Roman Balayan

Software Engineer
Yerevan, AM.

About

Highly accomplished Software Engineer with 4 years at a global creative platform (500M+ users) and 18 months as a solo founder, specializing in shipping production ML/LLM platforms. Expert in full-stack development across Node.js, Python, Kotlin, React, and FastAPI, with deep hands-on experience in AI/ML integration, serverless GCP, and end-to-end system ownership from data pipeline to UI and deployment. Proven ability to drive complex projects from inception to live, public-facing applications, demonstrating strong technical leadership and innovative problem-solving.

Work

Picsart
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Software Engineer

Summary

Engineered and owned critical microservices and tooling for a global creative platform with 500M+ users, driving platform migrations and enhancing core services.

Highlights

Architected and launched the company-wide Audit Logs microservice from inception to production, leveraging NestJS, Kafka, and Elasticsearch to track moderation actions, DMCA workflows, and CSAM/NCMEC reporting across a platform with 500M+ users.

Engineered OpenAPI specifications with auto-generated client SDKs, enabling complex search and pagination across millions of records efficiently.

Spearheaded the migration of a legacy jQuery/Node.js content moderation stack to modern NestJS + React microservices, and subsequently to Kotlin/Spring Boot, significantly enhancing system reliability and accelerating feature development velocity.

Developed advanced search and bulk-moderation tooling for Trust & Safety teams, enabling complex filtering, pagination, and efficient bulk operations across millions of photos, users, and reports.

Mentored and guided 3 engineering interns, providing structured 1-on-1s, comprehensive code reviews, and technical direction to foster their professional growth and project contributions.

Collaborated effectively with globally distributed teams across multiple time zones, contributing to the development and maintenance of core platform services (user, subscription, photo) that served an international user base of over 500M.

Education

Russian-Armenian University
Yerevan, Armenia, Armenia

Degree

Law and Politics

Languages

English
Armenian
Russian

Skills

Languages

TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, Kotlin, SQL.

Backend Development

Node.js, NestJS, Express, FastAPI, Spring Boot, Kafka.

Frontend Development

React, Next.js, React Native, Expo, Tailwind CSS.

Databases

PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Redis, pgvector.

ML / Data Science

XGBoost, scikit-learn, PyTorch (LSTM), DBSCAN, K-Means, Random Forest, NumPy, Pandas, KDE.

LLM Integration

DeepSeek, OpenAI, prompt-cache architecture, structured JSON outputs, SSE streaming.

Cloud / DevOps

GCP (Cloud Run, Cloud Tasks, GCS, Cloud Scheduler, Cloud Monitoring, Secret Manager, Firebase Hosting), Docker, Kubernetes, GitLab CI/CD, Linux.

Other Technologies & Methodologies

RESTful APIs, GraphQL, microservices, event-driven architecture, OpenAPI / Swagger, Steam OpenID, Agile / Scrum.

Projects

Dota Fight IQ

Summary

ML-powered Dota 2 analysis & training platform benchmarking against Immortal-rank (7000+ MMR) play. Three integrated products on a single async serverless backend. Live, public users.

Mnemony

Summary

AI quiz generation + SM-2 spaced-repetition learning platform. Cross-platform mobile app + REST backend.