Maxim

Hey, I'm Max,

a Lead (Staff) Android Engineer working in Moldova at Crunchyroll

Blog
HTML tutorial

About Me

Hi! I'm Max, a 29-year-old Staff Android Engineer and Tech Lead from Moldova.

Over the past decade, I've built and scaled Android applications used by millions of users worldwide — from reviving legacy products to leading high-impact architecture initiatives at Crunchyroll.

My expertise spans Android, backend services, and distributed systems, with a track record of

  • Driving cross-platform architecture across Android TV, mobile, and Apple platforms.
  • Leading multi-team initiatives that improved performance, scalability, and developer productivity.
  • Delivering critical features like a unified native player, multiple profiles, and AI-powered localization.
  • Building internal tools and frameworks to streamline development, testing, and release processes.
I'm passionate about clean architecture, performance optimization, and developer enablement. I enjoy mentoring engineers, shaping technical strategy, and finding elegant solutions to complex problems.

If you want to talk about architecture, scaling teams, or building something impactful — I'm always open for a good conversation.

Work Experience

Staff Android Engineer / Tech Lead
Crunchyroll (03/2018 - Present)

Led cross-platform architecture and feature delivery across Android Mobile, Android TV, and Apple platforms for one of the world's largest anime streaming services. Drove multi-team initiatives, modernized the codebase, and built internal tooling to boost developer productivity.

Key Achievements:

  • Unified Native Player: Refactored TV player for reuse on mobile, improving playback smoothness and reducing web-player dependency.
  • Cross-Platform Architecture: Guided migration from MVC/MVP to MVI/MVVM + Clean Architecture, integrated Hilt, migrated from Retrofit to Ktor, and enabled large-scale code sharing in a mono-repo.
  • Server-Driven UI (SDUI): Designed and implemented a custom SDUI framework using annotation processors; later evolved into Foxhound.
  • Multiple Profiles: Defined API contracts, coordinated backend + all client teams, and delivered the first simultaneous cross-platform feature launch in company history.
  • Performance & Stability: Reduced video error rate from 4.5% → 1.5% (Mixpanel) and raised playback success score from 92 → 95 (Mux).
  • AI-Driven Localization: Led integration of AI translation, expanding reach to new markets under tight deadlines.
  • Developer Tooling: Created the "Friday" CLI and other automation scripts, cutting repetitive engineering tasks and release prep time.
  • Release & Testing Strategy: Established a rotational release pilot program and restructured testing from Appium to Espresso after QA layoffs.
  • Mentorship & Leadership: Provided architectural guidance to engineers across platforms, organized technical knowledge-sharing sessions, and influenced organization-wide engineering practices.


University Assistant
Technical University of Moldova (09/2019 - Present)

As an university assistant at the Technical University of Moldova, I am mentoring PBL(Project-based learning) English tough student groups, and students who're writing their diploma. I am helping them with the complex problems they face during the development process of their projects.


Android Fundamentals Mentor
Tekwill (07/2018 - 03/2019)

As an Android Fundamentals Mentor at Tekwill, I developed a brand new Android Fundamentals course from scratch and taught it to 2 groups of Android beginners.


Software Enginer
JivyGroup (06/2016 - 03/2018)

As a software engineer at Jivy, I was working on multiple different projects supporting MarketsPulse binary trading mobile native applications and .NET web sites. I was also doing some DevOps stuff and writing different scripts for CI services of the company's projects.


My GitHub