# Suren Hakobyan, Senior Frontend Engineer | AI-native Product Engineer

Yerevan, Armenia (UTC+4), remote · surhak96@gmail.com · [linkedin.com/in/surhak](https://www.linkedin.com/in/surhak/) · [github.com/surohak](https://github.com/surohak) · [surhak.vercel.app](https://surhak.vercel.app/)

PDF version: [Suren Hakobyan - Senior Frontend Engineer - CV.pdf](https://surhak.vercel.app/files/Suren%20Hakobyan%20-%20Senior%20Frontend%20Engineer%20-%20CV.pdf)

## About

I build the hard part of product UI: editors, workflow builders and AI features, in high-performance web apps that millions of people use daily. Over 8+ years, I've shipped production products for Picsart (400M+ users), Warner Music Group, Empire, Simplified, JobLeads and Toptal, specializing in complex visual editors (Canvas, Konva.js, Fabric.js), node-based workflow builders (React Flow), AI-integrated interfaces and scalable SaaS architecture. Full ownership mindset: from architecture planning and CI/CD setup to mentoring teams, code reviews and stakeholder communication. I work agent-first every day (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, MCP servers and CLIs) with specs, reusable skills and review gates, so the speed shows up as shipped work.

## Experience

### Senior Frontend Engineer, Toptal
06/2026 - Present · Remote

Full-time on Toptal's in-house product team, building Toptal's own Applicant Tracking System (ATS): the hiring platform that powers how Toptal screens and moves candidates through hiring. Working in a large-scale React + TypeScript monorepo backed by GraphQL.

- Built frontend for an interactive, node-based workflow builder in React + TypeScript on a canvas engine (React Flow): drag-and-drop editing, real-time branching visualization, and pan/zoom controls
- Built data-intensive dashboards on GraphQL (Apollo Client): server-driven filtering, bulk actions, pagination, and complex state management
- Shipped reusable, accessible UI building blocks across the product: dynamic forms, file upload, browser media capture, and rich content
- Contributed components and icons to a Tailwind-based design system, applying token-driven theming and consistent UI patterns
- Delivered frontend modernization work in a large monorepo: module and route refactors, service decoupling, unit and component testing (Jest, React Testing Library), and code review
- Own initiatives from concept to production, not only the hardest slice

### Founder, inflyu
11/2025 - Present · Yerevan, Armenia, remote · https://inflyu.com

Solo-built AI creative platform with 10,000+ organic sign-ups, driven by an autonomous learning loop that makes every generation smarter. I own product, architecture, frontend, backend, mobile and growth. AI agents write most of the code under rules and review gates I designed.

- Autonomous learning loop: post analytics feed back into prompt scores, shifting from AI quality to real engagement as accounts mature
- RAG on Pinecone: top performers return as few-shot examples, rejected results as anti-examples; nightly prompt evolution with 80/20 explore/exploit
- Long AI jobs on 300s serverless: a 4-step QStash pipeline with idempotency keys, retries and automatic refunds
- Model router over 25 image, video and language models with health-based failover
- AI Image and Video Editors with 20+ tools each, a node-based Canvas and auto-posting to 6 platforms
- Stack: Next.js, React, TypeScript, Zustand, TanStack Query, Turborepo, PostgreSQL, Prisma, QStash, Pinecone, FFmpeg, Stripe, React Native, Expo

### Frontend Software Engineer, JobLeads
07/2024 - 06/2026 · Hamburg, Germany, remote

Started in the Resume World team shipping AI-powered features (AI Resume Builder and Resume Review), then moved to the User Acquisition team, owning frontend engineering for SEO, conversion optimization, and growth tools that directly drive platform revenue.

- Built and optimized high-converting landing pages and SEO-driven content pages, directly impacting user acquisition metrics and organic traffic growth
- Implemented A/B testing frameworks and conversion experiments across the acquisition funnel, translating test results into measurable improvements in sign-up and activation rates
- Developed internal marketing and growth tools used by the acquisition team to scale campaigns and automate workflows
- Optimized Core Web Vitals and page performance for SEO ranking signals, achieving 90+ Lighthouse scores across key landing pages
- Architected and shipped AI Resume Builder and AI Resume Review features with NLP-driven scoring, auto-suggestions, and intelligent formatting, now a core product differentiator
- Designed a reusable component library using Vue 3 Composition API, cutting new feature development time by ~30%
- Reduced page load time by ~35% through code-splitting, lazy loading, and caching optimizations
- Worked on the Vue 2 to Vue 3 migration, modernizing the codebase to Composition API and improving maintainability across the platform

### Frontend Software Engineer, Simplified
11/2021 - 07/2024 · San Francisco, United States, remote

Primary owner of the AI Photo/Video Editor module, the most technically complex part of the platform, built on Canvas with Fabric.js. Part of a 20+ engineer frontend team.

- Owned end-to-end development of the AI Photo/Video/Audio Editor: real-time image/video/audio processing, layering systems, filters, transformations, Canvas rendering, audio waveform editing, and AI-powered enhancements using Fabric.js
- Designed the frontend layer for AI-powered editor features: the UI that translates AI outputs into intuitive user interactions, handling edge cases and fallbacks that require human UX judgment
- Worked directly with the CTO on technical prioritization, resource allocation, and roadmap planning for the editor product
- Conducted daily code reviews across the frontend team, identifying architectural issues early and maintaining consistent quality standards across 20+ engineers
- Mentored 3+ junior engineers with structured guidance on Canvas internals, frontend best practices, and complex problem solving
- Built and maintained the real-time WebSocket communication layer for live collaborative interactions within the editor
- Evaluated and integrated emerging AI capabilities and frontend frameworks for browser-based creative tools
- Collaborated with product, design, QA, and backend teams to translate user needs into technical solutions

### Frontend Software Engineer, ENKE Systems (Warner Music Group, Empire)
03/2021 - 12/2025 · New York, United States, remote

Outstaffed frontend engineer through ENKE Systems (employer of record), delivering 5 production applications (CRM, CMS, Release Management) for Warner Music Group and Empire, two of the world's largest music companies.

- Developed and shipped 5 enterprise music-industry web applications from initial setup to production deployment and ongoing support, including audio metadata handling, music release workflows, and content management
- Projects included Warner Chappell Music's Arrow licensing portal (advanced search, audio playback, waveform visualization) and a customized Apache Superset dashboard for supply-chain analytics with custom chart types
- Directly communicated with Warner Music and Empire business stakeholders: gathering requirements, translating them into technical specifications, and reporting progress across time zones
- Contributed to architecture planning and tech stack decisions for all 5 projects: component structure, state management patterns, and CI/CD pipelines
- Conducted systematic code reviews across the multi-project codebase
- Built frontend features using React, Redux, TypeScript, and Material UI: responsive UI components, SCSS modules, and reusable patterns shared across all applications
- Maintained production applications post-launch within a contracted 4 to 6 hr/month support window
- Implemented unit and E2E test automation across critical user workflows
- Led the Angular to React migration across project codebases

### Frontend Software Engineer, Picsart
03/2018 - 11/2021 · Yerevan, Armenia, hybrid

Founding frontend engineer on Picsart's Creative Photo Editor, built from scratch using Canvas (Konva.js) in a 50-person team with 28 engineers. Picsart is used by 400M+ people worldwide.

- Part of the founding team that built Picsart's online Photo Editor from the very first line of code, architecting Canvas-based features with Konva.js, React, Redux, TypeScript, and ReactJSS
- Developed core editor features including brushes, filters, layers, text tools, and image transformations
- Independently built and deployed 5 WeChat mini-applications, expanding Picsart's presence to the WeChat ecosystem
- Contributed to code reviews, sprint planning, and architecture discussions during the product's early growth phase
- Helped drive the team's transition from Kanban to Scrum

### Frontend Software Engineer, Freelance / Contract / Volunteer Projects
09/2018 - 07/2024 · Remote

15+ projects across fintech, blockchain, real estate, multiplatform, and gaming, as sole developer or within small teams, with full frontend ownership from architecture to deployment. Clients and projects include Libertex (trading platform), Sberbank (online school), Factoring, Hellopay, GamesBoost42, Stihi, CW, Savva (crypto exchange, PulseChain bridge), Edi-Real (Electron, React Native), Boo (C++ via WebAssembly), Arburg (Qt QML, Python), Dats, Bet Andreas (Next.js SSR), Vecteezy and BookedBy.

## Skills

- Main: TypeScript, JavaScript, React, Next.js, Vue, Nuxt.js, Canvas (2D), React Flow, Redux, Qt QML
- HTML5 Canvas: Konva.js, Fabric.js, image/video processing, real-time rendering, layering systems, filters, transformations
- AI & Agentic: Claude Code, Cursor IDE, Codex, Google Antigravity IDE, ChatGPT/Claude API, MCP (Model Context Protocol), RAG (Pinecone, embeddings), agent pipelines, prompt engineering, AI-augmented development, Figma AI, AI strategy & evaluation, LLM integration architecture, AI quality benchmarking, human-AI workflow design
- MCP & CLI: Atlassian MCP (Jira, Confluence), Playwright MCP, Chrome DevTools MCP, Figma MCP, Slack MCP, Sentry MCP, Grafana MCP, Context7, Neon MCP, Cloudflare MCP, custom MCP servers, GitHub CLI, GitLab CLI, Atlassian CLI, Vercel CLI, Wrangler, AWS CLI, gcloud, kubectl
- State management: Redux (Toolkit), MobX, Zustand, Recoil, Effector.js, Vuex, Pinia
- UI components: shadcn/ui, Radix UI, Headless UI, Material UI, Chakra UI, Ant Design, Vuetify, Core UI
- Styles: CSS, SCSS, SASS, LESS, Styled Components, Tailwind CSS, React JSS, PostCSS, Framer Motion
- Design engineering: Figma to Code Agent, design systems, design tokens, Figma, Figma Dev Mode, Storybook, web accessibility (WCAG), Core Web Vitals, Lighthouse
- Build tools: Webpack, Vite, Rollup
- Tests: unit, integration, E2E, Cypress, Playwright, React Testing Library, Vitest, Jest
- Mobile & multiplatform: React Native, Expo, Expo Router, Reanimated, mobile architecture (shared web + mobile monorepo), Electron.js, Qt QML, WeChat Mini Apps
- SSR/SSG: Next.js (SSR, SSG, CSR), Nuxt.js (SSR, SSG), React Server Components, streaming SSR
- API & data: React Query (TanStack Query), Zod, GraphQL, Apollo Client, REST APIs, WebSocket, Firebase
- Data visualization: Chart.js, Apache ECharts, Apache Superset, Recharts, Leaflet.js
- Other: WebAssembly, Node.js, Express.js, React Hook Form, Turborepo, Prisma, Docker, micro-frontends, Web Workers, performance optimization, code review
- Methodologies: Agile, Scrum, Kanban, CI/CD
- Leadership: technical mentoring, code reviews, stakeholder communication, architecture planning

## Open source

- [career-agents](https://github.com/surohak/career-agents): Claude Code plugin that keeps LinkedIn, CV and personal website in sync, with read-only agents and human-approved writes
- [autonomous-dev-agent](https://github.com/surohak/autonomous-dev-agent): local macOS agent that drives Cursor CLI from Jira/GitHub tickets to merge requests, with Telegram/Slack approvals

## Education

Yerevan State University, Bachelor of Informatics and Applied Mathematics, 2013 - 2020

## Languages

Armenian (native), English (full professional), Russian (full professional), Spanish (elementary)