Pavel Samsonov

Engineering Manager. I turn chaos into predictable delivery. I build autonomous teams where engineers grow, processes serve the business, not the other way around.

• 10+ years in IT, 5 years in Engineering Management.
• Led cross-functional teams of 8-15 (Backend, Mobile, Web, QA).
• BigTech experience: built processes and products in PropTech and E-commerce (Avito).

📍 Moscow

🌐 Remote / Hybrid

🎓 MTUCI '13 (Software Engineer)

Read my "Manager README" →

My achievements

Built 3 cross-functional product teams from scratch to launch new streams (hiring, onboarding, processes).

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Outcome

Teams achieved full autonomy; 2 teams successfully handed over to newly minted Team Leads.

Implemented PDPs aligned with business goals and delegated ownership via the Feature Lead role.

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Outcome

Promoted 7 Senior Engineers and 2 Tech Leads internally. Achieved full team autonomy with zero micromanagement.

Implemented a 'Shift-left' approach: involved engineers in Discovery/Grooming and established TTM metrics.

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Outcome

Reduced the gap between ideation and release; the practice was scaled to neighboring teams within the unit.

Managed the technical roadmap for a large-scale update serving millions of users.

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Outcome

On-time release across all platforms (Web/iOS/Android).

Planned a seamless migration of traffic and data, aligning with SEO, marketing, and legal requirements.

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Outcome

Project closed on time. Secured a transfer of +40K DAU and +1% Buyers to the main platform. 100% of resources redirected to growth tasks.

Formalized the 24/7 on-call rotation process involving all backend engineers in the cluster.

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Outcome

Established the operational foundation required to maintain cluster availability at the 99.9% level.

Experience

Avito

Teamlead

Jul 2020 - now

People leadership

Hiring and onboarding engineers
1:1s, performance reviews, PDPs

Team leadership

Cross-functional team (BE, FE, iOS, Android, QA)
Built and handed over 2 product teams
Delegated key ownership areas

Goal setting

Yearly/quarterly goals aligned with roadmap and unit metrics
Focus via OKRs and sprint goals

Process management

Discovery→Delivery flow with time-to-market measurement
Retros on complex projects with process follow-up
Project templates and governance

Business expertise

Hitting targets on key business metrics

Technical background

Ex Senior QA
Read/fix code, write scripts and automation
Logs, monitoring, CI/CD
Join tech discussions and decisions

Avito

QA/SDET

Sep 2018 - Jun 2020

Domofond (QA Automation & Release Lead): Built a comprehensive quality ecosystem using a various stack (Kotlin, JS, Python, Go, PHP) covering the entire test pyramid. Took ownership of CI/CD infrastructure and acted as the Android Release Manager, ensuring predictable delivery to Google Play and transparent QA processes for the product team.

Busfor

Lead QA Engineer

May 2017 - Sep 2018

Joining the company as its first QA engineer, I established quality and continuous release processes, balanced manual and automated testing, and served as both a release engineer and QA lead, which let me work closely with the CTO and directly influence the development team.

Lamoda Group

Senior QA Engineer

Aug 2015 - May 2017

I developed my Python skills, wrote web and API automation tests and immersed myself in infrastructure and CI/CD while working as part of the product team on both the website and the mobile application.

Wikimart

QA Automation Engineer

Feb 2014 - Aug 2015

I began my career as a QA Automation Engineer: I wrote automated tests, explored code and frameworks in multiple languages and learned CI/CD and release processes—skills that became the foundation for my future growth.