About Me

I call myself a documentarian — though the longer version is: a product technical writer who defines content strategy and helps organizations turn what they know into documentation that actually gets used. My work sits at the intersection of technical writing, knowledge management, and content strategy; I’m also well-versed in eLearning content, knowledge assessments, and repurposing documentation for training and certification paths.

My foundation is a Master’s in book publishing and text editing — which shaped how I think about information architecture and the full content lifecycle. That same background is why I approach a knowledge base the way an editor approaches a manuscript: structure first, then words.

What I do

Not every technical writer works the same way. Some are embedded in dev teams, living in Git repositories and documenting APIs — that’s a valid and important specialty. Mine is different.

I work at the product and business layer: understanding how a system behaves, who uses it, and what each audience actually needs to know. What I thrive at — and want to keep doing — is building the content architecture that lets one well-structured source of truth serve multiple purposes: internal documentation, client-facing guides, eLearning courses, knowledge assessments, and onboarding materials. The format and depth change; the source of truth doesn’t.

I use frameworks and AI tools to structure content so it’s reusable by design, and to scale production without scaling the effort proportionally.

Where I’ve been lately

Bringing order to a growing product

Currently, I work as a contractor Technical Writer at Betby, a B2B sports betting platform. I joined when the company has moved past the "startup" stage and started scaling rapidly — at that point, fewer than 100 internal articles existed and many challenges arose as existing documents were not covering the questions many new hires had. I started the way I always do: audit what's there, talk to the people who actually know things, and figure out who needs what.

The glossary came first — it's the foundation for everything in internal documentation. At the same time, the Client Services department was launching a new Knowledge Base in Intercom, and I offered to help them set the right foundation before the first article went live. Having managed a 1,300+ article knowledge base at my previous company, I'd seen firsthand what happens when tone, structure, and terminology standards come too late. So I put together a style guide and AI prompts they could use to co-write and draft articles in a consistent, translation-ready format. They were happy to take it. Today I own the internal documentation in Confluence; the Client Services team owns the customer-facing KB, and I feed them verified facts and screenshots with each release.

Managing Content to Scale Well

In my previous role, I spent years managing a customer-facing knowledge base at enterprise scale — 1,300+ articles, multiple product lines, teams across several regions, and content that needed to work in multiple languages. The full story is in the Knowledge Management section.

What that experience gave me is hard to replicate any other way: I know which problems appear at scale, what approaches hold up under that pressure, and which ones don’t. Working with smaller and scaling companies now, I can apply those lessons early — before the complexity arrives.

Navigating Languages and Cultures

Cross-cultural collaboration isn’t just a line on my CV — it’s something I’ve navigated daily across most of my career. From providing technical support to customers in the US, UK, and Australia, to teaching the same course content to classrooms with very different group dynamics, to working under both Russian and American management styles — I’ve learned that the "how" of communication matters as much as the "what."

I speak Russian and English fluently, but more importantly, I speak the "languages" of Support, QA, Marketing, and Engineering — and I know that those languages also carry cultural assumptions worth paying attention to.

Learning New Industries Quickly

I learn by doing — and in my experience, the fastest way to learn a new domain is to start documenting it. At Betby, I moved from knowing nothing about sports betting to publishing a glossary and the first how-to articles within the first month. The gaps in my own understanding showed up in the writing, and filling them was the job.

That same approach carried me through earlier career transitions too. I’ve personally onboarded and trained over 50 new hires across different roles — so I understand both sides: what it takes to get up to speed quickly, and what good onboarding documentation actually needs to do.

Professional Toolkit & Skills

Documentation & Content Strategy

• Methodology: SME-Led Documentation (SME = Subject Matter Expert), Product-Centric Documentation, Docs-as-Code (plain text files + version control, built into a website automatically), Information Architecture (Diataxis — a framework that sorts docs into tutorials, how-to guides, references, and explanations), Searchability Analysis, manual testing (using browser dev tools and API schemas to verify how a product behaves — minimizing questions to developers when source code access isn't available).
• Static Site Generators: MkDocs, Zensical, Docsify, Git-based workflows.
• Authoring & Markup: Markdown, HTML, Obsidian, VS Code, Microsoft Word.
• Platforms: Confluence, Oracle CX Knowledge, Google Workspace.
• Technical Illustration: Creating clear block schemes and flowcharts to explain complex system architectures (e.g., Mail Server structures). Tools: Mermaid, draw.io, whiteboard tools.

Learning & Instructional Design

• Frameworks: ADDIE, Bloom’s Taxonomy, Exam Design for global audiences.
• LMS Administration: Docebo, Moodle.
• Learning Content Authoring: Articulate 360 (Storyline, Rise), Navattic.
• Media Production: Animation and Video (Vyond, Snagit, Camtasia), Audio (writing scripts, recording and editing narration).

Technical Knowledge

• Infrastructure: Networking (TCP/IP, DNS), Mail Servers (Exchange, POP/IMAP), Spam Filters, Encryption.
• Cloud & Connectivity: IaaS (Virtual Servers, Web Hosting), SaaS (Web, Desktop, and Mobile), VoIP Telephony, Unified Communications.
• Security & Access: 2FA, Single Sign-On (SSO), Role Based Access to Control Panels, IP Whitelist/Block List management.
• APIs: REST API, AsyncAPI, GraphQL
• AI: RAG Search implementation (RAG = Retrieval Augmented Generation, an AI method that searches your documentation before answering a question), preparing content for Automated Translation, building custom GPTs/Gems, building AI agents and related automations.

Collaboration & Management

• Frameworks: Agile, Scrum, Waterfall, Feedback Management.
• Tools: Jira, Smartsheet, Slack, Microsoft Teams.
• Reporting: Building tables and charts in Excel, building dashboards (Jira, Oracle CX Cloud)

Industry Experience

• Telecommunications: Support and documentation for complex infrastructure and hardware.
• EdTech: Administrating Learning Management Systems (LMS), creating learning paths, instructional videos, eLearning courses and knowledge assessments, proctoring exams.
• Sports Betting: Documenting fast-changing products and their features, back-office tools and reports, and user flows.
• Publishing: Full book creation and distribution cycle (both print and digital).

Education & Certifications

Publishing Studies and Content Strategy

Master of Arts | Bachelor of Arts | 2011 — 2018
Saint Petersburg State University of Industrial Technologies and Design

I treat documentation as a complex product. My 7-year academic track provided a 360-degree view of the content lifecycle—from the structural integrity of typography and HTML to the legal and economic frameworks of distribution.

Research Focus: Digital Transformation of Educational Content

My thesis focused on converting traditional printed textbooks into digital learning materials — figuring out how to bring in audio, video, and interactive elements without losing what made the original content effective. The core challenge was migrating content across formats without breaking it. That same problem comes up constantly in technical writing, and having worked through it academically gave me a head start on every content migration project I've handled since.

Methods and Techniques of Teaching Online

Continuous Professional Education Diploma | 2021
Moscow Institute of Psychoanalysis

Focus: Instructional design, psychological aspects of remote knowledge transfer, presentation methods for online learning, Bloom's Taxonomy, ADDIE model, curriculum development, building knowledge assessments.

Professional Development

Communication & Soft Skills

Tools and Specializations

Exams & Technical Certifications

Volunteering