Maxim Senin

Senior Backend & Distributed Systems Engineer

Professional Profile

Veteran Software Engineer and Architect with 28+ years of experience building enterprise-grade backend infrastructure, distributed systems, and real-time data pipelines. Specializes in designing highly resilient, fault-tolerant architectures, with deep expertise in the Elixir/OTP ecosystem (BEAM internals), Java ecosystems, and cloud-native deployments. Proven track record of scaling platforms to handle hundreds of millions of dollars in transaction volume, executing complex database migrations, and leading high-performing engineering teams.

Core Expertise

Programming Languages: Elixir, Java, Python, SQL, Scala
Distributed & Real-Time Systems: OTP/BEAM Internals, Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, WebSockets, gRPC, Microservices
Data Engineering & Databases: PostgreSQL, Snowflake, AWS Redshift, SQL Server, Oracle, Informix, DB/2, ETL pipelines, Airflow
Cloud & DevOps: AWS (EC2, RDS, DMS), Docker, Kubernetes, Hadoop, Cloudera, Prometheus, Grafana
Architecture & Leadership: Supervision Strategies, Fault Tolerance, API Design, System Migrations, Mentoring, SDLC Optimization

Career Chronology & Highlights

Cogility Software | Senior Backend Engineer (Feb 2022 - Jul 2025)

Architected and maintained distributed backend services for real-time event processing and signal detection software deployed in cybersecurity, US Government, and US Military applications.
Engineered resilient supervision strategies using Elixir/OTP and BEAM internals, significantly boosting service uptime and system fault tolerance.
Drastically improved platform reliability by expanding test coverage from 15% to 98% using ExUnit and property-based testing.
Optimized PostgreSQL operations with Ecto, integrated Oban for background processing, and established system observability via Prometheus and Grafana.

System1 | Senior Database Engineer (Oct 2019 - Jun 2020)

Maintained core production databases and engineered scalable Python, Docker, and Airflow ETL frameworks.
Spearheaded massive data and schema migrations from Postgres and Redshift to Snowflake.
Automated complex migration tasks and moved production SQL Server instances from Amazon EC2 to RDS via AWS DMS.

DexMedia Corporation (now Thryv) | Senior Staff Engineer / Engineering Manager (Aug 2013 - Sep 2019)

Staff Engineer: Transitioned legacy systems to AWS/Cloudera, built SpringBoot/JPA microservices, and developed a custom Java/Kafka database replication tool to sync on-prem SQL Server data with cloud clusters.
Manager: Consolidated and led a lean engineering team overseeing automated campaign systems, scaling the post-merger Search Engine Marketing (SEM) architecture to expand the company's client capacity.

Dex One / Business.com | Lead Architect & Engineer (Jun 2005 - Aug 2013)

Managed and scaled an SEM platform that generated over $300,000,000 in annual revenue.
Engineered the foundational infrastructure for Business.com's SEM platform from scratch, exploding revenue from $50k/month to over $300,000,000 a year.

Enterprise Consulting Roles | Project Rescue Specialist (Jan 1999 - Jul 2005)

Disney Feature Animation: Served as Lead Developer on the FAME-II production management system, migrating infrastructure from Sybase to Informix and building custom data-driven Java Swing UI frameworks.
Axium: Rescued an over-budget production accounting framework utilized by major movie studios, building secure general ledger transaction entry and posting modules.
Global Apparel Network & Abraxas Technologies: Built distributed client-server systems, complex persistence frameworks, and full-stack dental insurance capitation systems modeled for enterprise workloads.

Education

🎓 MSc in Computer Science – Riga Aviation University
🎓 BSc in Computer Science – Riga Aviation University

A Senior Backend Engineer with 28+ years of experience, specializing in building fault-tolerant, highly distributed backend systems and real-time event processing pipelines using Elixir/OTP and Java.