cv
Viktor Chalyi's CV - VP of Engineering, Director of Engineering, Engineering Manager with 15+ years leading engineering teams. Expertise in AWS, DevOps, fintech, and telecom.
Basics
| Name | Viktor Chalyi |
| Label | VP of Engineering @ IDT | Director-Level Leadership | AI, Telecom & Fintech | High-Performing Teams |
| Website | vchalyi.com |
| Summary | VP of Engineering with over 15 years of experience leading global engineering organizations through modernization, growth, and large-scale digital transformation. Expert in delivering high-performance, cloud-native applications (AWS, CI/CD, DevOps) that balance innovation with enterprise-grade reliability. Adept at guiding teams of 15–100+ engineers across software, QA, and program management to deliver mission-critical products with measurable business impact. |
| Location | Summit, NJ, USA |
| Profiles |
Work
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2023.10 - Present Newark, NJ, USA
IDT Corporation
VP of Engineering
- Led 100+ engineers (Eng, QA, TPMs) across 5 product lines (Mobile Top-up, E-Gift, eSIM, Prepaid Cards, International Calling) serving millions of users.
- Managed and mentored 7 Engineering Managers, strengthening leadership pipeline and cross-functional alignment.
- Drove engineering excellence initiatives achieving 99.995% platform uptime, surpassing reliability benchmarks.
- Implemented DevLake to track DORA metrics, velocity, bug escape ratio, and tech debt, improving release predictability by 25%.
- Led GenAI-driven support modernization, redesigning chat widgets and IVR to boost first-contact resolution by 45%.
- Created an Engineering Manager Playbook, reducing onboarding from 2 months to 3 weeks.
- Led legacy system decommissioning, saving $400k+ annually and improving platform stability.
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2023.03 - 2023.10 Newark, NJ, USA
IDT Corporation
Director of Engineering
- Led 3 cross-functional teams delivering business-critical products on schedule, driving revenue and retention.
- Mentored a 25+ engineer org, increasing internal promotions by 30% through strong career pipelines.
- Rebuilt the enterprise data supply chain, improving accuracy and reducing delivery cycle time by 40%.
- Hired and onboarded 10+ engineers, cutting time-to-productivity by 50%.
- Improved developer productivity with Backstage, reducing onboarding and service discovery time by 30%.
- Led GenAI-driven support modernization, improving first-contact resolution by 45%.
- Decommissioned legacy systems, saving $400k+ annually in support and maintenance costs.
- Drove engineering excellence, achieving 99.995% uptime across core platforms.
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2021.07 - 2023.03 Newark, NJ, USA
IDT Corporation
Engineering Manager
- Led 2 cross-functional teams (15+ engineers across software, QA, TPM) delivering mission-critical systems at scale.
- Migrated infrastructure to a dedicated AWS account using CDK, improving security, scalability, and cost visibility.
- Built CI/CD pipelines with Jenkins/Groovy and blue-green deployments, reducing downtime and release incidents by 90%+.
- Optimized a retail portal serving 35k+ users by removing sticky sessions, fixing SQL bottlenecks, and decomposing a monolith, improving performance by 20%.
- Improved observability with OTEL and Grafana, reducing mean time to detect incidents by 35%.
- Drove cloud infrastructure management through TypeScript, enabling infrastructure as code practices that improved deployment speed and reliability on AWS.
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2020.08 - 2021.07 Newark, NJ, USA
IDT Corporation
Lead Software Engineer
- Revamped two mission-critical financial applications supporting retail, DTC, and wholesale channels, migrating from .NET Framework/Windows to .NET Core/Linux — improving stability and performance while cutting infrastructure costs by 50%.
- Directed a cross-functional team of seven engineers (software and QA), ensuring on-time delivery of high-stakes financial systems and strengthening collaboration across functions.
- Enhanced CI/CD pipelines with Groovy automation, reducing rollback time for critical applications by 50%, improving deployment safety and developer efficiency.
- Implemented canary deployments with HAProxy for core applications, reducing mean time to recovery (MTTR) by 40%, significantly improving reliability and customer trust.
- Engineered a backend API in C# for phone number lookup service, incorporating Twilio and X-Connect to determine country, carrier, and phone type.
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2019.02 - 2020.08 Andersen Lab
Team Lead
- Oversaw a cross-functional engineering team to deliver business-critical financial solutions, ensuring alignment between technical execution and business goals.
- Partnered with stakeholders to define and refine requirements for a complex loan approval workflow at a major Eastern bank, enabling automation of previously manual processes and reducing approval cycle times.
- Applied a HATEOAS-driven architecture with workflows powered by Camunda Engine, improving system flexibility and reducing development effort for new workflow changes by 30%.
- Established and enforced code review standards, improving defect detection rates by 25% and significantly raising overall product quality.
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2015.07 - 2019.01 Inostudio
Senior Software Engineer
- Engineered high-performance .NET applications with JavaScript and AngularJS frontend for talent acquisition system, enhancing user engagement and system efficiency.
- Optimized distributed systems for throughput and latency, increasing overall efficiency and reducing infrastructure costs.
- Drove architecture decisions that improved scalability and resilience, enabling the platform to seamlessly handle 3x traffic growth without degradation.
- Mentored and coached junior developers, accelerated their ramp-up time and increased overall team capacity.
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2013.10 - 2015.06 LLC Itlook
Team Lead
- Guided a 4-person engineering team, implementing TDD and DDD to improve code quality and accelerate feature delivery.
- Delivered distributed and desktop systems, improving maintainability and cutting release cycles by 30%.
- Mentored team members, boosting velocity and building long-term technical capability.
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2012.04 - 2013.07 RN-UfaNIPIneft
Software Engineer
- Led development of web applications integrating WCF services, streamlining data workflows and boosting operational efficiency.
- Drove end-to-end software lifecycle from design to deployment, ensuring high-quality, reliable releases.
- Collaborated across teams to deliver projects on time and exceed stakeholder expectations.
Education
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2007.09 - 2012.08
Certificates
| Master Go Programming | ||
| Udemy | 2022-11-02 |
| Team management, business communication and negotiation course | ||
| STRATOPLAN MANAGEMENT SCHOOL | 2022-10-13 |
| Terraform - From Zero to Certified Professional | ||
| Udemy | 2021-02-21 |
| AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate 2020 | ||
| Udemy | 2021-01-30 |
Skills
| Leadership |
| Communication |
| Team Management |
| Strategic Planning |
| Distributed Systems |
| Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) |
| SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) |
| Microsoft Azure |
| mssql |
| AngularJS |
| MySQL |
| Information Technology |
| Amazon Web Services (AWS) |
| Cloud Computing |
| .NET |
| C# |
| Software Development |
| Scrum |
| .NET Core |
| ASP.NET Core |
| AWS |
| Docker Products |
| Terraform |
| Microsoft SQL Server |
| PostgreSQL |
| MongoDb |
| Entity Framework |
| Elasticsearch |
| Entity Framework (EF) Core |
| Swagger API |
| SQL |
| Camunda BPM |
| Dapper ORM |
| WCF Services |
| Akka.NET |
| RabbitMQ |
| WinForms |
| Apache Kafka |
| Microservices |
| ASP.NET Web API |
| Akka |
| AutoMapper |
| BPMN |
| ActiveMQ |
| Python |
Languages
| Russian | |
| Native or bilingual proficiency |
| English | |
| Professional working proficiency |