Flight software for a physical CubeSat and its cloud ground station: five Python subsystem services on an MQTT bus, telemetry over HTTP and LoRa.
Misha Topchilo
Engineering Lead
California, USA · Pacific Time
I lead engineering teams and own the architecture of what they build: from the first design decision, through delivery, to the system running in production.
Now
I've spent 20+ years building production software. Today I lead engineering on a large React and TypeScript platform at a US enterprise software company: I set the architecture and engineering standards for a distributed team, and built the testing and delivery pipeline that replaced manual regression testing with automated quality gates.
Before that, I spent five years as an engineering team lead for a government IT contractor, shipping federal and regional systems used by millions of citizens. Earlier, I worked as a full-stack engineer in media, telecom, and GIS.
Experience
Lead Software Engineer · US enterprise software company2021 — now · 5 yrs 2 mos
- Technical lead for a large React/TypeScript application; designed the component architecture now used across the organization.
- Lead a distributed engineering team through hiring, onboarding, mentoring, and architecture and code reviews.
- Work across the stack: Go services and the PostgreSQL data model behind the platform's APIs, keeping API contracts and the UI in sync.
- Raised automated test coverage from near zero to 85%+ across unit, integration, and visual regression tests.
- Built the CI/CD pipeline with SonarQube quality gates, replacing manual regression testing.
- Introduced AI-assisted engineering: built MCP servers that connect coding agents to the team's internal engineering tools.
TypeScript, React, Redux, Go, PostgreSQL, Playwright, Jenkins
Senior Frontend Developer · Enterprise engineeringTransition contract2021 — 2022 · 1 yr 4 mos
- Short engagement that overlapped my move into the current lead role and wound down once that role was fully staffed.
- Built a QA portal that gave engineering leadership visibility across 36 microservices for the first time.
- Wrote UI test suites for each service from scratch and consolidated their quality metrics into a single dashboard.
TypeScript, React, Jest, Playwright, Jenkins
Lead Software Engineer · Media groupPart-time2018 — 2024 · 6 yrs 6 mos
- Owned the technical lifecycle of a portfolio of high-traffic news sites under strict performance SLAs.
- Ran the server infrastructure: provisioning, security hardening, patching, and disaster recovery.
PHP, MySQL, WordPress, Linux
Engineering Team Lead · Government IT contractor2016 — 2021 · 4 yrs 11 mos
- Led a cross-functional team delivering systems for federal and regional government under strict compliance requirements.
- Built the payment integration with state banking infrastructure for a federal cashback program used by millions of citizens at launch.
- Took a citizen issue-reporting portal from zero to the region's primary municipal reporting channel.
TypeScript, React, PHP, Python, PostgreSQL, Docker
Full-Stack Developer · Media and telecom software2015 — 2016 · 1 yr 4 mos
- Built a high-load news aggregation platform and a telecom billing system with subscriber management.
PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, Linux
Full-Stack Developer · GIS software company2013 — 2015 · 1 yr 6 mos
- Designed the PostgreSQL spatial database and led the migration from a monolith to microservices.
PHP, Yii, PostgreSQL, JavaScript
- Earlier roles in web development and systems engineering2005 — 2013
Full history on LinkedIn
Projects
Remote-controlled home observatory: Arduino and Raspberry Pi hardware, an INDI driver for the roll-off roof with a software and hardware interlock, and a Python pipeline that plate-solves every frame, extracts sources, and cross-matches them against star catalogs.
Crowdsourced geo-discovery platform: 1,100+ documented places on an interactive map, with photos, ratings, and traveler activity feeds.
Arduino firmware, a REST API, and a live dashboard; the observatory's safety gate.
Typed React component library published on npm, with Storybook docs; the base for my own web projects.
Open-source Next.js portfolio template used by other developers; the predecessor of this site.
- Moon widgetTyped React component: live Moon phase and ephemeris, PIXI.js-shaded disc
- Business AI assistantAuto-replies for Telegram Business with grounded answers and LLM provider fallback
- CASEAI support bot for community group chats, answers only from admin-set context
- TARSTelegram AI bot, the front end for the CubeSat project
- Starmap serviceOn-demand night-sky chart renderer over MQTT
Asteroid trackerNear-Earth approaches from NASA NeoWS data- Look at StarsAstronomy channel on Telegram
Stack
- Leadership
- Team leadership, hiring, mentoring, architecture reviews, engineering standards
- Engineering
- TypeScript, React, Next.js, Redux, Node.js, Go, PHP, Python, PostgreSQL, MySQL
- Platform
- Docker, CI/CD, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, SonarQube, Playwright, Linux
- AI
- Claude Code, agentic workflows, MCP servers, multi-agent pipelines, LLM integration (OpenAI, Groq)