Alex Gusev

Alex Gusev has been building server-side architectures for 20 years, helping businesses grow from their very first line of code to handling up to 3.5 million user signups a day.

He’s passionate about scalable distributed systems, with a particular appreciation for simplicity in high-load environments. Every part of a system, in his view, is a set of trade-offs — not only in technology, but also in adoption, maintenance, and hiring.

Most of the systems Alex has built run on Ruby on Rails — a framework he still considers an excellent choice both for rapid product launches and for scaling when speed and reliability become critical.

As CTO at Uploadcare, Alex’s personal focus is on people first, then technology, then processes. He’s found that in a strong, motivated team, the right tools and workflows tend to emerge and evolve naturally.

He’s also a critic of cargo cults in tech — when companies mimic each other’s behavior without understanding the context, inheriting problems instead of strengths. While he values data-driven product development, he’s most energized by working with people who are deeply passionate about their ideas.

Outside of work, Alex enjoys fiction, playing ice hockey, and once, at the Nürburgring, had Kimi Räikkönen come close to crashing into him.