- Stack: PHP, Yii2 (primary framework); one module built on Symfony
Equifax Credit Services
PHP Developer
- "Bureau of Insurance Histories" built from scratch — system architecture and database design; the service returns risk flags on a person and an insured object to detect double insurance
- Queue-based processing pipeline on ActiveMQ (ingest → parse → normalize → match → serve), with online insurer requests prioritized over historical loads
- Cut an analytical query with 17 joins over ~30M rows from over an hour to ~300 ms
- Stack: PHP 7, Yii2, PostgreSQL, MySQL, ActiveMQ, Ansible
UniCredit Bank
PHP Developer
- Internal banking systems, intranet portal, reporting
- PDF document generation and stakeholder communication
Earlier Roles
PHP Developer
- Real estate web development (1C Bitrix)
- Logistics company — PDF processing systems
- IT consulting — counterparty verification service with ElasticSearch
Education
Moscow Financial-Industrial University "Synergy"
Information Security
2013
College of Moscow University for the Humanities
Software Engineering
2010
Let's Work Together
Remote by default; hybrid or on-site in Moscow works too. Open to relocation outside Russia. Full-time, part-time, or project-based engagements.
Contracting as sole proprietor or through a foreign entity