Ilyas Mustafin

Professional Summary

18+ years in IT, last 6 at the intersection of architecture and engineering leadership in Kazakhstan’s banking sector. Led a 300+ engineer IT organization at Eurasian Bank, built DevOps teams from scratch at Kaspi and Sberbank. Early Kubernetes adopter in the region. Launched a retail mobile bank, eliminated Oracle vendor lock-in, passed PCI DSS and National Bank audits. Run a technical blog at imarch.dev - 35 articles and 1K+ readers in the first month.

Core Competencies

Leadership & Strategy IT Strategy & Roadmapping · Technology Transformation · Team Building & Scaling (up to 300+) · Cross-functional Coordination · Vendor Management · Risk & Tech Debt Management · Budgeting & Resource Planning

Processes & Methodologies ITIL 4 · Agile (Scrum, Kanban) · Release Cycle Management · Backlog Management & Prioritization · KPI Framework & Performance Metrics · Incident & Problem Management

Architecture & Platform Enterprise & Solution Architecture · Microservices · Service Mesh (Istio) · Event-Driven Architecture · Domain-Driven Design · SSO / IAM (Keycloak) · Disaster Recovery & High Availability · PCI DSS Compliance

Cloud & DevOps AWS · Azure · Yandex Cloud · Kubernetes / OpenShift · Docker · Helm · Terraform · Ansible · Vault · CI/CD (GitLab CI, Jenkins, ArgoCD) · GitOps · Serverless (OpenFaaS)

Mobile Development Flutter · Dart · Mobile App Architecture · Mobile Release Cycle Management (App Store, Google Play)

Quality Assurance QA Strategy Design · Regression Testing · Integration Testing · E2E Testing · Release Quality Management · QA Team Coordination

Observability Prometheus · Thanos · Grafana · Loki · ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) · Sentry · Alertmanager · Custom Exporters

Development & Data Python (Flask, Django, FastAPI) · REST API Design · PostgreSQL · MySQL · MongoDB · Redis · Kafka · RabbitMQ

AI / Machine Learning LLM Integration into Enterprise Systems (OpenAI API, Claude API, Local Models via Ollama) · RAG Architectures (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) · Vector Databases (Qdrant) · Prompt Engineering · AI Agents & Workflow Automation · Model Fine-tuning & Business Adaptation

Professional Experience

Home Credit Bank - Architect

November 2024 – Present | Almaty

Architecting the mobile banking platform for legal entities within a 40-person product team.

• Designed full architectural landscape (as-is → to-be) and defined 1-year technology strategy aligned with business objectives
• Led the launch of the credit conveyor for legal entities
• Initiated migration to Service Mesh (Istio) + GitOps (ArgoCD) for improved deployment reliability and observability
• Implemented SSO platform based on Keycloak - unified authentication for internal and client-facing services
• Implemented RAG approach for intelligent search across internal documentation and team knowledge base
• Ensured successful PCI DSS audit and Oracle license compliance audit
• Mentored teams on DevOps, Cloud, and AI practices; reviewed third-party technical proposals
• Supported release cycles, backlog management and KPI tracking for the product team
• Initiated implementation of BPM system Camunda 8.5 for business process automation
• Managed IT budgeting and risk assessment across the product domain

Eurasian Bank - Managing Director of IT

July 2022 – September 2024 | Almaty

Led two IT departments: retail mobile banking app development and infrastructure (data centers, servers, networks, L1/L2 support, HelpDesk, ATMs and terminals). 300+ engineers in scope. Reorganized teams and divisions - rebuilt some, motivated and grew others.

• Launched retail mobile banking application - led cross-functional teams (Kotlin, Swift, QA, analytics), built processes with product owners, from architecture to App Store & Google Play publication
• Eliminated Oracle vendor lock-in by migrating core backend to open-source stack; successfully passed Oracle license audit
• Achieved 99.9% uptime SLA for business-critical banking systems
• Passed PCI DSS certification audit - end-to-end compliance program
• Passed regulatory audits and inspections - National Bank of Kazakhstan, external auditors; GovTech integration certification
• Implemented SSO based on Keycloak - single authentication point for all internal systems
• Executed 100% hardware refresh - servers, network equipment, and ATM fleet
• Product approach: CJM (Customer Journey Map) development, eNPS and NPS improvement, strategic project launches
• Managed IT directorate and project budgeting - annual budget planning, executive-level presentations and approval
• Built processes around ITIL 4 and Agile (Scrum/Kanban): incident management, release cycles, KPI framework
• Evolved QA strategy: regression, integration, and E2E testing across all release stages
• Created and maintained methodological framework: job descriptions, department regulations, process guidelines
• Built IT HR function: departments and divisions created from scratch, team formation, competency development, performance reviews, executive presentation skills

Sberbank Kazakhstan - Head of DevOps

June 2021 – July 2022 | Almaty

Built the DevOps practice from zero, bridging development and infrastructure organizations.

• Grew and managed a 10-person DevOps team
• Transitioned from manual deployments to automated CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, ArgoCD, Helm)
• Maintained and kept Kubernetes clusters up to date across 3 environments (dev, test, prod)
• Designed and deployed observability stack based on Elasticsearch and Prometheus
• Developed a number of internal REST services (Python) for infrastructure automation
• Created and maintained the DevOps knowledge base

Kaspi Bank - Head of Infrastructure Development & Support

September 2018 – June 2021 | Almaty

Led infrastructure engineering during Kaspi’s hyper-growth, managing containerization and platform services.

• Pioneered Kubernetes adoption at Kaspi - early adopter when k8s was still emerging in the region
• Built containerization platform: Docker, Kubernetes, etcd, Consul, with serverless (OpenFaaS, Kubeless)
• Designed CI/CD pipelines on GitLab with Helm, Ansible, Terraform, Vault
• Deployed and implemented full observability stack: Prometheus, Thanos, Grafana, Loki, ELK, Sentry, custom exporters and alerting
• Developed internal APIs and automation tools (Python, Flask); integrated with Redis, RabbitMQ, Kafka

Kaspi Bank - Virtualization & Infrastructure Engineer

August 2012 – September 2018 | Almaty

Core infrastructure engineer responsible for virtualization platforms, load balancing, and platform operations through 6 years of rapid bank growth.

• Administered Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop and NetScaler (MPX, VPX, SDX, CPX) platforms with management tooling (MAS, Command Center, Insight)
• Launched observability stack based on ELK for centralized log analytics
• Managed VMware, Xen, and Hyper-V virtualization environments
• Developed automation tools and internal web applications (Python, .NET, Flask, Django)
• Administered databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis) and web servers (Nginx, Apache, Tomcat)
• Managed Windows Server & Linux (Ubuntu, RHEL, FreeBSD) infrastructure; scripting in PowerShell & Bash

Earlier Career

Erkin K LLP - System Administrator (June 2009 – August 2012) Corporate IT infrastructure on Microsoft stack (AD, GPO, backup). Email & VPN administration. 1C (7.7, 8.0) support.

Kazinvestbank - System Administrator (January 2008 – February 2009) Server & network infrastructure (Windows Server, AD, Exchange). Monitoring, backup, user support.

AlemCard - Technical Support Specialist (February 2007 – January 2008) ATM network & POS terminal monitoring, incident response, remote support.

Side Projects

imarch.dev - technical blog & platform (since February 2026)

• 35 articles in 18 days, three locales (ru/en/kk): architecture, DevOps, AI, engineering management
• 1K visits, 2.18K page views in the first month
• AI chatbot with hybrid RAG (Qdrant + Claude Haiku) - answers visitor questions, captures leads, sends CV
• Content agent: automated publishing via Claude Sonnet + DALL-E → GitHub PR ($0.46 per post)
• Stack: Astro 5, Tailwind v4, Cloudflare Pages, Docker, Python, FastAPI

Education

Year	Degree	Institution	Program
2025	EMBA	Narxoz University, Business School	Executive MBA
2015	MBA	MMU Business School (UK)	Management & Marketing
2012	Master’s	Turan University	Computer Science & Software Engineering

Certifications & Professional Development

• ITIL Foundation - BASU (2017)

Conference Participation

• DigitalBridge 2023 - Astana
• Red Hat Forum 2019 - Moscow
• Citrix Synergy 2018 - Anaheim, CA
• Citrix Synergy 2017 - Orlando, FL

Languages

• Russian - Native
• English - B2 (Upper-Intermediate)