Mikhail Novikov
Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft
Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolMikhail Novikov is a Principal Software Engineer based in Amsterdam with 16 years of experience building scalable developer-facing systems and libraries. He combines deep GraphQL expertise—having implemented schema stitching and contributed to core projects like graphql-tools, graphql-js, and Gatsby—with hands-on systems work in Rust, React, and backend orchestration. As a former co-founder and CTO, he has led product pivots, built a GraphQL BaaS, and created developer tooling such as Apollo Launchpad, demonstrating both entrepreneurial drive and delivery focus. At Gatsby he drove major core features (schema customization, materialization, incremental builds) and helped organize engineering processes as a tech lead. Mikhail is comfortable operating autonomously under uncertainty and often bridges open-source contributions with product engineering to move complex features into production. He has an unusual mix of research-era NLP and robotics background plus practical consulting experience, giving him a broad technical palate and strong customer-facing instincts.
16 years of coding experience
12 years of employment as a software developer
BBA Business Information Technology, BBA Business Information Technology at HeliaMSc (unfinished) Computer Science, MSc (unfinished) Computer Science at University of Helsinki
Russian, English, Finnish
Stackoverflow
3,629reputation
490kreached
26answers
9questions
graphql
top-5%
elisp
top-5%
if-statement
top-5%
python
top-5%
emacs
top-5%
Github Skills (49)
javascript10
python10
static-site-generator10
command-line-interface10
typescript10
xml-schema10
wpgraphql10
type-system10
wordpress-graphql10
typescript-types10
command-line10
graphql-tools10
graphql10
graphql-js10
error-handling10
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
ardatan/graphql-tools
Jul 2017 - Mar 2019
:wrench: Utility library for GraphQL to build, stitch and mock GraphQL schemas in the SDL-first approach
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:185 commits, 147 PRs, 230 pushes in 1 year 8 months
Contributions summary:Mikhail primarily contributed to the implementation of schema stitching capabilities within the `graphql-tools` library. Their work involved defining and implementing APIs for merging GraphQL schemas, handling aliases, and managing errors within merged schemas. The user was also responsible for updates that allowed referring to query and mutation types from types, indicating significant contributions to the library's core functionality.
schema-stitchinggraphql-apijavascriptgraphql-toolsschema-language
gatsbyjs/gatsby
Jul 2018 - Aug 2020
The best React-based framework with performance, scalability and security built in.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:1 review, 270 commits, 330 PRs in 2 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Mikhail's primary contribution involved adding a GraphQL source plugin to the Gatsby framework. They implemented the ability to add third-party schemas, enabling plugins to merge into Gatsby. The user addressed various issues, including version bumps, review feedback, and pre-release problems. They made modifications to core files and example code related to the integration.
gatsbyreactweb-appfastestcompiler
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