October 31, 2023

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19:00

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Offline

CTO Hitchhiker's Guide to R&D

2025

Ukraine

🧭 Andriy Fisunenko (Vice President in R&D at Samsung R&D Institute Ukraine) shared his journey — from low-level programming and railway projects for Ukrzaliznytsia to global tech leadership at a major international company.

Highlights from the conversation:

  • What R&D looks like at Samsung: focus areas, scale, types of teams and products
  • The path of an engineer growing within the structure — from the first project to combining Director and CTO roles
  • How internal culture works: discipline + freedom = a creative challenge
  • Why large companies fuel a startup mindset — launching new products and technologies within massive organizations
  • The role of a tech leader in building independence, trust, and accountability

This meetup was a field guide to navigating the R&D galaxy — equipped with structured thinking, a love for C++, and a deep understanding of people.

Meetup speakers

Speaker
Andriy Fisunenko

Vice President in R&D @ Samsung R&D Institute Ukraine

Andriy Fisunenko – MD in Theoretical Physics, PhD in Computer Science. Leading HW/SW R&D since 1997. In 1997-2008 worked mainly on Ukrainian railways' independence of legacy USSR systems. Currently, for almost 15 years, he has been heading R&D in Samsung R&D Institute Ukraine.

Moderator
Yana Mykhailenko

Director of Engineering @ Turnitin

The moderator is Yana Mykhailenko, CTO of Turnitin, an international company that ensures the integrity of education and is a leader in anti-plagiarism solutions. She is a judge and mentor at international competitions and hackathons.

Upcoming events

Tech Stack

On the first Thursday of October, we will hold a Tech Stack meetup to discuss choosing the right technology stack, optimal use of cloud solutions, and effective practices that directly affect development speed, product quality, and infrastructure stability.

October 2
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CTO @ Wantent
Oleksandr Tarasenko
CTO @ Rozetka Pay
Yana Mykhailenko
Director of Engineering @ Turnitin

Conference | How to Become Great CTO

In November, the DEV Challenge team, in cooperation with UNIT.City, will once again bring together Ukrainian tech leaders, entrepreneurs, company and startup founders, CTOs, and managers to discuss the most relevant and important topics in technology, business, and leadership.

13 November
120 seats
Alex Kovalchuk
Co-founder & CTO @ Cargofy
Yana Mykhailenko
Director of Engineering @ Turnitin
Volodymyr Sveredyuk
CTO @ DEV Challenge

Meetup #21

Full information about the meetup will appear here soon.

4 December
Оffline
18:00