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Maksym Shpak Product development · Fractional CTO Kyiv, Ukraine · Remote In software since 2003

Building products. Leading the engineering behind them.

I’m Maksym Shpak, a product developer and Fractional CTO with 20+ years in software engineering, including UBS and Thomson Reuters. I help founders and teams build, launch, and evolve SaaS, fintech, and trading systems — and I write the code myself.

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On the record

Years in software engineering
20+
Options market data processed daily, analytics platform I built
100 GB+
Hedge fund technology launches as sole engineer
2
Infrastructure cost reduction, one financial data platform
90%
Engineers on the analytics team I managed
19
Frontend department I grew, engineers
3 → 17

Services

Two ways to work together. One person accountable for both.

My architecture work draws on systems I’ve built and operated. My product work benefits from the same attention to technical decisions, testing, and long-term maintainability.

IFor founders

Product development

From the idea and a first useful version to build, launch, and continued development. I take ownership of a meaningful part of the product, not individual tickets.

  • SaaS products and MVPs
  • Fintech and trading applications
  • Analytics platforms and data-intensive interfaces
  • APIs, integrations, and workflow automation
  • Stabilizing and developing existing products

Product work usually starts on Upwork. View my Upwork profile

IIFor companies and teams

Fractional CTO & architecture

Senior technical leadership with hands in the code — usually during a transition: scaling, a system that has become hard to operate, or a costly architectural bet.

  • Technical direction and architectural decisions
  • Legacy modernization
  • Reliability, performance, and infrastructure costs
  • Engineering practices and delivery
  • Technical assessment before significant investments

CTO engagements usually start on LinkedIn. View my LinkedIn profile

My own platform · Rune

Engineering decisions backed by experiments.

Rune is the platform I built to run AI-assisted development with discipline. The point isn’t speed for its own sake: faster implementation buys room for more experiments, more checks, and tests of how a system behaves when things fail.

I still set the constraints, judge the evidence, and accept the result.

Read the Rune case study →
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Candidate implementations

CorrectnessLatencyThroughputResourcesOperability

Same load, same criteria

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Compare the trade-offs, choose the one that fits the requirements. A schematic of the process, not measured results.

Selected work

Problems I was trusted with, and what I built.

Client work is described without names where it is covered by NDA.

01

Live trading infrastructure across three US regions

Confidential fintech client (NDA) · 2024–present

Task
Real-time event distribution and execution pipelines for quantitative trading, coast to coast.
My role
Fractional CTO and hands-on architect.
Solution
A tri-regional NATS JetStream backbone; event-driven execution and risk systems with integrity monitoring and replay; audit logging and zero-trust network access.
Result
Execution and risk events distributed across three regions, with replay built into the design rather than added later.

02

Options analytics on 100 GB+ of market data a day

Confidential fintech client (NDA) · 2024–present

Task
Turn the full stream of US equity options market data into analytics traders can read in real time.
My role
Architect and developer, data pipelines to interface.
Solution
Dealer gamma and delta exposure analytics, market microstructure models, hybrid statistical and ML regime detection, and web interfaces that render dense options surfaces live.
Result
A real-time platform processing 100 GB+ of options market data daily. Python, Node.js, Next.js, GCP, Vertex AI.

03

Underwriting engine for a gig-worker credit card

Fintech startup, via Upwork · 2026

Task
Build the underwriting engine behind a credit card for gig workers.
My role
Fintech developer working directly with the founder.
Solution
Flagged early that two income-verification sources had to be reconciled to avoid double-counting, and proposed a decision-audit feature.
Result
In the client’s words, the decision audit “turned out to be exactly what I needed for conversations with banking partners.”
Portrait of Maksym Shpak

About

Twenty years of building systems that matter.

I started writing software in 2003 and have spent most of my career in financial and information systems: trade capture at UBS, core web applications at Thomson Reuters, web banking for Tier-1 Swiss banks, and trading and market data infrastructure today.

I’ve managed teams of up to 19 engineers and remain hands-on with implementation. I favor simple architectures, resilient systems, and decisions that teams can maintain.

Core technology

Python · Rust · React · Next.js · Node.js · distributed and event-driven systems · cloud infrastructure on AWS and GCP

Computer Science, Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.

What clients say

“He’s technically strong, hardworking, creative, and fast, and most importantly the kind of engineer who pushes things forward without needing constant direction and flags better approaches rather than just executing specs.”
Priyanka Misra, Founder | Investor
Managed Maksym directly · LinkedIn recommendation, May 2026
“He’s a good guide, not just a good builder, someone who explains the ‘why’ behind technical decisions, not just the ‘what.’”
Upwork client, 5.0 review · Underwriting Engine for a Gig-Worker Credit Card · September 2026
“He is detail-oriented, takes full ownership of outcomes, and holds his work to a high standard of quality.”
Upwork client, 5.0 review · Production infrastructure architecture for a fintech organization · June 2026

Contact

Tell me what you’re building.

A few sentences are enough. I’ll reply with the main technical risks I see and what I’d tackle first.

  1. 1What the product is and who it’s for
  2. 2Where it stands today
  3. 3The task or technical problem in front of you

Building a product

SaaS, fintech, trading or analytics — an MVP, a launch, or an existing product that needs a steady hand. Top Rated on Upwork.

Contact me on Upwork ↗

Technical leadership

Fractional CTO, architecture, modernization, or an independent assessment before a major investment.

Message me on LinkedIn ↗