Roman Kutanov

• Owning training and evaluation pipelines for personality-centric AI characters
• Delivering enterprise AI solutions for robotics, retail, and consumer applications
• Leading cross-functional R&D and deployment programs from concept to production

Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

• Led generative AI product development across multiple startup initiatives:

  • shugar – AI-powered character and image generator

  • aivy.cc – virtual interviewer with voice/video avatars

  • muse – AI-driven video editor

• Designed and deployed RAG-based AI copilots for banking and telecom clients, improving: nDCG@1 from 0.3 → 0.78, nDCG@3 from 0.5 → 0.93

• Delivered production-ready LLM infrastructure and retrieval pipelines within aggressive timelines

AI startup behind the Replika app (30M+ users) focused on generative conversational AI for mental wellness and emotional support.

Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

• Led the development of Blush AI (AI-powered dating simulator), which was successfully acquired by Linden Lab (creators of Second Life)

• Launched image generation features (txt2img, img2img) in Replika and Blush apps and scaled usage from 0 to 100,000+ generations per day

• Built and deployed end-to-end AI stack (LLMs, RAG, img2img, embeddings)

• Collaborated with cross-functional teams across design, iOS/Android, and backend to ship features used by millions globally

Boutique agency focused on building internal tools and automation systems for startups and scale-ups.

Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

• Led technical strategy and delivery of 15+ internal tools for VC-backed startups and enterprise clients

• Built and deployed custom business applications 5x faster and 3x cheaper than traditional dev teams using modern low-code platforms

• Became a certified expert in Retool and AppSmith, helping clients move from spreadsheets to scalable tools in days

• Selected for investment by Antler Berlin following a successful pitch to the investment committee. Led technical development and MVP delivery as Entrepreneur in Residence.

Palta is a leading co-founding ecosystem (Flo, Prisma, Simple) with over 100M users globally.

Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

• Took over technical leadership from the previous CTO and ensured a seamless project handover

• Led backend development and actively contributed to production code; supervised the iOS frontend team

• Transformed a legacy offline health tracker into a social health network with:

  • Algorithmic content feed, likes, user profiles, real-time updates

• Delivered full platform pivot in under 4 months, from planning to launch

• Built and hired a new backend development team from scratch to support product growth

AI-powered marketing tech startup focused on automation tools for small businesses.

Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

• Achieved 30% MoM active user growth through rapid iteration and user-focused development

• Designed and implemented a visual low-code tool enabling users to create custom marketing scripts without programming

• Built a fine-tuned GPT-2 text generator for automated ad copy creation across Google and Facebook Ads

Enterprise marketing platform focused on branded YouTube campaigns and interactive experiences.

Key Responsibilities & Achievements:

• Built and scaled a B2B platform delivering custom interactive video campaigns in partnership with Google on YouTube

• Successfully executed high-impact campaigns for global brands including BMW, Samsung, Ford, Martini, Avon, Rexona, and Nokia

• Delivered projects that served millions of users daily, with strict performance and SLA requirements