About

Helping software engineers grow their careers and turn their expertise into independent businesses.

Who is the author?

My name is Yaroslav Tkachenko, I’m a software engineer and a consultant.

I started programming when I was 14. I made my first open-source contribution when I was 16. But I didn’t know it was called open-source; GitHub didn’t exist at the time.

I got a full-time software engineering job when I was 17. Long story.

I moved to Vancouver, Canada, more than a decade ago. I’ve done full-stack and platform engineering in several startups. Then I primarily focused on data platform engineering. I’ve worked on large data platforms and streaming data pipelines powering Call of Duty games (at Activision) and e-commerce experiences (at Shopify). I was a founding engineer at Goldsky, where I led a team that built a self-serve streaming data platform.

Nowadays, I offer consulting services specializing in data streaming & data-intensive applications. I help companies build, deploy and maintain complex streaming systems. I also mentor and educate.

Why should you subscribe?

I started The Independent Engineer because I believe every software engineer should have an option to start working for themselves sometime in their career. But it doesn’t happen overnight: you spend years getting specialized knowledge, building an online brand, and growing your network. I’ll show you how. You can read more in the first post here.

I also hold monthly office hours for the paid subscribers. You’ll be able to ask me any questions about consulting, career development, business growth, branding, etc.