Platform: An Engineer with a Product Mindset

Vladimir Kalugin is a technical product manager for T-Bank's Spirit platform. His domain covers GitLab, CI/CD, code, and artifacts, while the platform supports developers' daily work. The team is shifting from directive tool adoption toward Developer Experience and concrete engineering pain points.

His interest in technology began with a home computer and experiments with games. At Bauman University Vladimir studied information systems, taught himself PHP, and became a magazine website's only developer as a student. Technical books gave him a foundation: encounter the problem first, then understand which pattern solves it.

At Tutu.ru Vladimir grew from PHP developer to team lead, Scrum Master, and informal architect, helping move search to Go. He later built Tinkoff's internal platform like a startup, then assembled a team and architecture from scratch at MTS Travel, refusing to ship a version that could not survive production.

After returning to T-Bank, Vladimir moved into technical product management. A platform must make teams faster, so he combines SPACE surveys with system measures and counter-metrics. He preserves energy through swimming, uses travel time for reading, and tests self-development techniques personally.