Meet Pavel Filippov (Emdin), Chief Technical Officer at RociFi

Jan 5

Pavel Filippov, CTO of RociFi, is an absolute powerhouse, having developed with his team first DeFi’s under-collateralized lending protocol and ML-based credit scoring. Alongside his band of fourteen tech-savvy devs, he toils night and day to ensure RociFi apps and services run perfectly.

“I think we’ve built something really cool here at RociFi labs and am super proud of my team’s dedication. Our devs are always trying to find ways to innovate and improve the user experience and this definitely contributed to its success and popularity. We also value collaboration with our partner teams and work hard to make sure everyone is on the same page.”, — says Pavel.

Well done on the successful performance after launching the retail Defi borrowing platform on Polygon a while ago! I heard it goes well and you are about to launch a V2!

Yeah, we have been working on this project for months, and although we faced some challenges with the first version, it is gratifying to receive positive feedback from our first users. We are hopeful that the launch of the second version will go smoothly. It is an honor to receive support from PolygonDAO and Aave Grants for both our credit scoring system and borrowing platform, as it shows the support and confidence from some big fellas in the DeFi community in our development.

What does it feel like to be given such a responsibility while these strong bearish trends?

As they say, the bull market is for speculators, the bear market is for builders. The initial feeling may be daunting, but when you can rely on your team, give them enough freedom and responsibility and divide tasks appropriately, you can always pull through. It is also important to design your systems to be as pragmatic and resilient as possible. Backed by a pragmatic project management and a strong squad, no crypto winter can strike fear into your heart.

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced in your role?

Being first on the market. I would love to simply fork some of existing solutions and build on that, but currently our product has no analogs in the Defi space, which means we have built most of it from the scratch.

But the first results are promising — within half-a-year after launch on Polygon we have reached 35K mints of RociFi’s Non-fungible credit score (NFCS) ERC-721 tokens. We have thousands of borrowers who also are active users of our scoring system.

Another challenge was learning how to effectively delegate tasks and then relinquishing my urge to micro-manage. :)

It hasn’t been easy for me to trust others with the critical assignments, but I’m gradually getting better at it. Time management is another challenge that I’ve faced. With the cryptocurrency market constantly in flux, it can be difficult to set priorities. Despite the difficulties, I’m trying to be a better self in these areas.

Do you like the work environment here?

The freedom which a remote-only office gives is exciting. At the same time synchronizing work across 6+ time zones can be tricky. For me working at RociFi sometimes means I have to stay up really late to make sure every question in the working chat is answered. But that’s me and my anxiety. I insist everyone from my team keep a normal 40 hours 5/2 week. Work-life balance is extremely important.

Any word of advice to the engineering managers who are just getting into the new fintech space?

These are not unique to the Web3 development and of course known to any sane EM out there. And yet

• Invest in the testing environments. Test automation and 100% coverage is not a bonus, but a requirement.
• Don’t chase the hype, use languages and frameworks you are familiar with. RociFi ecosystem has 20+ Java, Node.js (TS) and Python microservices and a language was never a problem in terms of dev velocity or scaling.
• For tests use Typescript or a similar typed language. Plain JS will fail you one way or another.
• Start building your own data infrastructure as soon as possible. Dependance on external data APIs can be a serious blocker for scaling.
• The more alerts you have, the better you can sleep at night. Invest in monitoring tools.
• Create a dashboard for every critical error in the system and work tirelessly to clear it. Any service big or small should have proper logging.
• Communication is everything. Redundancy is fine. It is better to repeat something everybody knows than to miss important pieces of info.

Do you need to be an expert in credit scoring systems and lending protocols to work at RociFi?

No, you just have to be professional in what you do. We have some well-experienced traders, researchers and investors here at RociFi. The most important thing for my team is that they’re interested in DeFi as a topic.

What were you doing before you joined RociFi?

I have 20 years of experience in software engineering, 10 of them leading engineering teams and 5 years specifically in new fintech and related areas. Before RociFi I worked in 2 Berlin Unicorns, Auto1 and Delivery Hero. I also co-founded Ego.jobs, an anonymous recruitment platform and Bitcannery, an on-chain social recovery tool. I also was an active trader and not a stranger to the big gains and big losses. To be honest, building is much more fun than trading in terms of mental balance. :)

What advice would you give to the recent RociFi applicants?

The crypto market can be challenging at times, but there are always opportunities out there for those who are willing to look for them and rock the world of DeFi. Don’t be afraid to show initiative and ask questions. Asking questions is how we know you’re interested and willing to learn.

So question everything, assume nothing. Do your own research. And — not your keys, not your crypto. :)

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RociFi — Under-Collateralized DeFi Credit Protocol on Polygon