vkuzmin.com vk@vkuzmin.com

Vladimir Kuzmin

CTO / CIO · 25+ years in IT, 15+ at executive level

Limassol, Cyprus · Valid Cyprus work authorization

I build and repair technology functions until they're dependable. For the last seven years I have run technology at Animaccord – the company behind Masha and the Bear, one of the world's most-watched animated franchises, distributed in over 150 countries.

Vladimir Kuzmin – portrait

Selected results

170
people moved to remote production in under two weeks. Six years later the model still runs.
1.07M
lifetime activated users of Honey Farm, a Telegram game – on roughly three euro cents of marketing spend per registration.
>70%
cut in average incident resolution time: about 20 → under six working hours, with the same team.
500+ TB
off-site backup and recovery environment, built from scratch, with a validated recovery path.
≈30%
less end-to-end 4K render processing time on the same compute, via AI upscaling in the production pipeline.
2 weeks
on-time release cycle after rebuilding web/product delivery from frequent slippage.

About

The remit at Animaccord spans several countries and covers infrastructure and cloud, cybersecurity and resilience, ITSM, enterprise applications, web/product delivery, AI adoption, budgets and dozens of vendors. I own technology strategy and work directly with the CEO and COO.

Earlier: functional CIO for a private cryptocurrency-mining portfolio (four concurrent data centers, thousands of devices; NDA), CIO of Yves Rocher Russia (246 stores), and founder of two profitable businesses. At ABB, my Service Desk rebuild cut resolution times fivefold.

Outside work I ship my own products, directing AI agents that do the implementation. Sole human creator: I own requirements, architecture decisions, QA and release.

Experience

Chief Technology Officer – Animaccord

2019 – Present

Limassol, Cyprus

The company behind Masha and the Bear. I joined to professionalize its technology. The scope now spans several countries and covers infrastructure and cloud (Azure, AWS, Google Cloud), Microsoft 365 and identity, ITSM, cybersecurity and resilience, internal applications, web/product delivery and AI adoption.

  • Rebuilt web/product delivery from frequent slippage to an on-time two-week release cycle (mid-2025), through functional leads.
  • Sponsored Honey Farm, our in-house Telegram game, and later led it directly: 1.07 million lifetime activated users, with about EUR 0.03 marketing spend per registered user (excluding development and operations), vs more than USD 3 on the web channel.
  • Initiated and architected the move of about 170 employees to remote production in under two weeks. Production never stopped; the model still runs six years later.
  • Re-architected infrastructure from a single site into a multi-country, cloud-and-on-premises estate, monitored across every site, server, and network device.
  • Ran an internal security audit and remediation, followed by a multi-country Check Point rollout and MFA. No material security incidents detected through platform monitoring since the 2021 go-live.
  • Built a 500 TB off-site backup and recovery environment (my initiative and design): monitoring, integrity checks, a validated recovery path.
  • Jira Service Desk and ITIL incident workflows: average resolution time down more than 70% (about 20 → under six working hours) with the same team on a growing user base.
  • Supplier selection, tenders, performance reviews, renewals and replacements across dozens of vendors. Balanced in-house, part-time and outsourced capacity.
  • AI upscaling in the permanent render pipeline; licensed generative AI tools rolled out for office and prototyping work.

Chief Information Officer (functional role) – Cryptocurrency Mining & Blockchain Projects (NDA)

2016 – 2019

Several related ventures backed by one private investor. I owned the technology and infrastructure function; entity names withheld under NDA.

  • Launched four concurrent data centers running thousands of devices on an adapted Linux platform with embedded monitoring.
  • Designed an industrial GPU-mining platform (enclosure prototype, motherboard requirements, monitored Linux build) and deployed more than a dozen factory-integrated containers at one site.
  • Developed blockchain solution concepts and architectures for clients.

Founder and CEO – AnswerAll Call Center

2013 – 2015

Moscow, Russia

Self-funded outsourced-sales and call-center business built from scratch, with no external equity or loans.

  • Grew it to a 31-person team and about EUR 40,000 gross monthly turnover in each of three peak months, within about 18 months. Profitable in the second half of 2014.
  • Built and operated outsourced sales functions for two B2B clients, from lead generation through estimates, follow-up and deal closure.

Head of Technical Support – ABB

2013

Moscow, Russia

  • Rebuilt the Service Desk with full-history ticket analysis and Theory of Constraints: resolution time cut to one-fifth, initial response time to one-tenth.
  • First-line resolution up 60%; a backlog of several hundred tickets cleared within two months.

Consultant – Private IT Consulting

2012

Moscow, Russia

Infrastructure audits, target architecture, Service Desk implementation and ITIL/Theory-of-Constraints process work.

Chief Information Officer, Russia – Yves Rocher

2011 – 2012

Moscow, Russia

  • Directed IT for 246 stores across Russia and developed the three-year IT strategy.
  • Cut service and hardware costs by double digits year on year through competitive tenders, removal of unnecessary spend and support-process redesign. Service quality improved.

IT Operations Manager · Systems Administrator – Quelle Russia

2007 – 2011

Moscow, Russia

24/7 business: 300 users across up to four sites, an internal team and about ten integrated partner engineers.

  • Moved infrastructure to an SLA-backed OPEX sourcing model. Later replaced an underperforming provider.
  • Delivered a Genesys contact-center platform for up to 300 internal and outsourced agents on time and within budget.
  • Ran a personal-data-protection program that passed an external compliance audit.
  • Activated the disaster-recovery plan after a production storage failure: full interruption of about one hour, core services back within four hours, complete recovery in three days.

Founder and CEO – ALPHA-IT

2005 – 2007

Moscow, Russia

Grew a profitable IT-services company to 52 client organizations and more than 1,000 servers and computers under support at peak.

Freelance IT Support

2000 – 2005

Moscow, Russia

Hands-on support of client servers, computers and networks. These clients later became ALPHA-IT's founding client base.

Independent products

WKB Teleprompter

Native Android teleprompter for mirror rigs and multi-camera work: offline scripts, mirror playback, Bluetooth HID control, synced screens over local Wi-Fi. Built and shipped to Google Play in about four months (2026).

Resolve Auto-Edit

Working CLI prototype: multicamera footage, recorder audio and a script in. A reviewable DaVinci Resolve rough-cut timeline out – waveform sync, script-aligned ASR, rules plus text-only LLM decisions, custom FCPXML/DRT tooling.

Prototype – happy to demo

Sole human creator of both products, directing AI-assisted development (Codex, Claude) end to end: requirements, architecture decisions, QA and release.

Focus areas

  • IT strategy
  • Digital transformation
  • Cybersecurity
  • Cloud: Azure
  • AWS
  • GCP
  • ITSM / ITIL
  • Vendor management
  • Business continuity & DR
  • Budgets & portfolio
  • AI & generative AI
  • Product & software delivery
  • Organizational design
  • Architecture governance
  • Executive stakeholder management

Education & languages

Moscow State University, Faculty of Physics – 2005. Professional courses across multiple IT disciplines.

  • Russian – native
  • English – C1
  • Greek – B1