Leonid Sopov

Senior Backend Engineer

MY.GAMES — Payment Solutions Department March 2024 – Present

Working on secure payment infrastructure under PCI DSS, GDPR, DORA, and internal security policy requirements.

• Maintained and refactored legacy Perl payment services for security, stability, and testability.
• Integrated new payment acquirers (Payermax, Stripe, Adyen), implementing 3DS authorization flows, IBAN/country code validation, and anti-fraud system hooks.
• Built unit, E2E, and pytest-based integration tests for payment acquirer flows.
• Maintained versioned database migrations using Alembic (Python) across multiple service databases.
• Established Docker security standards across the team: read-only containers, capability dropping, resource limits.
• Migrated services across two infrastructure generations: from virtual machines to Docker Compose, then to Kubernetes.
• Built and maintained the team's shared development environment: reverse proxy, uptime monitoring, mock API services, and Docker orchestration.
• Optimized stage deployment pipeline from ~9 minutes to 14 seconds: replaced git attribute filters with direct text substitution, optimized startup scripts, and added git caching.
• Implemented Git-based SSH access management with automated provisioning and account expiration.
• Fixed security vulnerabilities in payment processing code and automated secret rotation across service configuration files.

Senior Go & Python Developer

Acronis — Platform Department July 2020 – January 2024

Worked on backend services and tooling with a focus on legacy migration, API development, and automation.

• Rewrote the Serial Number parsing service from Perl (with C++ XS bindings) into a standalone Go REST API, eliminating the C++ build dependency.
• Extended the Go Account Server: migrated API endpoints from the Python backend and resolved critical production issues.
• Migrated AMQP client library from streadway/amqp to amqp091-go, modernizing async messaging across services.
• Extended and maintained the Reporting Service: replaced DELETE-based retention with DROP PARTITION for performance, added support for new offering items, and resolved critical production incidents.
• Built a configuration parser converting multi-sheet XLSX files into structured YAML for license chain management, deployed across cloud and on-premise environments.
• Implemented E2E tests using Gherkin and Python across multiple services.

Lead of Perl Development Team

Acronis – Perl Applications Department November 2019 – July 2021

Led the Perl backend team at Acronis, managing a team of two developers, responsible for core internal services and infrastructure tools.

• Managed a team of two developers: code review, unit testing standards, documentation, and professional growth.
• Wrote detailed design documentation and clarified undocumented system internals.
• Introduced and enforced code review practices and Perl Best Practices.
• Migrated a 122,000-line Perl codebase to a modern build and deployment setup, and containerized services using Docker.
• Served as the single point of contact for all cross-team requests and technical queries related to the Perl backend.

Senior Perl Developer

Acronis — Web Development Department July 2014 – November 2019

Maintained and developed core internal backend services. Also covered web systems administration responsibilities when the department had no dedicated sysadmin.

• Maintained and extended internal backend services: access management, licensing, and reporting systems.
• Built an access management system handling ~12,000 transactions per day.
• Replaced internal authorization with Active Directory integration, serving 1,500+ employees daily.
• Improved XML parsing performance 10x by migrating from a DOM-based parser to a custom SAX-based implementation.
• Managed infrastructure of 70+ Linux (CentOS/Fedora) servers across 2 data centers and 3 MySQL (MariaDB) clusters (acting sysadmin role); patched critical CVEs including Poodle, Shellshock, and GHOST.
• Designed and maintained deployment pipelines and release processes.

Senior Architect

Acronis — Web Development Department August 2012 – July 2014

Responsible for system design, reverse engineering of undocumented legacy services, and leading cross-department technical migrations.

• Designed web system architectures for internal backend services.
• Reverse-engineered legacy systems to restore undocumented business logic.
• Led cross-department migrations: software platforms, OS upgrades, Perl version transitions, and server consolidation.
• Served as primary escalation point for critical web development issues.
• Researched and recommended new technologies to improve department efficiency.

Head of Web Development Team

Acronis — Web Development Department December 2010 – August 2012

Led the Web Development team, responsible for backend services, team processes, and cross-team coordination.

• Managed a team of 6 engineers: weekly 1:1s, bi-annual performance reviews, team building.
• Introduced Agile methodology and deployed JIRA for project tracking (100+ new requests/month).
• Launched a unified Confluence documentation system: 7 topics, 100+ articles at launch, 30–50 new materials added monthly.
• Provided monthly development estimates for 7–10 projects.

Perl Developer

Acronis — Web Development Department February 2008 – December 2010

Joined Acronis as a Junior Perl Developer and progressed to Senior Perl Developer within 18 months. Developed and maintained internal backend services and automation tooling.

• Developed internal web applications, reporting tools, and administrative interfaces.
• Built automation scripts and internal tooling to support operations and content teams.
• Promoted: Junior Perl Developer (Feb 2008) → Perl Developer (Aug 2008) → Senior Perl Developer (Aug 2009) → Head of Web Dev Team (Dec 2010).

Freelance Web Developer

Campus Crusade for Christ December 2006 – February 2008

Perl Developer

Metadesign February 2005 – December 2006

Web development using Perl at a web studio.

• Developed code for most of the websites managed by the studio (~20 websites over 2 years).
• Built a search engine: indexing robot, morphology-based search, and incremental page updates.
• Designed an advertising system serving over 1.5 million banners daily.
• Organized live internet broadcasting of Drag Racing events.

Founder & Solo Engineer

Bible Online Project — only.bible · bibleonline.ru · bible.ru October 2003 – Present

Solo-built and operated for 20+ years. Full ownership: architecture, development, deployment, monitoring, and incident response.

• Platform serving 2M+ unique users and 10M+ page views per year. Multilingual Bible reading and study platform: text reading, side-by-side translation comparison, audio, video, reading plans, Q&A.
• Perl backend (Apache mod_perl2 + HTML::Mason) handling all content delivery across multiple websites.
• Full-text search in Russian, English, and German via Sphinx Search with custom dictionaries and morphology.
• Developed a Go caching reverse proxy deployed in Russia, providing access for users in restricted regions: hybrid SQLite + filesystem cache, content transformation pipeline (URL rewriting, header manipulation, banner injection), Python-generated config system for multi-domain deployments.
• Developed a Go microservice for parsing and normalizing Bible references (bble.ru): multi-language input (Russian, English), Unicode normalization, prefix book matching, chapter/verse range optimization, QR code API with custom SVG generation.
• Developed a public REST API for Bible texts (api.bibleonline.ru), documented and used by external developers.
• Infrastructure: 50+ Docker containers across multiple servers with geo-distributed proxies; Perl and Go backends, Varnish CDN, Sphinx search, MariaDB, forum, radio streaming, REST API.
• Operates community across VK (68K+ subscribers), Facebook (7.5K+ likes), and other platforms.