Igor Katkov

“Igor and I worked together for almost two and a half years. He is one of a few people who can architect a complex distributed system and be able to implement any part of it himself at the same time. What I love about working with Igor is that he is very pragmatic and always focuses on the most important thing, even when it might not be the most exciting thing, and drives it to closure. I know that if he takes something on, it will get done right. Igor has a unique ability to anticipate technical challenges before they become visible to others. More importantly, as he identifies and raises such concerns, Igor always comes with proposals to address them. Igor is one of the most respected people not just within engineering, but also within product and design teams. I really enjoyed working with Igor and I would love to work together again in the future.”

“I have known Igor for several years at Yahoo and I had the pleasure of working closely with him for the past two. Igor has a strong grasp of systems architectures and was instrumental in the design and implementation of Yahoo's next generation search content system. Igor consistently exhibited strong leadership and mentorship, and instilled best practices in the team. He is passionate about his work, eager to achieve results, and effective in designing and developing complex systems. I would greatly enjoy working with him again in the future.”

“During his years at Yahoo, I've had the pleasure of working together with Igor Katkov in two different projects. First, during the inception and development of Yahoo's brand-new ingestion pipeline for news, Sieve, and more recently during the release of the new version of Omid -a transaction manager for HBase- as an Apache Incubator project. Technically, Igor is a very flexible, pragmatic, efficient, reliable and goal-oriented professional; I particularly appreciate these values in a software professional. He's able to grasp the essence of a project or task in a blink of an eye; he can take the very core concept of a complex system and he's able to quickly transform it into a first working version of the system; he contributes with new ideas that end up in improving any project in which he's involved; he is a very good communicator, specially when discussing project details face to face; last but not least, he's also able to work very effectively and efficiently with remote teams; we worked remotely during the integration of Omid in Sieve, and it ended up being a very fruitful collaboration. On the human side, he's a really good partner and a noble person, always available for interaction: answering technical questions, comming up with hacks or workarounds, discussing about new viewpoints on how to solve a problem of any kind... It has been a pleasure for me to share the floor with Igor during the last few years, learn new things together and improve my skills with his experience, so I strongly recommend him to any serious company in the software business interested in a great professional for developing quality complex software. ”

“I worked with Igor on Yahoo!'s personalization platforms for six months during 2012-2013. I was impressed by his enthusiasm and ability to deliver an RSS crawler in a very short timeframe, working over weekends to get the job done. Igor was self-aware, and consistently seeking feedback from those he worked with in order to improve. He is a solid senior technical contributor with whom I would enjoy working again.”

“Igor is an energetic, eager and enthusiastic architect. Igor always challenges complacency and constantly focusing on problem areas that needs attention. He is a detailed oriented architect, very thorough with his design and exhibits high quality coding standards. Igor is also extremely knowledgable in internet technologies and a quick learner of any new technology. Igor can make positive impact in a short amount of time.”

“I worked with Igor Katkov on a complex and politically sensitive project for which I was the architect. The project aimed to swap out a key serving system's home-grown back-end implementation with external open-source technology. In addition to taking on significant technical and logistical challenges, we also worked closely with senior leaders to pioneer the corporate process by which such external technologies were assessed and vetted. Igor quickly became the leader of the scrum team devoted to designing and delivering this product. Igor's intelligence and strength of character quickly helped the team achieve its first milestones. Designed to be Agile from the beginning, we quickly implemented and demonstrated key functionality via a couple of prototypes. Not only did Igor contribute to the coding and design, learning a number of new things along the way, Igor also served as the public face of the project for a time. It was Igor's voice on the two demo videos that were produced (in May and June 2012), and it was Igor who did some of the key presentations. Igor's key strengths include: a. Great intelligence b. Good and varied technical experience c. A strong and outgoing personality d. Results-oriented, understanding how to iterate towards your goal e. An ability to recognize his weaknesses and seek support and counsel in order to address them f. A generally fearless attitude, willing to take anything on”

“Igor is a superstar. We hired Igor back in Viigo when we were having massive scaling issues. Igor came in and brought in design and architectural practices that not only helped us survive our massive growth, but helped all our software engineers understand and follow excellent design paradigms. Igor is very passionate about his work and has excellent work ethic. I have learnt a lot from him over the few years that we worked together. He will be an enormous asset to any company that he works for !!”

“I have worked with Igor at Viigo and RIM for over 4 years during which time I have gained an deep appreciation for his technical knowledge in distributed systems and cloud computing, API design, SQL/NoSQL databases, Hadoop and other large scale data processing technologies. Igor is not only a great problem solver but is grounded in reality. He understands the business, organization and people behind it, which helps him make informed architectural decisions His software architecture and design skills are among the best I have seen. When I think of the term Software Architect Igor immediately comes to mind. His technical insights, thoughtful approach to problem solving and deep experience to draw upon made him a "go to" person on the development team. He has been a key mentor for lot of engineers. I have enjoyed working with Igor on a personal level as he is very friendly and helpful. I would be very pleased to work with him again in the future.”

“Igor is the guy to have in your corner when production schedules are insane, you're introducing new features faster than you can get them into the system. He's incredibly smart, hard-working, and flexible, and saved our team from disaster more times than I can count. A very easy guy to work with. Igor knows all the latest cloud and grid computing trends and large scale data processing technologies as well as real-time application monitoring. He has proven himself to be skillful in leadership and coaching, and works hard to deliver a quality product on time. I believe he would be a great asset to any team. I look forward to working with him again.”

“Igor is one of the most technically advanced and competent individuals, he is a fantastic person to work with due to his sheer presence and the way he spreads positive energy around his team. He possesses the rare combination of technical expertise, business acumen, leadership and common sense while maintaining the ability to listen to, and consider other points of view. He is an effective and skilled team lead who brought technical breadth and depth to his team. Igor has good management skills and good at communication, he adds a great deal of value to every endeavor he is engaged in.”

“Igor's experience and professionalism were an asset to the development team and at Promptlink Communication from the very start. He provided strong technical leadership and demonstrated that he was an exceptional software engineer. His biggest strength to the software department was his ability to make everyone around him a better software engineer. His dedication to his work and the coworkers around him is truly something that most people desire. I was deeply impressed by his responsibility, talents and effectiveness. He is a guy who knows what to do and who is fun to work with. Igor would be a valuable asset to any organization that strives for success and quality.”

“Igor is a superior Software Developer who constantly grows and expands his expertise. He likes new difficult tasks, which challenge and inspire him. In the same time Igor is a very nice and easy-going person, who is always ready to help and share his knowledge.”

“Igor has great business analysis and customer service skills. He led several software development projects to completion successfully battling product complexity, time pressures and huge uncertainties in specification. Igor's excellent analytical skills coupled with a high personal discipline, effective time management and attention to detail let him effectively operate and solve difficult software engineering problems. In his work Igor demonstrated very deep understanding of advanced computer science concepts of and the first-hand ability to write code and design competitive mission-critical software components. He is skilled in cultivating and is a big supporter of the software development best practices, agile development processes and unit testing. Igor brought the energy, enthusiasm, confidence and, ultimately, the success to many of our initiatives. I highly recommend him.”

“Igor is very experienced software developer with excellent team and professional skills.”

“Igor is a very knowledgeable and talented IT professional. His wide array of skills and technical expertise are invaluable. He would be a tremendous asset to any team.”