Alexander Makeev — AI-Native Engineering Lead

Lift your ideas off the ground

I turn proof sketches into launched products. Architect the first scalable MVP, lead it to launch.

Work with me directly

via Toptal — they handle contracts, you work with me

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Already worked with

From sketch to scaled product

First two stages — validate yourself with no-code. From stage 3, I architect the MVP that scales, and lead you to a revenue engine.

Alone

Spark

Stage 1: Kite

Manual experiment with 10 customers, Excel + messenger

+ no-code

Validate

Stage 2: Winged bicycle

No-code automation (Zapier + Bubble), 100 customers

+ Alex

Build

Stage 3: Biplane

Custom MVP, own database, 1000 users

+ Alex + DevOps + Growth

Scale

Stage 4: Airliner

Production-grade platform, dedicated team, ARR tracking

+ Alex + Full team

Refine

Stage 5: Private jet

Fully automated growth engine, self-onboarding, viral loops

Three ways to work together

All engagements run through Toptal — same hourly rate, same direct access to me.

Fractional CTO

20-40 hrs/week. Lead your engineering org, set the AI roadmap, hire your first team. 3-6 months.

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Embedded Engineer

Full-time on your most ambitious feature. Prototype, ship, hand off. 4-12 weeks.

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Advisory Sprint

5 days. I audit your stack, sketch the architecture, deliver a roadmap your team executes.

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Selected work

A few teams I helped launch.

Toptal — Conversion Engine

2016–2022

Built lead-qualification quizzes for Toptal's marketing funnel. Single page generated $500K monthly revenue at peak.

Lead Generation • SEO • Conversion

FirmPilot — Legal Data Pipeline

2025–2026

Nationwide legal data pipeline. Transformed US court opinions across all states and court levels into structured, LLM-ready knowledge.

AI • Data Engineering • LLM Infrastructure

Wedding Catalog — Novosibirsk

2013–2014

Marketplace for wedding venues. Reached organic demand — venue owners called us to list their properties. Built filters, paid placements, full revenue model.

Marketplace • Product • Two-sided

Alexander Makeev — Moscow night portrait

Engineering since 2007. AI-native since 2021.

Toptal Top 3% engineer with 17+ years building products from sketch to scale. Worked with CERN (Python development for accelerator software), Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics (graph-based config systems), Intel (invited lecturer), and BairesDev. Today I focus on AI-native systems — multi-agent architectures, LLM cost optimization, production observability.

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Vertical layout (A)

Where I go deep

Three verticals, one engineer. Each backed by shipped projects.

AI-Native Engineering

Multi-agent systems, LLM orchestration, production data pipelines.

FirmPilot — nationwide US court opinions parser, LLM-ready knowledge base.

Conversion & Lead-Gen Systems

SEO quizzes, marketplaces, funnels — designed and engineered end-to-end.

Toptal lead quiz — single page peaked at $500K monthly revenue.

Platform & Infrastructure

Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform — self-hosted PaaS for small R&D teams.

OneLiner — Heroku-style platform on K8s; CERN accelerator software (Python).

Horizontal layout (B)

Where I go deep

Three verticals, one engineer. Each backed by shipped projects.

AI-Native Engineering

I design multi-agent systems and LLM orchestration pipelines that turn unstructured input into production-ready knowledge. For FirmPilot, I built a nationwide pipeline transforming US court opinions across all states into structured, LLM-ready data — proxy rotation, test coverage, micro-libraries shared with the team. My own products run the same playbook: Majesti AI ships features (a vibe-coded 3-tier MLM referral system among them) entirely through Claude-driven development, and my open Claude Code setup is used by colleagues as a starting template.

Conversion & Lead-Gen Systems

I build the funnels that move money. Six years inside Toptal as tech lead on SEO quiz funnels — one of those pages alone drove $500K in monthly revenue, and the whole system was documented well enough to hand off to a 10-person team. Earlier, a wedding-venue marketplace in Novosibirsk reached the rare state where suppliers called us to be listed: filters, paid placements, two-sided revenue model. I treat lead-gen as a measurable engineering problem, not a marketing afterthought.

Platform & Infrastructure

Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform — deep, not surface. With OneLiner I built a Heroku-style PaaS on K8s for small R&D teams: GitLab, Jitsi, and custom apps deployed via Helm, infra provisioned by Terraform from a single command. Earlier, at CERN I wrote Python for the LHC accelerator software stack with connection pooling and mutexes for scale, and at Budker INP I built graph-based config systems for physics experiments. I know what production infrastructure looks like when uptime actually matters.

From CERN to AI startups

Since 2007. Three eras. Accelerating velocity.

Science

2009–2014

CERN, Budker INP, Novosibirsk State University. Accelerator software, image processing, teaching the next generation of engineers.

Platform

2014–2022

Toptal Top 3%. Built lead-generation engines that drove millions in revenue. Scaled web platforms across industries.

AI-Native

2021–now

Multi-agent systems, LLM cost optimization, production AI infrastructure. From GPT release date to today's frontier.

Ready to lift your idea off the ground?

I take 1-2 new engagements per quarter. All through Toptal — they handle contracts, payments, and legal. You work directly with me.

Work with me directly →

Or view my full Toptal profile →