hey, i'm
Stsiapan Tsikhanau
AI Engineer & Backend Architect
Building production AI systems for enterprise clients — MCP servers, autonomous agents, and RAG pipelines.
Previously: backend architect on industrial telemetry for Rosatom, Swiss banking platforms, and German energy infrastructure. Now: AI Factory at Japan Tobacco International, delivered by Stellium — Microsoft Partner of the Year 2025 (Switzerland).
// about
About
> What I do now
I design and build production AI systems: MCP servers, autonomous agents, and RAG pipelines for enterprise clients. My current work is on the AI Factory platform for Japan Tobacco International, delivered by Stellium — Microsoft Partner of the Year 2025 in Switzerland.
> Where I come from
My foundation is enterprise backend engineering in C#/.NET and Azure. Over five years I've shipped production code across industrial IoT (Rosatom nuclear manufacturing plants), Swiss fintech, UK healthcare, German semiconductor manufacturing, German energy infrastructure, and US smart home platforms — often as the sole backend engineer or team tech lead.
> How I work
I'm the engineer who walks into a project with no CI/CD, no tests, no pull requests, and no review process — and six months later it has all of them, plus documentation. I bring engineering culture, not just commits. When I join a team, processes get better.
> Technologies
Primary stack
Active secondary
Also experienced with
// experience
Experience
Stellium / AI Factory — Japan Tobacco International
currentAI Engineer & Team Tech Lead · current
Enterprise AI platform for supply chain, procurement, and document automation at JTI. Built by Stellium, Microsoft Partner of the Year 2025 (Switzerland).
- • Own 3 of 4 core use cases on the platform — 2 built from scratch
- • APRA: full RAG pipeline with document ingestion, embeddings, Azure AI Search, and a voice interface for natural-language queries
- • Lizard: Purchase Requisition validator with complex rule engine, integrated with SAP
- • Verida: Supplier validation across 20 countries with multi-source reporting
- • Built a "What If" project planning simulator during the JTI Manila hackathon — AI-driven Gantt generation with risk analysis and cross-department load simulation; technical solution recognized as top-tier by judges
- • Act as team lead in the manager's absence; directly manage several engineers on my services
Digi3 — German Energy Sector
currentSole Backend Engineer · 2023–current
Digital forms and workflow platform for German energy companies. Fine-grained access control with per-client customization.
- • Sole backend engineer for the entire product
- • Introduced engineering culture from scratch: pull requests, CI/CD pipelines, automated test coverage, and task tracking
- • Before I joined: direct pushes to dev, no tests, tasks written in chat. Today: full review cycle, automated quality gates, structured backlog
- • Ongoing responsibility across all backend development and architecture
Infineon Technologies — German Semiconductor Manufacturer
completedSenior Backend Engineer · 1 year
TESLIM (Test and Limit Manager) — enterprise application for semiconductor production control. Worked through VDI due to security policy, with 10+ minute build times on every change.
- • Configured SonarQube with code coverage reporting and quality gatekeeping over a single weekend — a task the team had struggled with for months
- • Mentored interns on Playwright end-to-end testing suite
- • Collaborated daily with a Microsoft MVP-led engineering team; contributed to establishing testing practices across the codebase
Acasium Group — UK Healthcare
completedBackend Engineer · 1 year
Medical software platform for UK healthcare providers. The highest-quality Scrum process, code review culture, and engineering standards I've experienced.
- • Integrated Stripe payment processing — first payment infrastructure on the platform
- • Shipped features across multiple product modules
- • Client requested rehire two weeks after contract reduction — declined due to prior commitment
Additive — Swiss Banking Software
completedBackend Engineer · ~6 months
First large-scale enterprise environment: multiple teams, extensive codebase, full Scrum delivery. On-site client work in Zürich.
- • Optimized a critical database query from over 1 minute to ~6 seconds through view-to-stored-procedure refactor with caching
- • Led database denormalization and index optimization for downstream performance improvements
Rosatom Industrial Systems (via Brio RTS)
completedSole Backend + Frontend Engineer · 1 year
Real-time telemetry system for AtomMash and PetrozavodskMash — nuclear manufacturing plants. Dozens of location anchors per plant streaming geolocation data over TCP into my backend.
- • Single backend and frontend engineer — worked remotely alongside an embedded team writing C, C++, and Python firmware on-site
- • Designed binary TCP protocols from scratch for equipment diagnostics and noise filtering in the data stream
- • Optimized SignalR to handle hundreds of real-time notifications per second on the frontend without degrading responsiveness
- • Iteratively improved channel throughput through protocol refinement
HomeSeer — US Smart Home Platform
completedBackend Engineer · 3 months
Modernized the legacy Visual Basic admin panel of an American smart home platform to C#/.NET with a UI refresh.
// projects
Projects
Open-source and personal work. More coming — actively building in AI engineering.
C# Functional Library
Currently building
// contact
Let's talk
Currently open to:
- • Full-time senior or staff AI engineering roles — remote, EU timezones preferred
- • Technical advisory for companies building production AI agent systems
- • Speaking engagements on production AI engineering and MCP architecture
Not taking short-term freelance at the moment.