Iliya Karin is a DevOps professional with over a decade of experience. He is an IT expert in telecom, banking, and fintech. He has worked for such global leaders as Nokia and Innotech.
How have your talents and interests influenced your career and education?
My early interest in electronics had a huge influence on my educational and career choices. I was always interested in how electronics like the TV, VCR, radio, and handset Tetris worked. I followed my grandfather, watched him repair equipment, and later began disassembling electronics myself. At 7, I bought my first PC on MSDOS, leading to my interest in computers and programming. I have extensive technical knowledge. I always achieve my goals.
Your interest began in childhood? Where were you born? What did you enjoy doing as a child? Tell me about your parents.
I was born in Moscow, USSR, in 1987. Since early childhood, I have been taking electronics apart. In the '90s, my mom worked in retail, and my dad worked in construction. They didn't have much money but kept me engaged in sports, English, chess, computer classes, and other educational activities.
How did your early experiences with automation in computer games influence your career path?
I learned to write scripts to automate routine actions in computer games, gaining an advantage in them, and I realized that automation could give me an advantage in real life.
Why did you decide to enroll at the MIREA Institute, and what led you to transfer to MATI?
After school, I enrolled in the MIREA Institute—Moscow Institute of Radio Engineering, Electronics and Automation, the Faculty of Cybernetics. However, I quickly realized that the knowledge offered there was incredibly outdated, and the dean's office decided just to get rid of a student who was too "smart" like me. I have very bad memories of MIREA. I transferred to MATI—Russian State Technological University, named after K.E. Tsiolkovsky, to the specialty Information Systems and Networks, Faculty of Aviation Technology.
Can you describe the impact of the university reform on your education and the outcome of your studies?
Shortly before the end of my studies at the institute in the Russian Federation, a major reform of universities was carried out, and somehow, I got a diploma with the qualification of Manager-Economist, despite the fact that most of the subjects in the graduation are computer science and other related subjects.
How did your job at Eldorado influence your approach to work and automation?
When I was a senior at the institute, I was part-time at Eldorado, a salesman in the computer department, and we didn't have a salary as such. It was based on sales and software installations. I quickly realized that this had to be automated because while installing software and setting up the laptop I sold, someone else was selling the next laptop simultaneously. I wrote scripts on cmd using Windows post-install technology. I started to configure several devices at the same time, implementing a graphical interface in the next iteration of the script, which did its job in 15 minutes, which previously could have taken up to 2 hours.
Do you have heroes or people that you equate within your life?
My grandfather, an incredibly intelligent and well-read man, significantly influenced my principles despite not having significant career success.
What are your current goals in life, and where do you see yourself in 10 years?
I am interested in the fintech sphere. I plan to change conservative approaches in financial and investment companies, providing significant advantages and innovative solutions.
Describe your area of expertise.
DevSecOps, both on-premise and cloud infrastructure.
What was your role at Nokia, and what were your main responsibilities?
At Nokia, I started as a Site Reliability Engineer and eventually became the Head of the DevOps Group. My main responsibilities included overseeing the integration of IoT technologies [internet of things] into smart city systems, enhancing system reliability, and leading a team of engineers to ensure efficient operations and innovative solutions.
Can you describe a project you worked on at Nokia that you are particularly proud of?
One of the projects I'm most proud of at Nokia involved working on the Impact IoT smart city system. We integrated various communication protocols like CoAP, LWM2M, MQTT, and others into the platform, significantly improving connectivity and functionality. They're still used by Vodafone, China Mobile, and TPG Telecom's networks globally.
How did your work at Nokia influence the company's approach to IoT and smart city solutions?
My work helped streamline Nokia's approach to IoT, particularly through the development and integration of advanced protocols and technologies. By improving system interoperability and introducing efficient automation scripts, we enhanced Nokia's offerings in smart city solutions, making them more adaptable and widely usable.
What challenges did you face during your tenure at Nokia, and how did you overcome them?
One of the biggest challenges was ensuring seamless integration of new IoT technologies with existing systems. To overcome this, I led a team to develop robust automation tools and scripts that facilitated easier deployment and management of IoT devices, which proved crucial for scalability and customer satisfaction.
Looking back, how do you assess the impact of your contributions to Nokia's technological advancements?
I believe my contributions advanced Nokia in the IoT and smart city domains. We made better product offerings by focusing on technological innovation and practical applications. We also set new industry standards for connectivity and system integration.
Tell me about Invent. It's touted as a no-code Fintech and BI platform, which is great for users.
Yes, we can say that this is a digital ecosystem with a customizable no-code UI builder. We help our clients work efficiently and quickly without replacing their own legacy solutions. Our platform is endlessly expandable with integration plugins for any data provider. We provide users with consolidated and structured data in any standard and custom interfaces that the client has created himself.
From a technological point of view, everything is not very simple. To support such a convenient solution for our clients, we use only open-source solutions and implement all the necessary modules and missing functions ourselves. This imposes enormous demands on our engineers' expertise.
What are some of the benefits of Invent being a multi-cloud company?
We use all the large public clouds—GCP, AWS, Azure—which makes us attractive since we can be called a multi-cloud company. However, from a professional point of view, engineers must have exceptional knowledge and constantly study new services and technologies.
What were some of your significant contributions to Invent during your first year?
Thanks to my expertise and a highly motivated team, in the first year, we achieved direct infrastructure savings of more than $350k per year, and all new projects were already launched on an optimal and scalable configuration. We rewrote the entire infrastructure in Terragrunt, using maximum templating and standardization, focusing on the DRY and KISS methodologies.
What role did you play in Innotech's digital transformation of VTB Bank?
As the Lead DevOps and Head of the DevOps community at Innotech, I made a significant contribution to the digital transformation of VTB Bank. I led the team responsible for the operation of the main banking systems. I implemented standards, documentation, and priorities for new projects to optimize the CI/CD process, which allowed 4–9 times faster installation in the production environment.
How did you improve team communication and efficiency at Innotech?
I improved team communication and communication between software developers and other team members, resulting in tasks being solved in 1–2 days instead of up to 3 weeks. I also engaged in refactoring the obsolete banking system into microservices for customers' comfort.
What is the most difficult thing about your work?
Connecting business and engineers, clearly setting goals and objectives.
Can you tell us about your involvement in the Sberhack Advanced 2021 hackathon?
One of the major hackathons was Sberhack Advanced 2021, where I was invited by colleagues from Russian Hackers, the largest community of IT specialists and companies in Russia. The competition received 811 applications, and 70 teams were formed. For 50 hours online, they implemented their projects using the SberCloud.Advanced cloud platform. I became a mentor and judge for the first round of voting on team projects at the hackathon.
What criteria did you use to evaluate the projects at hackathons?
I selected the best works based on four parameters: originality, relevance, quality, and efficiency of use of cloud services. I took a deep dive into each of these projects to analyze their maturity and strengths.
How does participating in hackathons benefit your professional development?
Such experiences help not only to study fresh ideas in the industry but also to meet promising young specialists. Communication with them enriches one's own competencies.
What are some of the most notable awards you and your teams have received throughout your career?
The company received many awards thanks to my work, including the GlobalCIO award, the Grand Prix of the Time of Innovation forum, and the Runet Award. VTB Bank won four awards at the International Visa Global Service Quality Awards 2020 for the quality of innovative payment technologies.
How did your contributions lead to these awards?
All engineers did a great job working in Innotech; we had a huge staff of 11000 employees working on VTB projects. However, my contributions, such as improving the CI/CD process at Innotech, leading the team responsible for the main banking systems, and refactoring the obsolete banking system into microservices, were instrumental in achieving these recognitions.
What impact do these awards have on your motivation and future goals?
Receiving these awards motivates me to continue pushing the boundaries of innovation and excellence in my work. They validate the effectiveness of my contributions and inspire me to aim for even higher achievements in the future.
What are your achievements in the industry? How important are they?
My achievements in the industry revolve around pioneering IoT integrations and advancing DevOps practices, especially at Nokia. They were crucial for improving the scalability and functionality of smart city solutions worldwide. My role in transforming fintech operations at Innotech was also important. Optimizing processes that significantly increased deployment speeds and operational efficiencies enhanced company capabilities and set new standards in the sectors I worked in, making them highly significant.
