A bit of history

Hi, I am Roman Dushko.

I was born long time ago - in 1984 (same year as the title of the novel by George Orwell).

Originally I am from Ukraine. Moved to the Netherlands in 2015, where I live until now.

Professional life

My professional carreer started around 2005, when I learned to create static websites with PHP4, MySQL, CSS, HTML4, and vanilla JavaScript. They were running on LAMP stack.

Through the years I have built many websites and platforms of different complexities.
The most challenging project I would consider so far was DAZN (www.dazn.com) - Platform for live streaming of sport events around the Globe. The challenge there was to support multi-million userbase, providing fast and resilient response time from the APIs.

Currently I am working as an Engineering Manager / Engineering Tech Lead / Engineering Team Lead.

I enjoy learning new technologies and programming languages, and still keep my hands dirty while tinkering with side projects.

My dream domain / area to work in would be - robotics and IoT. Somehow I haven’t had a chance to work with those, most probably because I don’t have experience with the serious programming languages like C/C++ or low-level Java.

Tech stack and skills

Usually I am building web based solutions, mostly with NodeJS ecosystem. Yet I am not hesitant to pick any other technology stack if task requires it. Being a quick learner, also with many year

Programming languages

  • TypeScript / JavaScript, Golang, Python, PHP
  • HTML5, CSS3, XML, XSLT

Frameworks

  • React.js, Next.js, Nest.js, Angular, Svelte
  • FastAPI, Flask, SQLAlchemy
  • Symfony, Doctrine
  • Bootstrap, TailwindCSS, Foundation
  • WSDL, SOAP

Databases & Queues

  • PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB
  • Kafka, SQS / SNS, EventBridge
  • Redis

Cloud & Infrastructure

  • AWS (Amazon Web Services) - advanced used of very many services
  • GCP (used few services, but can make a sense of many others, comparing to AWS counterparts)
  • GitHub (Actions, Workflows), GitLab, Jenkins, Drone
  • Terraform, Serverless, AWS CDK, Ansible, Puppet
  • Docker, Kubernetes

Observability

  • NewRelic, DataDog, Grafana, Sentry
  • Logz.io, Falcon LogScale

AI/LLM

  • Github Copilot, ChatGPT / Codex, Claude Code
  • LangChain, OpenChain
  • PromptFoo

Architecture and software design

  • Micro-Services, SOA
  • DDD, OOP
  • REST, GraphQL, AsyncAPI, Pub/Sub, WebSockets

Methodologies

  • TDD (test-driven development)
  • XP (eXtreme Programming techniques)
  • Scrum, Agile, Lean, CI/CD
  • SLO/SLI

Me as in “Cover Letter”

I will bring nearly two decades of hands-on software engineering experience, combined with experience leading and developing engineering teams.

I have worked as a frontend engineer, backend engineer, staff engineer, team lead, and engineering manager, which helps me see problems from different angles and understand both the technical and people sides of engineering.

My experience includes building scalable, highly loaded, microservice-based and event-driven platforms, as well as leading teams responsible for critical enterprise systems. What I believe I can bring is strong technical leadership combined with a strong sense of ownership.

I don’t need my hand to be held. When given a problem, I find a way forward: understand the root cause, bring the right people into the room, and turn complex problems into manageable deliverables. I prefer pragmatic solutions over gold plating and frequent, smaller deliveries over spending too much time theorising. I also use data and measurable signals to support decisions rather than relying on subjective opinions.

I enjoy working at the intersection of engineering, product, and the wider business. I work closely with Product Managers and stakeholders to understand the real customer and business needs, translate them into technical direction and roadmaps, and make sure engineers understand the “why” behind the work. I am comfortable representing engineering challenges to senior leadership while translating business priorities into something engineering teams can understand and get behind.

I also feel personal professional responsibility for what happens after the code reaches production. Building software is only one part of the job. I care deeply about reliability, observability, monitoring, and giving engineers the tools to support what they own. Clear logs, meaningful dashboards, metrics and actionable alerting help teams troubleshoot faster, reduce MTTR, and proactively address problems before they escalate.

On the people’s side, I strive to cultivate a culture of ownership, accountability, openness, and continuous growth. I enjoy leading and coaching people by sharing my experience, but I want engineers to become confident and autonomous rather than dependent on their manager. Through regular 1-1s, feedback and coaching, I make sure people understand the bigger picture, their contribution, and the impact of their work on real customers and the business.

Ultimately, I want to build solid, reliable products and strong engineering organisations. I bring the technical depth to understand engineering challenges, the leadership experience to build high-performing teams, and the business perspective to connect engineering work with meaningful outcomes.