SphereConsulting

Leon is responsible for global day to day operations of Sphere Consulting, Inc.
Leon is a seasoned Management Consultant, Certified Technical Project Manager/Scrum Master, Entrepreneur and Investor with 14+ years of experience designing and implementing solutions for the Startups and Fortune 500 clients in Financial Services, Ecommerce, Logistics, Entertainment, and other industries. He has extensive experience building and working with remote software delivery teams, including 8+ years in Ukraine, Russia, Israel and Eastern Europe. At free time Leon enjoys traveling around the world, skiing, playing tennis and running triathlons in Chicago. Leon graduated from the University Bar Ilan, Israel.

As a Chief Operating Officer at Sphere Inc, Svetlana Kostikova oversees global operations. In partnership with business, Ms. Kostikova provides strategic direction and management for the company’s worldwide infrastructure.

Svetlana Kostikova has more than 16 years in the industry and 10 years of experience leading medium-scale to large-scale organizations for companies experiencing explosive growth through global expansion and/or implementing new business models. Her expertise includes building teams from scratch in India and leading organizations through transformational change.

Before joining Sphere Consulting, Ms. Kostikova was a Director Web Technology at Adobe Inc, where she was responsible for all aspects of production and quality of the Company’s worldwide web portals including entire Ecommerce. Prior to Adobe Inc, she led organizations in Macromedia Inc (acquired by Adobe Inc) , Epiphany Inc. and Computer Associates Inc. Before joining Epiphany, Ms. Kostikova held several key management roles at a number of startups and served on the board of BMA NorCal.

Ms. Kostikova holds a Master's Degree in Computer Science from Kiev Tech University and Master Degree in business from Notre Dame de Namur University. During her free time, Svetlana enjoys cheering her son on at his ice hockey games with her family, traveling, playing piano and drawing.

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Yuri has more than 16 years of experience in technical architecture, analysis, programming and team leadership.
He has designed and implemented large scale distributed software and solutions across multiple industries, using a wide range of technology platforms, including Microsoft, Sun and Oracle. The systems he has built include telecommunication financial and transaction applications, distributed management and monitoring applications, and customer web portals. As an expert in business analysis and enterprise architecture, Yuri has a substantial experience building architecture, designing and implementing enterprise information management systems. Prior to Sphere, Yuri worked as a software engineer/analyst for several Ukrainian companies specializing in telecommunication billing, CRM, data management and enterprise resource planning.

Certified in multiple programming disciplines including object-oriented analysis and information system design, Yuri holds a Master’s degree in applied mathematics from Kharkov Polytechnic Institute.

Oleg has worked as a Chief Architect and General Manager at several software development companies in US and Europe and successfully completed 40+ projects. He has more than 16 years of experience in analysis, programming, technical architecture and managing local and remote teams located in Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Germany, US and Indonesia.. He designed and implemented innovative solutions in a wide range of technologies: J2EE/NET/Ruby/C++, mobile, web, RFID, databases and data warehousing, real-time systems, simulation, gaming, security and video streaming. Besides, he has an extensive experience in statistical simulation scientific research and business analysis. Some of his scientific works were published.

Oleg has a Master’s Degree in Computer Science and a postgraduate Degree in Statistical Simulation. He is also a Master of Sport Candidate in table tennis.

Andrey has more than 15 years of experience in technical architecture, programming and team leadership.
He has designed and implemented large scale data centric software and business intelligence solutions across multiple industries, using a wide range of technology platforms, including Microsoft, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Pentaho and Netezza. The systems he has built include wholesale telecommunication financial and transaction applications, customer web portals and customer relationship management applications. Being an expert in managing electronic transactions, Andrey has a substantial experience designing and building ecommerce systems and other electronic data exchange applications. Prior to Sphere Consulting, Andrey worked as a software architect for several Ukrainian firms specializing in business intelligence, data management and online collaboration.

Certified in multiple programming disciplines including object-oriented analysis and information system design, Andrey holds a Master’s Degree in applied mathematics from Kharkov Polytechnic Institute.

Valeriy has more than 10 years of experience in software development.
He has been involved in dozens of projects and has participated in design, development and testing of the custom application for the leading telecommunication provider, work order management system, biotechnical experiments tracking system, data generation & matching box applications.

Valeriy has a great successful experience in setting up development and testing processes that are distributed between onsite and offshore teams with adoption of the agile methodologies (Scrum & XP). He is proficient in Ruby on Rails, Java and also a Certified Microsoft Database administrator (MCDBA) and Microsoft Solution Developer (MCSD).

Denis has more than 15 years of experience in IT administration, more than 10 years in Software Development and Configuration Management.
His development skills are mostly in backend programming. He worked closely on payment systems integration and on order processing. Denis has a wide knowledge and practical experience in building and managing OS starting with NT 4.0 up to Windows 2008 R2, from Linux up to Solaris SPARC. He has advanced skills in Zyxel/HP network hardware and Linux networking services. Denis worked as a chief of Infrastructure Department in the organization with up to 100 employees and supported the network of more than 140 computers 24/7.

Denis obtained a Microsoft certification in MSSQL Administration.

At Sphere Consulting, Anastasia is responsible for positioning of the company, scaling sales efforts, as well as ensuring high quality of work and productivity of R&D teams.

Anastasia has worked for both corporations and startups in strategy and product development. As an analyst at a major insurance corporation, she analyzed large datasets and conducted rigorous competitive research to come up with recommendations on strategy, business process improvement and cost-cutting. As a co-founder of a biotech startup, she contributed to the product development strategy and financial plan that helped get several term-sheets from venture capital funds.

She graduated from a leading university in Moscow (Higher School of Economics) with a B.Sc. degree in Quantitative Methods in Economics. She is pursuing a Chartered Financial Analyst destination, and she has passed two levels of CFA exams out of three to date. In her spare time, she loves meeting and talking with accomplished entrepreneurs and executives.

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Michael is a versatile and talented IT professional. He has 15+ years of experience in software design, implementation and agile team leadership. He has a profound expertise in statistical analysis and presentation, geospatial and relational database design and architecture, distributed system design and implementation. The technologies and tools he has worked with include, but are not limited to, Ruby on Rails, REST, JSON, SQL, AJAX, CSS, HTML4, C++, Perl, SAS; PostgreSQL, Oracle 10, Solaris & Linux, Visual Studio 2008, RubyMine, Telelogic, Perforce, SVN, and Github.

Michael holds a Bachelors Degree in Computer Science that he completed just in three years! He also has three patents, including a first-named inventor patent.

Michael is a fan of Ruby on Rails and he loves the productivity of this graceful language. As for sports, he favors a morning power session of yoga and calisthenics. Apart from programming, Michael is involved in his local community in education.