Denis Bakanov — CEO
I build and ship. Three companies founded, an open-source toolchain (apeek-kit) cutting delivery cost 50%, seven AI products live. Looking for a CTO role at a scale-up or global tech company — where the engineering scope matches what I've already built. Fifteen years in. I started as a sysadmin, ran IT for a pharma company at 24, then spent eight years scaling infrastructure for a 20,000-employee manufacturer — 50 factories, 11 countries, $5M budgets, 99.5% uptime. After that, I bootstrapped Apeek to 14 engineers and $300K/yr in revenue. And while I was at it, I shipped seven AI/LLM products in the last twelve months. What I'm known for: — Building engineering orgs from zero. Did it four times. Most recently at Apeek (1 → 14 engineers across six countries) and earlier at Technonicol (0 → 24 inside a Russian manufacturing giant). 400+ interviews along the way. — AI-native delivery, with receipts. Built and open-sourced apeek-kit — a Claude Code pipeline (spec / test-driven with AI agents) that cut development cost 50% and compressed releases from three weeks to one. So when I claim "AI-native," the GitHub repo backs it up. — Platform that doesn't fall over. 50 factories centralized into 4 DCs. Uptime climbed from 80% to 99.5%. Zero security breaches over five years of annual third-party pentests. — Product instincts that aren't theoretical. 250+ CusDev interviews. Ten products shipped. MBA (AACSB / AMBA) — alongside hands-on coding in TypeScript and Python. But I'm done with early-stage. Three companies is enough. I want to apply this builder mindset where the scale already exists — inside a Series B+ scale-up or a global tech company with the team, budget, and ambition to make AI-native engineering compound across a larger engineering org. Looking for: remote-first CTO, Founding CTO, or VP Engineering at a Series B–D scale-up or global tech company with engineering teams of 10+. EU-based, CET timezone, daily overlap into US East Coast afternoons. DM me — always open to founders, investors, and operators building something at scale.
Stackforce AI infers this person is a SaaS and AI-focused technology leader with extensive experience in scaling engineering organizations.
Location: Madrid, Community of Madrid, Spain
Experience: 15 yrs 5 mos
Skills
- Chief Technology Officer
- Team Building
- Ai-native Development
- Software Architecture
- Product Development
- Product Strategy
- Customer Discovery
- Engineering Leadership
- Cloud-native Architecture
Career Highlights
- Built and scaled engineering teams across multiple countries.
- Developed AI-native tools that significantly reduced costs.
- Led digital transformation in large manufacturing environments.
Work Experience
ApeekFlow
CTO & Co-Founder (1 yr 8 mos)
Junipro
CPO & Co-Founder (9 mos)
Apeek
CTO & Founder (5 yrs 6 mos)
TN International
Head of Digital Products (3 yrs 9 mos)
Deputy Head Of DevOps & IT Architecture Department (5 yrs 10 mos)
UralChem
Head of System Administration (1 yr)
Team Leader Of System Administrators (7 mos)
Education
Master of Business Administration at The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA)
Master's degree at Moscow State University of Instrument Engineering and Computer Sciences (MGUPI)
Bachelor's degree at Moscow State University of Civil Engineering (MSUCE)
