---
title: About
navTitle: About
sidebar_position: 1
layout: about
hide_table_of_contents: true
tags: [about, career, education, beekeeping, ai, startups, estonia]
---
I am Artjom. I help companies develop and support their products and establish internal processes for long-term success.
I hold an MSc in Computer Science from the Tallinn University of Technology.
I also develop my own projects and look for new ideas and projects. I am raising a son and a daughter. Two cats and several bee colonies are raising me too.

You may meet me at local meetups and hackathons related to startups and programming - at [devclub](http://devclub.eu/), TallinnJS, Garage48, Lift99, Palo-Alto, and Technopol. The easiest way to reach me is via [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurapov/). I like coffee ☕️


#### Technical Stack Experience
| Area                    | Preferences                                                                                                                |
| ----------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Languages               | <img class="no-transform tech-icon" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/typescript" width="12" height="12"> **TypeScript**, <img class="no-transform tech-icon" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/go" width="12" height="12"> **Go**, Python, Ruby, PHP                                                                                      |
| Frontend frameworks     | <img class="no-transform tech-icon" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/react" width="12" height="12"> **React**, Angular, Backbone                                                                                               |
| API                     | <img class="no-transform tech-icon" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/graphql" width="12" height="12"> **GraphQL**, **REST**, GRPC                                                                                                    |
| Cache                   | Redis, Memcached                                                                                                           |
| Databases               | <img class="no-transform tech-icon" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/postgresql" width="12" height="12"> **Postgres**, MySQL, MongoDB, SQLite, AWS RDS, InfluxDB, Clickhouse                                                        |
| Async processing        | <img class="no-transform tech-icon" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/redis" width="12" height="12"> **Redis streams**, <img class="no-transform tech-icon" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/apachekafka" width="12" height="12"> **Kafka**, Elastic, RabbitMQ                                                                            |
| Search                  | Elasticsearch, Qdrant                                                                                                      |
| Backend frameworks      | **Fastify**, Koa, Express, Gqlgen, Ruby on Rails, Symfony, Zend Framework, CodeIgniter, Yii, Kohana                        |
| Testing                 | Go test, Jest, PHPUnit, PyTest                                                                                             |
| Development and support | **Just**, **GitHub workflows**, SeleniumRC/Grid, SVN, Git, Jenkins, Webgrind, XDebug, XHProf, Bower, Karma, Grunt, Jasmine |
| Trackers                | **Jira, GitHub issues**, Trello, Pivotaltracker, Mantis                                                                    |
| Filestorage             | AWS S3, Minio                                                                                                              |

## Profession
I started working in small studios on short projects for clients such as [Elisa](http://www.elisa.ee/), [SEB](http://www.seb.ee/), [Postimees](http://postimees.ee/), [GlaxoSmithKline](http://gsk.ee/), [Eesti Raadio](http://www.err.ee/), and [Rovio](http://rovio.com/). Then I moved to long-term products such as [Navigil](https://www.navigil.com/) and [GolfGameBook](https://golfgamebook.com/), and eventually to product startups where one product evolves for years - [Tactic](https://tacticrealtime.com/), [Pipedrive](https://www.pipedrive.com/), and [Clarifai](https://clarifai.com/). This allowed me to go deeper into product design and full-stack quality and grow as a T-shaped full-stack engineer.

<!-- WHY: year-cell ladder (bottom=oldest) + wide story column; editable HTML, shared CSS in about_styles.html. -->
<section class="path-section" aria-label="Career and Education">
  <h2 class="path-section-title">Career and Education</h2>
  <div class="year-path">
    <div class="year-path-ladder">
      <div class="year-path-board">
      <div class="yp-year is-decade" style="--from:2026;--to:2026">2026</div>
      <div class="yp-year is-decade" style="--from:2025;--to:2025">2025</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:2024;--to:2024">2024</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:2023;--to:2023">2023</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:2022;--to:2022">2022</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:2021;--to:2021">2021</div>
      <div class="yp-year is-decade" style="--from:2020;--to:2020">2020</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:2019;--to:2019">2019</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:2018;--to:2018">2018</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:2017;--to:2017">2017</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:2016;--to:2016">2016</div>
      <div class="yp-year is-decade" style="--from:2015;--to:2015">2015</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:2014;--to:2014">2014</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:2013;--to:2013">2013</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:2012;--to:2012">2012</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:2011;--to:2011">2011</div>
      <div class="yp-year is-decade" style="--from:2010;--to:2010">2010</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:2009;--to:2009">2009</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:2008;--to:2008">2008</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:2007;--to:2007">2007</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:2006;--to:2006">2006</div>
      <div class="yp-year is-decade" style="--from:2005;--to:2005">2005</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:2004;--to:2004">2004</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:2003;--to:2003">2003</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:2002;--to:2002">2002</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:2001;--to:2001">2001</div>
      <div class="yp-year is-decade" style="--from:2000;--to:2000">2000</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:1999;--to:1999">1999</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:1998;--to:1998">1998</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:1997;--to:1997">1997</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:1996;--to:1996">1996</div>
      <div class="yp-year is-decade" style="--from:1995;--to:1995">1995</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:1994;--to:1994">1994</div>
      <div class="yp-year" style="--from:1993;--to:1993">1993</div>
      <div class="yp-year is-decade" style="--from:1992;--to:1992">1992</div>
        <a class="yp-span yp-edu-a" style="--from:1992;--to:1995;--track:var(--edu-school)" href="#career-school-kharkiv" aria-label="Kharkiv School No. 4" title="Kharkiv School No. 4"></a>
        <a class="yp-span yp-edu-b" style="--from:1993;--to:2002;--track:var(--edu-school)" href="#career-school-tallinn" aria-label="TKVG" title="TKVG"></a>
        <a class="yp-span yp-edu-a" style="--from:2002;--to:2007;--track:var(--edu-uni)" href="#career-taltech" aria-label="TalTech BSc" title="TalTech BSc"></a>
        <a class="yp-span yp-edu-a" style="--from:2007;--to:2011;--track:var(--edu-uni)" href="#career-taltech" aria-label="TalTech MSc" title="TalTech MSc"></a>
        <!-- WHY: edu-b is free in 2005-2006 while both work lanes are taken (Mikare + Web Expert), so EDF sits on the left parallel lane. -->
        <a class="yp-span yp-edu-b" style="--from:2005;--to:2006;--track:var(--service-edf)" href="#career-edf" aria-label="Estonian Defence Forces" title="Estonian Defence Forces"></a>
        <!-- WHY: lane B holds overlapping/transition employers so year cells stay readable; Exact->Opus split at 2010 rebrand. -->
        <a class="yp-span yp-work-a" style="--from:2004;--to:2006;--track:var(--work-mikare)" href="#career-mikare" aria-label="Mikare" title="Mikare"></a>
        <a class="yp-span yp-work-b" style="--from:2006;--to:2007;--track:var(--work-webexpert)" href="#career-webexpert" aria-label="Web Expert" title="Web Expert"></a>
        <a class="yp-span yp-work-a" style="--from:2007;--to:2008;--track:var(--work-elitec)" href="#career-elitec" aria-label="Elitec" title="Elitec"></a>
        <a class="yp-span yp-work-b" style="--from:2008;--to:2009;--track:var(--work-exact)" href="#career-exact" aria-label="Exact" title="Exact"></a>
        <a class="yp-span yp-work-b" style="--from:2010;--to:2011;--track:var(--work-opus)" href="#career-opus" aria-label="Opus" title="Opus"></a>
        <a class="yp-span yp-work-a" style="--from:2011;--to:2014;--track:var(--work-exove)" href="#career-exove" aria-label="Exove" title="Exove"></a>
        <a class="yp-span yp-work-a" style="--from:2014;--to:2017;--track:var(--work-tactic)" href="#career-tactic" aria-label="Tactic" title="Tactic"></a>
        <a class="yp-span yp-work-a" style="--from:2017;--to:2022;--track:var(--work-pipedrive)" href="#career-pipedrive" aria-label="Pipedrive" title="Pipedrive"></a>
        <a class="yp-span yp-work-a" style="--from:2023;--to:2026;--track:var(--work-clarifai)" href="#career-clarifai" aria-label="Clarifai" title="Clarifai"></a>
        <!-- WHY: Gratheon is my own company running in parallel with employment, so it takes the free lane B from 2020. -->
        <a class="yp-span yp-work-b" style="--from:2020;--to:2026;--track:var(--work-gratheon)" href="#career-gratheon" aria-label="Gratheon" title="Gratheon"></a>
      </div>
    </div>
    <div class="year-path-stories">
      <article id="career-gratheon" class="yp-story" style="--track: var(--work-gratheon)" tabindex="-1">
        <div class="entry-heading">
          <h3 class="entry-org"><a href="https://gratheon.com/">Gratheon</a></h3>
          <span class="entry-heading-sep" aria-hidden="true">·</span>
          <h4 class="entry-role">Founder</h4>
          <span class="entry-years-inline">2020 - now</span>
        </div>
        <p>My own project: an open-source AI beehive monitoring platform. It started with beekeeping in 2020 and grew into a set of microservices - web app and mobile frame capture, bee counting and queen finding on photos and video, varroa detection, hive sensor telemetry, API router and schema federation. I drive product, architecture, hardware and field testing.</p>
        <div class="story-chips" aria-label="Technologies"><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/typescript" alt="" width="14" height="14">TypeScript</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/go" alt="" width="14" height="14">Go</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/python" alt="" width="14" height="14">Python</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/graphql" alt="" width="14" height="14">GraphQL</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/googlegemini" alt="" width="14" height="14">AI/ML</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/espressif" alt="" width="14" height="14">IoT</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/opensourceinitiative" alt="" width="14" height="14">open source</span></div>
      </article>
      <article id="career-clarifai" class="yp-story" style="--track: var(--work-clarifai)" tabindex="-1">
        <div class="entry-heading">
          <h3 class="entry-org"><a href="/en/about/Work%20Experience/clarifai/">Clarifai</a></h3>
          <span class="entry-heading-sep" aria-hidden="true">·</span>
          <h4 class="entry-role">Senior Full Stack Engineer</h4>
          <span class="entry-years-inline">2023 - 2026</span>
        </div>
        <p>Global SaaS full-stack platform. Auto-annotation, video processing and livestreaming (MPEG-DASH), annotation search, and labeling/review workflows. Cut PR checks by 50%, participated in on-call rotations and interviews. The team was acquired by Nebius in 2026.</p>
        <div class="story-chips" aria-label="Technologies"><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/typescript" alt="" width="14" height="14">TypeScript</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/go" alt="" width="14" height="14">Go</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/python" alt="" width="14" height="14">Python</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/googlegemini" alt="" width="14" height="14">AI/ML</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/youtube" alt="" width="14" height="14">video</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/githubactions" alt="" width="14" height="14">CI/CD</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/kaggle" alt="" width="14" height="14">datasets</span></div>
      </article>
      <article id="career-pipedrive" class="yp-story" style="--track: var(--work-pipedrive)" tabindex="-1">
        <div class="entry-heading">
          <h3 class="entry-org"><a href="/en/about/Work%20Experience/pipedrive/">Pipedrive</a></h3>
          <span class="entry-heading-sep" aria-hidden="true">·</span>
          <h4 class="entry-role">Principal / Senior Software Engineer</h4>
          <span class="entry-years-inline">2017 - 2022</span>
        </div>
        <p>Sales SaaS unicorn. Mission lead for subscriptions and schema federation, launchpad lead for high-load core services (~12 engineers), initiator of the guild, contributor to the open-source graphql-schema-registry, and onboarding mentor.</p>
        <div class="story-chips" aria-label="Technologies"><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/graphql" alt="" width="14" height="14">GraphQL</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/go" alt="" width="14" height="14">Go</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/nodedotjs" alt="" width="14" height="14">Node</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/apachekafka" alt="" width="14" height="14">Kafka</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/redis" alt="" width="14" height="14">Redis</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/react" alt="" width="14" height="14">React</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/cloudflare" alt="" width="14" height="14">high-load</span></div>
      </article>
      <article id="career-tactic" class="yp-story" style="--track: var(--work-tactic)" tabindex="-1">
        <div class="entry-heading">
          <h3 class="entry-org"><a href="/en/about/Work%20Experience/netron-tactic-realtime-marketing/">Netron &amp; Tactic Realtime Marketing</a></h3>
          <span class="entry-heading-sep" aria-hidden="true">·</span>
          <h4 class="entry-role">Full-Stack Engineer</h4>
          <span class="entry-years-inline">2014 - 2017</span>
        </div>
        <p>At the Netron agency, I did full-cycle product development for Tactic Realtime - real-time advertising management. Tactic grew into an independent company and was acquired.</p>
        <div class="story-chips" aria-label="Technologies"><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/php" alt="" width="14" height="14">PHP</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/nodedotjs" alt="" width="14" height="14">Node.js</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/angular" alt="" width="14" height="14">Angular</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/rabbitmq" alt="" width="14" height="14">RabbitMQ</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/socketdotio" alt="" width="14" height="14">realtime</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/googleads" alt="" width="14" height="14">adtech</span></div>
      </article>
      <article id="career-exove" class="yp-story" style="--track: var(--work-exove)" tabindex="-1">
        <div class="entry-heading">
          <h3 class="entry-org"><a href="/en/about/Work%20Experience/exove/">Exove</a></h3>
          <span class="entry-heading-sep" aria-hidden="true">·</span>
          <h4 class="entry-role">Full-Stack Developer</h4>
          <span class="entry-years-inline">2011 - 2014</span>
        </div>
        <p>Long-running product projects including Navigil, GolfGameBook, Postimees iPad, Planago, and Nextdays. Built products from scratch with unit, integration, and acceptance tests plus CI.</p>
        <div class="story-chips" aria-label="Technologies"><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/backbonedotjs" alt="" width="14" height="14">Backbone</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/codeigniter" alt="" width="14" height="14">CodeIgniter</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/mongodb" alt="" width="14" height="14">MongoDB</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/wordpress" alt="" width="14" height="14">WordPress</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/drupal" alt="" width="14" height="14">Drupal</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/testinglibrary" alt="" width="14" height="14">testing</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/jenkins" alt="" width="14" height="14">Jenkins</span></div>
      </article>
      <article id="career-opus" class="yp-story" style="--track: var(--work-opus)" tabindex="-1">
        <div class="entry-heading">
          <h3 class="entry-org"><a href="/en/about/Work%20Experience/opus/">Opus</a></h3>
          <span class="entry-heading-sep" aria-hidden="true">·</span>
          <h4 class="entry-role">Software Engineer</h4>
          <span class="entry-years-inline">2010 - 2011</span>
        </div>
        <p>Medium-term projects including Rovio.com, Elisa.ee, and Pling.ee. Introduced PHPUnit, Selenium Grid, and CI. Worked with SMS gateways and social networks. The company grew out of Exact.</p>
        <div class="story-chips" aria-label="Technologies"><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/php" alt="" width="14" height="14">PHP</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/yii" alt="" width="14" height="14">Yii</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/mongodb" alt="" width="14" height="14">MongoDB</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/android" alt="" width="14" height="14">Android</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/selenium" alt="" width="14" height="14">Selenium</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/githubactions" alt="" width="14" height="14">CI</span></div>
      </article>
      <article id="career-exact" class="yp-story" style="--track: var(--work-exact)" tabindex="-1">
        <div class="entry-heading">
          <h3 class="entry-org"><a href="/en/about/Work%20Experience/exact/">Exact</a></h3>
          <span class="entry-heading-sep" aria-hidden="true">·</span>
          <h4 class="entry-role">Web Developer, CMS Integration</h4>
          <span class="entry-years-inline">2008 - 2009</span>
        </div>
        <p>Worked for the Estonian and US markets. Built SSO for all projects and CMS search indexing across dozens of projects, including Masterkeep, Baumax, and Laenuvaidlus. Introduced InnoDB foreign keys, database delta migrations, and Scrum.</p>
        <div class="story-chips" aria-label="Technologies"><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/php" alt="" width="14" height="14">PHP</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/mysql" alt="" width="14" height="14">MySQL</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/jquery" alt="" width="14" height="14">jQuery</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/android" alt="" width="14" height="14">Mobile-ID</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/wordpress" alt="" width="14" height="14">CMS</span></div>
      </article>
      <article id="career-elitec" class="yp-story" style="--track: var(--work-elitec)" tabindex="-1">
        <div class="entry-heading">
          <h3 class="entry-org"><a href="/en/about/Work%20Experience/elitec/">Elitec</a></h3>
          <span class="entry-heading-sep" aria-hidden="true">·</span>
          <h4 class="entry-role">PHP Developer</h4>
          <span class="entry-years-inline">2007 - 2008</span>
        </div>
        <p>Small Estonian web studio. Built short-term projects on a custom CMS, including a Google Calendar-style drag-and-drop calendar module, and supported document management for RMK.ee.</p>
        <div class="story-chips" aria-label="Technologies"><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/php" alt="" width="14" height="14">PHP</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/zend" alt="" width="14" height="14">Zend</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/postgresql" alt="" width="14" height="14">PostgreSQL</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/javascript" alt="" width="14" height="14">Prototype.js</span></div>
      </article>
      <article id="career-webexpert" class="yp-story" style="--track: var(--work-webexpert)" tabindex="-1">
        <div class="entry-heading">
          <h3 class="entry-org"><a href="/en/about/Work%20Experience/web-expert/">Web Expert</a></h3>
          <span class="entry-heading-sep" aria-hidden="true">·</span>
          <h4 class="entry-role">Web Developer</h4>
          <span class="entry-years-inline">2006 - 2007</span>
        </div>
        <p>Built custom CMS modules and applications with non-trivial algorithms such as tree search and distributed sessions. First experience with Pangalink and WSDL. Projects included SICP, EIQA, and dozens of websites.</p>
        <div class="story-chips" aria-label="Technologies"><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/php" alt="" width="14" height="14">PHP</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/mysql" alt="" width="14" height="14">MySQL</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/sqlite" alt="" width="14" height="14">Oracle</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/apache" alt="" width="14" height="14">SOA</span></div>
      </article>
      <article id="career-edf" class="yp-story" style="--track: var(--service-edf)" tabindex="-1">
        <div class="entry-heading">
          <h3 class="entry-org"><a href="https://mil.ee/">Estonian Defence Forces</a></h3>
          <span class="entry-heading-sep" aria-hidden="true">·</span>
          <h4 class="entry-role">Service (ajateenistus)</h4>
          <span class="entry-years-inline">2005 - 2006</span>
        </div>
        <p>Served in the Estonian Defence Forces (Eesti Kaitsevägi) in parallel with TalTech studies and early web-studio work.</p>
      </article>
      <article id="career-mikare" class="yp-story is-muted" style="--track: var(--work-mikare)" tabindex="-1">
        <div class="entry-heading">
          <h3 class="entry-org"><a href="/en/about/Work%20Experience/mikare/">Mikare</a></h3>
          <span class="entry-heading-sep" aria-hidden="true">·</span>
          <h4 class="entry-role">Web Developer (early career)</h4>
          <span class="entry-years-inline">2004 - 2006</span>
        </div>
        <p>First job: integrated CMS templates and built custom applications such as email campaigns and an SMS gateway, while developing dozens of websites.</p>
        <div class="story-chips" aria-label="Technologies"><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/php" alt="" width="14" height="14">PHP</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/php" alt="" width="14" height="14">Smarty</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/mysql" alt="" width="14" height="14">MySQL</span><span><img class="story-chip-icon no-transform" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/hubspot" alt="" width="14" height="14">CRM</span></div>
      </article>
      <article id="career-taltech" class="yp-story" style="--track: var(--edu-uni)" tabindex="-1">
        <div class="entry-heading">
          <h3 class="entry-org"><a href="/en/about/University/bachelors-thesis/">TalTech</a></h3>
          <span class="entry-heading-sep" aria-hidden="true">·</span>
          <h4 class="entry-role">Computer and Systems Engineering, BSc</h4>
          <span class="entry-years-inline">2002 - 2007</span>
        </div>
        <p>Studied in parallel with early studio jobs. The Informatics MSc (2007-2011) continued alongside full-time work.</p>
      </article>
      <article id="career-school-tallinn" class="yp-story" style="--track: var(--edu-school)" tabindex="-1">
        <div class="entry-heading">
          <h3 class="entry-org"><a href="https://www.tkvg.ee/">Tallinn Secondary School No. 6</a></h3>
          <span class="entry-years-inline">1993 - 2002</span>
        </div>
        <p>Central Russian Gymnasium / TKVG. Competed in physics and mathematics olympiads, including the national Estonian olympiad in Tartu.</p>
      </article>
      <article id="career-school-kharkiv" class="yp-story" style="--track: var(--edu-school)" tabindex="-1">
        <div class="entry-heading">
          <h3 class="entry-org"><a href="http://lyceum4.edu.kh.ua/">Kharkiv Secondary School No. 4</a></h3>
          <span class="entry-years-inline">1992 - 1995</span>
        </div>
        <p>Pedagogical Lyceum. Overlaps the first years of school in Tallinn.</p>
      </article>
    </div>
  </div>
</section>

<!-- WHY: two-column hobby groups fill wide about layout; emojis make categories scannable. -->
<section class="hobbies-section" aria-label="My Hobbies">
  <h2 class="path-section-title">My Hobbies</h2>
  <p class="year-path-hint">I dislike labels and templates. I believe that people should be well-rounded.</p>
  <div class="hobbies-grid">
    <div class="hobby-group">
      <h3 class="hobby-title"><span class="hobby-emoji" aria-hidden="true">🛠️</span> Building software and hardware products</h3>
      <ul>
        <li>🤖 AI and machine learning</li>
        <li>📊 Graphs, visualization, and data processing</li>
        <li>🦾 Robotics (motor control and vision)</li>
        <li>🖨️ 3D printing</li>
        <li>🎮 Video games (creation, engines, game design, lore, animation)</li>
      </ul>
    </div>
    <div class="hobby-group">
      <h3 class="hobby-title"><span class="hobby-emoji" aria-hidden="true">📈</span> Self-improvement</h3>
      <ul>
        <li>🧠 Second-brain-style memory and note-taking (Obsidian)</li>
        <li>🎒 EDC (safety and survival)</li>
        <li>📡 Radio engineering</li>
      </ul>
    </div>
    <div class="hobby-group">
      <h3 class="hobby-title"><span class="hobby-emoji" aria-hidden="true">🔬</span> Science</h3>
      <ul>
        <li>🌌 Astrophysics</li>
        <li>🦠 Microbiology</li>
        <li>🐛 Entomology</li>
      </ul>
    </div>
    <div class="hobby-group">
      <h3 class="hobby-title"><span class="hobby-emoji" aria-hidden="true">💭</span> Reflection</h3>
      <ul>
        <li>🤔 Philosophy</li>
        <li>✝️ History of religions and faith (Christianity)</li>
        <li>🚀 Fantasy, science fiction, and futurology</li>
      </ul>
    </div>
    <div class="hobby-group">
      <h3 class="hobby-title"><span class="hobby-emoji" aria-hidden="true">🎨</span> Art</h3>
      <ul>
        <li>🐝 Observing nature (gardening, beekeeping)</li>
        <li>🎵 Music</li>
        <li>✏️ Drawing (anatomy, light and shadow, isometry)</li>
      </ul>
    </div>
    <div class="hobby-group">
      <h3 class="hobby-title"><span class="hobby-emoji" aria-hidden="true">📦</span> Collecting and fetishes</h3>
      <ul>
        <li>🧱 Lego</li>
        <li>⌚ Wristwatches</li>
      </ul>
    </div>
  </div>
</section>

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