The Developer Path - From a ZX Spectrum to High-Load Tech Lead
The Developer Path
Not a roadmap I copied from somewhere - the actual road I walked, from a home computer in first grade to leading high-load e-commerce platforms. Here is how it happened.
How it started
I was lucky from the very beginning: my mother worked as a programmer, so code was never something foreign in our home. And when I was in first grade, my father gave me a ZX Spectrum - a gift I'm still grateful for to this day. That little machine is where everything began.
My first language was BASIC, typed straight into the Spectrum. Through my school years I moved on to TurboBasic (around 2005), then Visual Basic. Curious about what else was out there, I experimented with Perl and Active Server Pages - until I found the stack that would define my career: PHP with HTML & CSS, and soon after, JavaScript.
In 2008 I registered as a private entrepreneur - back then СПД, today known as ФЛП - and turned the hobby into a profession.
Languages, in order
The career
ResonanceTechnologies
Full Stack Engineer (PHP, JS, HTML, CSS). My first full-time role - three years growing from a junior into a confident full-stack web developer, starting on the front-end and gradually owning the whole stack.
- PHP
- JavaScript
- HTML
- CSS
СПД "Терета Александр Викторович"
Full Stack Web Developer, working independently. Two years delivering custom web projects end to end - from requirements to deployment - which sharpened both my engineering and my sense of ownership.
- JavaScript
- HTML
- PHP
- OOP
Allo
Full Stack Magento Developer, Tech / Team Lead. Lead developer on the Magento platform for one of Ukraine's largest electronics and appliances retailers - my first taste of high-traffic e-commerce and team leadership.
- Magento
- RESTful Web Services
- OOP
- High-load optimization
Sam-Solutions
Magento / Magento 2 Senior Developer (Full Stack). Two and a half years of Magento and Magento 2 development for outsourcing clients, deepening my platform expertise across the full stack.
- JavaScript
- HTML
- Magento 2
- +10 skills
GoMage
Magento 2 Senior, then Team / Tech Lead, and today leading Laravel + Shopify (BE) alongside Magento 2 Full Stack. Nearly nine years of architecture ownership on high-load commerce: mentoring, code review, technology choices, and translating business needs into scalable systems.
This is where I tackled the hardest problems of my career - eliminating 504 errors on a store with 1M products and 10M+ pages, and leading a Magento 2 → Shopify Plus migration that cut total cost of ownership by ~50-60%.
- Magento 2
- Laravel
- Shopify
- GraphQL
- RESTful Web Services