Alexander Novikov

Summary

Principal Software Engineer specializing in JVM-based distributed systems, data platforms, and developer tooling. 10+ years designing high-load architectures that serve millions of devices. Author of open-source tools for code generation and protocol versioning.

Selected Work

Proto Wrapper Plugin github.com/alnovis/proto-wrapper-plugin — Maven/Gradle plugin for version-agnostic protobuf wrappers. Born from a production need to support multiple protocol versions across 1.5M+ devices with near-zero effort per new version.
TrustTunnel github.com/TrustTunnel/TrustTunnel — Contributor to an open-source VPN server and client ecosystem built with Rust and Tokio. HTTP/2, HTTP/3/QUIC support.
Nebula github.com/alnovis/nebula — Blog engine built with Rust, Axum, and HTMX. Compile-time templates, Redis-backed analytics, Cloudinary CDN integration.

Experience

1-OFD (Perviy OFD)

November 2021 — Present

Principal Software Engineer

Designed version-agnostic architecture for kkm-server handling 1.5M+ cash registers (~1M active). Reduced engineering effort for adding new protocol versions to near zero — this work led to the creation of Proto Wrapper Plugin.
Reworked the entire service ecosystem around the new architecture, unifying protocol handling across teams.
Built a two-level smart caching layer with cache warm-up and leader/follower replication across instances. Reduced p99 latency from 100+ ms to under 5 ms by eliminating per-request PostgreSQL queries.
Implemented approximate distinct count over petabyte-scale datalake using HyperLogLog, enabling analytics queries that would be impractical with exact computation.
Contributed to development of Yupana github.com/rusexpertiza-llc/yupana — a custom distributed database with SQL-like query syntax for analytical workloads.

Scala, Akka, ZIO, Cats, Tapir, http4s, Spark, PostgreSQL, Hadoop, Protobuf

Yandex

November 2020 — November 2021

Principal Software Engineer

Designed and built distributed backend services. Focused on interservice communication, REST API design, and performance optimization.

Scala, Akka, ZIO, PostgreSQL, gRPC, REST

HARMAN International

June 2013 — October 2020

Principal Software Engineer / Team Lead

Verizon (2019–2020): Built a 5G network telemetry analysis platform for one of the largest US carriers. Processing hundreds of megabytes to gigabytes of device telemetry per week per device — signal levels, base station data, network parameters. Designed the data processing pipeline using Spark-on-Kubernetes.
Reviver (2017–2019): Backend for the first US-approved digital license plate — an electronic display replacing traditional metal plates. REST API, database optimization, microservices architecture.
TouchTunes (2014–2017): In-venue interactive music platform serving tens of thousands of venues across North America. Built cloud services, real-time analytics on AWS.
OnStar (2013–2014): GM's connected vehicle platform providing telematics, emergency response, and navigation to millions of subscribers. Developed routing server components.

Java, Scala, Spring, Spark, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MongoDB, Redis, Cassandra, Docker, Kubernetes, AWS

Earlier Experience

2004 — 2013

VoIP and enterprise software development, including media application software for Avaya communication platforms.

Skills

Core

Scala, Java
Akka, ZIO, Cats
PostgreSQL, Redis
Spark, Hadoop
Docker, Kubernetes

Also worked with

Rust, Python, SQL/PL-SQL
Spring, http4s, Tapir
Oracle, MongoDB, Cassandra
AWS, Jenkins, CI/CD
Linux (Debian/Arch)

Education

Bachelor in Computer Science — Altay State Technical University (2000–2006)

Certifications

Parallel, Concurrent, and Distributed Programming in Java — Coursera, 2020