About me

A girl in a fur hat lying on the ground typing on a keyboard while an angry polar bear tries to drag her away — a framed cat photo and magnifying glass sit nearby — — Where accessibility gets complicated

How it started

I was born in a remote part of Siberia. My path into tech started there, studying Computer Software Engineering through to a Master's degree. Looking back, the degree mattered less than the mindset: the confidence to figure things out, even when I didn't know where to start.

During my master's, I taught a course on Software Development Methodology — my first time explaining ideas to an audience. That experience gave me a principle I still carry:

Understanding something deeply means being able to make it simple for someone else.

Relocation(s)

Three panels showing a girl in a fur hat packing moving boxes: first in Novosibirsk with a bear and snow, then in Amsterdam with canals and tulips, then in Seattle with the Space Needle and a coffee mug — Novosibirsk, Amsterdam, Seattle

There are many reasons I left, but this thought first crossed my mind when LinkedIn got blocked in my home country.

I moved to the Netherlands in 2019. It was a bold step — I'd barely had any speaking practice in English (mostly just reading technical docs!) and knew no Dutch at all. But I picked up the language, and once companies started hiring again after the 2020 freeze, I landed a role on a large and well-known e-commerce project.

Whenever I told someone where I worked, the reaction was always the same:

"Oh wow! yeah-yeah, I love them!"

I enjoyed that a lot, but it also made me realize how much I wanted to be part of a company that makes a difference in people's lives.

E-commerce, data insights & frontend

I enjoy working with data (I used to work as a web-analyst back in Siberia), so my first major project was building an A/B testing strategy and development guidelines with the Data Team. Once the process was running, I moved to the team responsible for product listing pages (PLP), product detail pages (PDP).

It was a real adventure: first, understanding a large legacy codebase (and the most challenging part — getting all of it running on my machine locally haha), then working with the team who rewrote the first pages — PLP & PDP on Vue, TypeScript, and Nuxt. Going from legacy to a modern stack was one of the most rewarding experiences of my career.

Accessibility in practice

Before moving to Europe, I studied web standards and accessibility seriously — I'd heard they were essential for the European market, a must-have given accessibility regulations. The reality turned out to be more complicated than that — but more on that in future posts.

I took the initiative and started changing how the team approached accessibility — the development process, the testing, the whole workflow. It was complicated — but if you've ever tried to change how a fast-moving e-commerce team builds software, that won't surprise you.

What's next

Since December 2025, I've been living in the United States — my second major move. Now that I have a bit more room to breathe, I want to write about the challenges and recurring questions frontend engineers and product teams face in e-commerce projects. Teaching showed me that explaining something clearly is one of the best ways to understand it deeply — and I hope writing will work the same way.

I'm starting with accessibility related topics. I'll also write about other things that interest me — but you can always filter posts by tag if you're only here for the tech.