Mikhail Yamkovy, Senior Software Engineer

Mikhail Yamkovy, Senior Software Engineer at Exactpro, talks about what piqued his interest in the company many years ago, what factors contributed to his professional progress and how he had to become an early riser due to his current project. 

– I came to Exactpro in January 2015 for a pre-graduation internship. I studied at the Obninsk subsidiary of the MEPhI National Research Nuclear University, majoring in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science with a focus on financial mathematics. Iosif Itkin's course of lectures really sparked my interest. And although it was not my initial plan, I stayed on to work here after the internship.

Now I work in the non-functional testing department managed by Pavel Medvedev. Over the years, I have had the honor to work with a dozen major trading platforms all around the world. At first, I performed and analyzed load testing results. Later, I got into developing a toolkit for load (and other non-functional) testing. 

I am proud of the fact that some of the tools I wrote back in 2016 are still actively used on many of the company's projects. Lately, I've been more and more involved in test planning and interacting with clients. At the moment, I am in charge of testing one of the Australian trading platforms. The project is very interesting, but also difficult, considering the fact that I had to learn to wake up early to counterbalance the big time difference?

Thanks to the help from experienced colleagues, I have advanced from a Junior to a Senior Software Engineer, learned the specifics of high load systems, the subtleties of financial markets, became proficient in several programming languages and fluent in English (thanks to our English classes and regular communication with clients from Canada, England and Australia).

I value the versatility of activities in my work, so I relish an occasional interruption and listen to an interesting presentation from time to time, and even give talks myself. I have given several talks at software testing meetups and am slowly but – hopefully – surely working on improving my public speaking skills.

I spend my free time with my family and friends, I play the guitar, enjoy video games, ride my bike and run (I'll see you at the Moscow Marathon?).