A Director of Engineering Shares Insights on Leadership Philosophy and Fintech’s Future

The global fintech industry is entering a more sustainable growth phase, yet technology adoption shows no signs of slowing. One striking data point: a recent report shows that 80% of fintech companies are already implementing AI. From AI-driven financial assistants to biometric payments and superapps, the ways people interact with money are multiplying. And so are the technical demands behind them. Meeting this complexity requires not only resilient infrastructure but also leaders who combine deep engineering expertise with the ability to grow high-performing teams.

Among such leaders is Mikhail Vaganov, Director of Engineering at Yandex, one of Europe’s largest internet companies. Over the past thirteen years, he has grown from developing frontend to building, scaling, and supporting the IT infrastructure that powers Yandex’s major fintech products. Today, he manages over 130 specialists across domains. In this interview, Mikhail Vaganov reflects on his journey, discusses his leadership philosophy, and highlights the key trends shaping the future of finance.

Experimenting with New Tech from the Start

When Mikhail Vaganov joined Yandex thirteen years ago, he was a frontend engineer eager to grow. Over the next couple of years, he explored new frameworks, learned the company’s business processes, and sharpened his technical skills.

One project in particular stands out from that time: migrating the real estate classified’s frontend to Node.js. Back then, this platform was still a newcomer on the scene, and there were no polished frameworks — not to mention AI-powered coding assistants — to lean on. The team had to build everything from the ground up.

And the effort paid off. The migration sped up feature releases, gave the product a cleaner architecture, and showed that Yandex was a place where ambitious engineers could work with the latest technology. “That project set the direction for me personally. I realized that if you believe in the potential of a new tool or approach, you should be bold enough to try it,” Vaganov recalls.

Another milestone was creating a system that allowed frontend updates to roll out without disrupting the user experience. On complex, dynamic websites, deployments used to take up to ten minutes — long enough for someone to start a task in one version of the site and finish it in another. This caused serious compatibility issues and drained resources to resolve them.

As a team lead and architect, Vaganov guided the design, testing, and launch of a comprehensive infrastructure solution that solved the problem. It let people complete their actions seamlessly across versions, removed downtime during updates, and greatly improved reliability for millions of users.

A Shift Into Infrastructure

With time, Vaganov’s curiosity pulled him beyond the frontend. He wanted to tackle problems at a deeper, more technical level.

“Infrastructure is very different. You’re not just building microservices that handle enormous loads — you’re also the one running them, monitoring them, making sure they don’t fail. To do it well, you need to understand the whole ecosystem, how the cloud works under the hood,” he explains.

He eventually took charge of a team responsible for part of Yandex’s Search runtime. Under his guidance, the group broadened its responsibilities and worked on increasingly critical components. A standout success was a microservice developed for the Search frontend. It proved so efficient and reliable it was later adopted across other products.

With a small team of five engineers, Mikhail built a configuration management layer that automated deployment at scale. “What began as a microservice for a single team evolved into something we could replicate across twenty,” Vaganov recalls.

From Guiding Engineers to Overseeing Leaders

From there, Mikhail Vaganov’s career evolved naturally into management. “I’ve never been someone who stands still. I’m always looking for ways to make things better. The executives noticed that and gave me the chance to lead larger teams,” he says.

What began with coordinating a few engineers gradually turned into overseeing managers themselves. Over time, the shift from pure technical expertise to leadership responsibilities led Mikhail to the Director of Engineering position. Today, his remit covers four major areas:

• The technology stack that powers a product enabling partners to process transactions, including backend, frontend, and SDK.
• The IT infrastructure that connects companies to Yandex’s fiscal data operator.
• The frontend for Yandex’s internal payment system.
• Developer experience and AI integration.

The scale has grown dramatically. In the past year alone, Mikhail expanded his team from 60 to over 130 engineers, bringing together specialists in backend, frontend, mobile, testing, and operations. For Vaganov, versatility is essential. “I believe a strong engineer should be able to dive into any of these fields. That’s what I try to encourage. As a result, we’ve built squads that can take on any project in the company,” he says.

Growing People, Not Just Teams

For Mikhail Vaganov, leadership is about ensuring the right signals reach the right people — and about building bridges that strengthen collaboration. To convey his style to younger managers, he often turns to metaphor. He describes himself as a dolphin swimming through a fast-moving stream of information: catching what matters and passing it along to those who need it.

Equally important to him is fostering resilience, so the organization can continue moving forward no matter the circumstances. Over the years, he has distilled this philosophy into a set of guiding principles. Those shape both his own work and the approach of the managers he hires and mentors.

“The first rule is simple: always find your successor. As soon as you start leading a team, you should already be preparing someone who could take your place,” he says. “It’s about being ready for the unexpected, but also about growth. Without a reliable backup, you can’t move forward as a leader.”

The second rule is to “make yourself unnecessary.” In practice, that means building processes that allow a team to operate smoothly, without a manager involved in every meeting or decision. And the third is a constant focus on hiring. Vaganov devotes around a quarter of his time to recruitment — even when no positions are open — and encourages his team leads to do the same. He maintains a pool of talent to draw from when the timing is right. “That consistency was one of the keys to our rapid growth,” he notes.

To keep talent development front and center, Vaganov also runs a monthly exercise with his team leads. He asks them to highlight people in their groups who are ready for more responsibility. “Sometimes someone is prepared for the next step, but there’s no space in their current team. Still, this opportunity might exist elsewhere. Leaders shouldn’t hide people who are ready to grow — they should help them move forward,” he says.

“30 Minutes with a Director”: A Culture of Transparency

Another hallmark of Vaganov’s leadership style is genuine transparency. Twice a year, any employee in his division can book thirty minutes with him directly to discuss their concerns, ideas, or career ambitions. “I call it ‘30 minutes with Mikhail.’ It’s not just for my direct reports — anyone on my staff can come,” he explains.

When he first introduced the initiative, many didn’t know what to talk about. But as trust grew through team-building events and informal conversations, the meetings became more candid. Employees started to raise issues that might otherwise be filtered out by layers of management. For Vaganov, it has become an essential way to hear the truth unfiltered.

He also experiments with ways to strip away bureaucracy. One example is the “no-bullshit review,” a format he launched together with another senior leader. After the official review process, they hold a follow-up session where employees can submit anonymous questions. Those are then answered live without preparation. These questions are often tough and sometimes uncomfortable, but that is precisely the point. Addressing them openly shows that difficulties don’t need to be hidden — they can be discussed head-on.

Fresh Approaches to Product Integration

In his current role, Mikhail Vaganov has encouraged Yandex to experiment with unconventional approaches to product integration. One of the most prominent examples came with a major partner whose systems were too complex for a standard API setup. Most merchants could connect to Yandex’s transaction processing product on their own. However, this partner’s code base, applications, and user flows made it nearly impossible with their internal resources.

Vaganov’s team took an unusual step: embedding its own engineers directly inside the partner’s company. On paper, it looked simple — sign an NDA, get access to infrastructure, build the integration. In practice, it was far more challenging. “Not every engineer is eager to dive into another corporate environment. At Yandex, we’re used to an open culture where you can easily grab a coffee with your manager. Stepping into an organization with a different setup could be a real adjustment,” Mikhail explains.

Vaganov managed to bring together around ten experienced specialists — from backend developers to mobile engineers — by highlighting the benefits of the assignment. It was a rare opportunity to take on a unique challenge, build resilience, and develop skills that routine projects could never offer. So, over the course of several months, the team delivered a complete integration that met all requirements and successfully went live in production.

Equally important was the knowledge they brought back. Unlike most companies that would have handed the job to external contractors, Yandex gained first-hand insights into the pain points merchants and integrators face. Mikhail Vaganov took responsibility for turning those lessons into action. Under his guidance, the product team simplified the process overall, making future integrations dramatically faster and more cost-efficient.

Vaganov sees a great opportunity in this kind of work model. He likens it to the practice of deploying engineers directly within client organizations: “Part of the team works on-site with clients to develop practical solutions and gather insights from the inside. A core team then takes those findings and turns them into a scalable product. That’s the closest analogy to what we did. And I see a lot of potential in this approach,” he says.

The New Face of Financial Technology

When discussing the most exciting shifts in finance, Vaganov points to markets that move at extraordinary speed. China, he says, is at the forefront. There, consumers can already pay simply by showing their palm to a biometric scanner.

Another innovation that caught his attention is the idea of a customer-presented QR code, generated on the user’s device and displayed for the merchant to scan. This approach reduces transaction time, minimizes errors and enhances security, as it gives consumers more control. Just as important, this habit of regularly opening the app makes the QR screen valuable space to promote additional offerings.

The second trend he highlights is the rise of payment-based superapps. Much like the customer-presented QR model, they build on the habit of frequent app use, turning each payment into a touchpoint for new services. “Once people are accustomed to making payments within your ecosystem, it opens the door to massive cross-selling opportunities,” Vaganov says.

WeChat is the most famous example — a platform where users can message friends, pay bills and order goods without ever leaving the app. Mikhail points to Yandex Go as another strong case. Originally a ride-hailing service, it has evolved into a platform that combines transport, delivery, e-commerce, and integrated payments.

Finally, Vaganov believes the next leap will be AI-driven financial assistants. Instead of static dashboards showing spending categories, he envisions conversational agents that can proactively suggest actions. “An assistant could say: your salary has arrived, here are your bills, here’s your mortgage, let’s pay them now and set aside some savings — do you approve? With one click, it’s done,” he explains.

In his view, the value of such agents goes beyond convenience. They could help people make smarter decisions in real time — warning when dining budgets are exceeded or recommending products with better cashback on routine purchases. For Mikhail Vaganov, the trajectory is already set: “People no longer want static interfaces. They expect a dialogue with their bank, their payment app, their advisor. And AI is what will make that shift possible at scale.”