Ilia Ashmarin
Head of Engineering
Belgrade, Serbia
20+ YOE · Technology Strategy · Systems Architecture · Embedded to Cloud & AI
Head of Engineering and Systems Architect with 20+ years in software engineering and 10+ years in technical leadership. I lead product engineering from architecture and R&D through delivery and operations, spanning embedded systems, cloud platforms, and applied AI.
- Own technology strategy, product architecture, and R&D
- Lead engineering across backend, frontend, mobile, QA, and DevOps
- Hire, build teams, and mentor engineers
- Deliver with Agile/Scrum and work directly with customers
- Develop critical components hands-on and review code
- Systems programming, multithreading, OS development, and distributed systems
- Enterprise product development and maintenance; custom licensing systems and integrations with Cryptlex and AWS licensing solutions
- Automation, optimization, and solutions to non-standard engineering challenges
- Scientific research, publications, and teaching
- Node.js, Go, Python, PHP, C#, C++, Assembly, TypeScript/JavaScript
- PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch
- Kafka, RabbitMQ, Redis
- Angular, React, Vue
- iOS/Android mobile apps; Ionic
- Crawlers (including Puppeteer, Playwright, and raw HTTP), bots (including Telegram), scrapers, and parsers
- AWS (Certified), Azure, OCI, and bare metal
- Kubernetes, Helm, Docker; Terraform, Ansible, and CI/CD
- Built a Helm-based update system that improved delivery across internal and customer Kubernetes clusters
- Introduced monitoring, alerting, and incident response with Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, and Loki
- Reduced operating costs through automation, resource optimization, and AWS architecture changes
- Open-weight LLM serving and RAG with vLLM, llama.cpp, and LangChain
- Agentic engineering, MCP, and spec-driven development
- Machine learning, computer vision, and robotics
- Develop, maintain, customize, and contribute to open-source and enterprise security, monitoring, and automation products
- Products: SIEMonster, Wazuh, Suricata, MISP, OpenCTI, TheHive/Cortex, Apache NiFi, OpenVAS, PatrOwl, DefectDojo, Shuffle SOAR, DFIR-IRIS, Alerta, ElastAlert, N8N, Kibana
- Operated SIEM with daily Elasticsearch data volumes reaching hundreds of gigabytes
- Security audits and penetration testing; reverse engineering and disassembly
- Microcontroller firmware and hardware: PIC, AVR, STM32, Arduino, and ESP32
- USB devices, IoT, smart home, motor/sensor control, DIY audio hardware, and machine tools
- Circuit and PCB design with associated firmware and software