From Lead Back to Senior: Rebuilding Influence from Zero

Andrey Marchenko grew up in Cherkessk, studied business informatics in Stavropol, and became a PHP developer while still a student. In Moscow, he joined a Tinkoff product frontend team and then its shared platform. Even as a mid-level engineer, Andrey deliberately practiced communication and persuasion.

At Tinkoff, Andrey stabilized a troubled React platform, helped establish a shared frontend stack, and built the first version of Statist. He later moved into Kubernetes, Cassandra clusters, and deployment tooling. The frontend specialist became a high-level engineer capable of leading company-wide change.

After relocating to Cyprus and London, Andrey traded leadership for a senior engineering role at Booking. He studied AWS, databases, and networks while writing a technical blog in English. Distributed systems led him to research papers, Raft, and Paxos. He later continued his career at a large US technology company.

Andrey prepared for relocation by preserving his coding skills and learning English. In a new market, he accepted a lower level and rebuilt trust. Internal documentation, design records, and large-scale systems became a learning environment. Dyslexia did not prevent strong abstract reasoning; his advice is to choose a direction and work consistently.