I served as Adjunct Professor in the Master’s Degree Program in Software Engineering – a flagship initiative jointly developed by EPAM Systems and the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, one of Ukraine’s most prestigious research universities. The program was designed from the ground up to replace theoretical-only graduate education with industry-grounded, case-driven learning. I was responsible for the Cloud & DevOps module, covering AWS, Terraform, Infrastructure as Code, and production-grade DevOps practices – delivered as blended online, offline, and self-study learning. My faculty colleagues included EPAM’s CEO and Vice-Presidents.
Cloud & DevOps curriculum
AWS · Terraform · IaC
Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
EPAM Systems
Industry practitioners as faculty
Master’s program
AWS · Terraform · IaC
Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
EPAM Systems
Industry practitioners as faculty
Master’s program
InstitutionNational University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
Industry partnerEPAM Systems
ProgramMaster’s Degree in Software Engineering
My roleAdjunct Professor – Cloud & DevOps module
FormatBlended – online, offline, self-study
Est. 1615
Kyiv-Mohyla Academy – Ukraine’s oldest university
6 modules
full software engineering curriculum
20+ students
first cohort – highly selective entry requirements
C-level
faculty colleagues: EPAM CEO & VPs
2+ yrs
industry experience required to enroll
Official program announcement: EPAM Campus — Master’s Program with Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
· Co-faculty included: Arkadiy Dobkin (CEO, EPAM), Yury Antoniuk (VP CEE, EPAM)
What Made This Program Different
Most graduate programs in software engineering teach theory and then expect students to learn practice on the job. This program was designed to do the opposite: take senior industry practitioners and put them in front of students who already had engineering experience – to teach how decisions are actually made, not how textbooks say they should be.
The institution: Kyiv-Mohyla Academy – Ukraine’s most respected university
The National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy was founded in 1615 and is consistently ranked as one of Ukraine’s top universities – known for rigorous academic standards and a culture of independent thinking. It is not a school that offers industry partnerships lightly. Being selected as faculty for this program – alongside EPAM’s own senior leadership – is a reflection of the standard of industry expertise the program sought to bring to its students.
The students: experienced engineers, not fresh graduates
Entry requirements for the program included 2+ years of software engineering experience, practical experience in integration, design, configuration and infrastructure development, and demonstrated understanding of the software development lifecycle. Selection involved an English language test, a technical test, and a personal interview. The first cohort was 20 students. Teaching this audience is materially different from teaching undergraduates – they push back, they bring their own experience, and they notice immediately when something is theoretically elegant but practically wrong.
The faculty: EPAM’s CEO and Vice-Presidents as co-lecturers
The faculty for this program was not assembled from university lecturers – it was assembled from senior EPAM leadership. Co-faculty included Arkadiy Dobkin (CEO of EPAM Systems), Yury Antoniuk (Vice-President, EPAM CEE), Ely Feldman (VP, Technology Solution), and other senior practitioners. Contributing to a program at this calibre of faculty – where each module was taught by someone with deep, current, first-hand industry experience – set a specific standard for what “industry-grounded teaching” means.
What I Taught, and How
The Cloud & DevOps module was one of six core modules in the program. I was responsible for its design and delivery together with my colleagues.
1
Cloud infrastructure – AWS, Terraform, Infrastructure as Code
The Cloud & DevOps module covered Amazon AWS architecture and services, Infrastructure as Code using Terraform, CI/CD pipeline design, and production-grade operational practices. The goal was not to teach tools in isolation – it was to teach the decision-making process: when to use which service, why architecture choices matter at scale, and what operational discipline looks like in a production environment. Exercises were grounded in real scenarios from large-scale projects rather than constructed teaching examples.
2
The broader curriculum: six modules of end-to-end engineering practice
The full program covered Engineering Excellence, Solution Architecture, Delivery Management, Product Management, Cloud & DevOps, and Big Data – each taught by a senior practitioner from the relevant domain. My Cloud & DevOps module sat within this broader framework, and the cross-module coordination meant students understood how infrastructure decisions connect to architecture choices, delivery constraints, and product management trade-offs. This integration – not teaching modules in isolation – was a deliberate program design choice.
3
Blended delivery: online, offline, and self-study formats
The program used a blended learning format combining live online sessions, in-person workshops, and structured self-study – a model designed to fit the schedules of working engineers while maintaining learning rigour. Designing effective learning experiences across these three formats requires understanding not just the content but how adults with professional experience learn differently from full-time students: they need immediate applicability, they test material against their own experience, and they retain knowledge through practice rather than passive instruction.
4
Real case studies from large-scale production environments
Every module in the program was designed to foreground real industry cases rather than textbook scenarios. My Cloud & DevOps content was built from actual situations encountered in large enterprise environments – architecture trade-offs faced in production, operational failures and their root causes, the difference between what looks right in a diagram and what works at scale. Teaching with genuine cases to an audience of working engineers creates a quality of classroom discussion that no constructed example can replicate.
What This Engagement Demonstrates
🎓
Mastery of a domain – knowing it well enough to teach it at graduate level
You cannot teach Cloud and DevOps at Master’s level to experienced engineers by reading documentation and summarising it. The questions that experienced practitioners ask expose shallow expertise immediately. Teaching this audience requires deep, first-hand production experience, and the ability to connect that experience to underlying principles rather than specific tools. Being selected as faculty for this program, alongside EPAM’s most senior leadership, is an external validation of that depth.
📐
Curriculum design – structuring complex knowledge for others to use
Designing a graduate module on Cloud and DevOps is an exercise in structuring knowledge: deciding what order to introduce concepts, which real-world examples best illuminate each principle, where self-study reinforces rather than replaces direct instruction, and how to assess whether learning has actually occurred versus been performed. This skill – turning experiential knowledge into structured, transferable curriculum – is directly what consulting engagements and internal knowledge-building programmes require.
🔊
Communication – explaining complexity clearly to a technically demanding audience
The students in this program were not beginners. They were working engineers with 2+ years of professional experience who had passed a competitive selection process. Teaching this audience requires a different communication skill than teaching beginners: they will question assumptions, apply concepts to their own experience in real time, and disengage if the material doesn’t connect to their reality. The ability to communicate at this level – clearly, accurately, and in ways that are immediately useful to practitioners – is the communication skill that matters in consulting and leadership contexts.
🤝
Industry credibility – faculty selection at this level is selective
The faculty for this program was curated by EPAM’s senior leadership from among its best practitioners. Being selected to teach alongside EPAM’s CEO and Vice-Presidents is not a standard career milestone – it reflects a specific assessment of technical depth and communication ability by one of the world’s largest software engineering companies. It is a form of professional peer validation that is difficult to manufacture and easy to verify.
What This Engagement Evidences
Cloud & DevOps curriculum design
Designed a graduate-level Cloud & DevOps module covering AWS architecture, Terraform, IaC, and production-grade operational practices – for an audience of experienced engineers who could validate the material against their own work.
Graduate-level technical instruction
Delivered structured teaching at Master’s level to a cohort of working engineers with 2+ years of professional experience – an audience that tests material against real production knowledge and disengages immediately when depth is lacking.
Knowledge transfer from practice to principle
Translated first-hand production experience – architecture trade-offs, operational failures, scaling decisions – into structured, generalisable learning material. The skill that separates a practitioner from someone who can teach others to become practitioners.
Industry-academic programme collaboration
Contributed to a formal academic programme at one of Ukraine’s most prestigious universities – Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, est. 1615. Worked alongside faculty from EPAM’s C-suite and VP level. A cross-sector collaboration at the highest level of both institutions.
Blended learning design
Designed content for delivery across online, offline, and self-study formats – calibrated for adult, professional learners rather than full-time students. Effective blended learning requires understanding how and when each format contributes to retention and application.
Technical mentoring at senior level
Mentored working engineers through complex engineering concepts – not beginner instruction but senior-level knowledge transfer. The same communication and structuring skills that make engineering leadership and consulting engagements effective.
Production-grounded case study development
Built teaching material from real production scenarios – not constructed examples. Real case studies for experienced engineers require both the experience to generate them and the judgement to select which aspects illuminate the principle being taught.
EPAM faculty validation
Selected by EPAM Systems’ senior leadership to contribute as faculty in a flagship programme alongside the company’s CEO and Vice-Presidents. An external peer assessment of technical and communication capability by one of the world’s largest software engineering organisations.
The Core Insight from This Engagement
Teaching is the hardest test of whether you actually understand something.
Experienced engineers can hide gaps in their understanding behind jargon, confidence, and
the authority of their track record. In front of a class of 20 working engineers who will
apply everything you say against their own production experience – those gaps become visible
immediately.
The second insight: the gap between knowing how to do something and knowing how to
explain it so others can do it is larger than most practitioners realise.
Bridging that gap – turning experience into structured, transferable knowledge – is a
distinct skill that has direct applications in consulting, engineering leadership,
documentation, and team capability building.
The third: many challenges visible in large organisations – architecture trade-offs, delivery
pressure, operational risk – can be taught effectively when grounded in real cases.
Abstract frameworks teach people to use frameworks. Real cases teach people to think.
Who This Is Relevant For
You need to build engineering capability inside your organisation
Internal training programmes, engineering academies, and structured knowledge transfer from senior to junior engineers all require the same skill as teaching at graduate level: taking deep practitioner knowledge and making it structured, transmissible, and immediately applicable. This is a different skill from doing the work – and a critical one for organisations trying to scale engineering capability faster than they can hire for it.
You want a consultant who can explain, not just execute
Many consultants deliver recommendations that the client cannot act on because the reasoning behind them hasn’t been transferred. A consultant who has taught at graduate level understands how to communicate complex technical decisions in ways that build understanding rather than just delivering outputs. The difference between a recommendation that gets implemented and one that gets shelved is often this communication skill.
You’re designing a Cloud or DevOps learning programme for your team
Whether it’s onboarding senior engineers to a new cloud platform, building internal DevOps maturity, or creating structured learning paths for teams transitioning from on-premise to cloud – designing effective programmes requires both the technical expertise to know what to teach and the pedagogical skill to know how to teach it. Both are demonstrated here.
You want documentation and knowledge assets, not just delivered work
Some engagements produce working infrastructure. The most valuable engagements also produce knowledge – architecture decision records, runbooks, training materials, and documented reasoning that means the organisation can sustain and evolve the work without dependency on the consultant. Teaching experience makes the difference between consultants who leave a system behind and those who leave capability.
You’re a university, bootcamp, or corporate training provider
If you’re building Cloud, DevOps, or software engineering curriculum and need practitioner expertise rather than academic theory – the combination of large-scale project experience, formal teaching credential, and the specific context of a blended learning programme at graduate level is directly applicable.
You’re evaluating someone for a senior leadership role and want to understand depth
A professional selected to teach at graduate level alongside a company’s CEO and Vice-Presidents has had their depth assessed by people who know what good looks like. It’s a form of peer validation that resumes and case studies alone can’t provide. The academic credential is secondary – the peer selection is the signal.
Building engineering capability, designing Cloud or DevOps learning programmes, or looking for a consultant who leaves knowledge behind, not just deliverables?
In 30 minutes I can tell you whether your situation maps to what I do – whether that’s designing internal training, structuring knowledge for a team transition, or simply working with someone whose communication matches their technical depth.
No pitch. A direct conversation about what you’re trying to build and how I might help.