Svyatoslav Scherbina is a software engineer with nine years of experience building and improving runtime and interop layers for language tooling, currently contributing to JetBrains on Kotlin and Kotlin/Native. With a strong foundation from Novosibirsk State University and competitive programming background (ACM ICPC-style), he excels at algorithmic problem solving and low-level systems design. His work includes shipping fixes and features for Kotlin/Native memory management, Objective-C/Swift interoperability, and JVM/VM components from earlier roles at Excelsior JET. He has taught algorithms and programming theory at university and Yandex School of Data Analysis, reflecting clear communication skills and mentorship. Based in Amsterdam, he combines deep discrete-math rigor with practical engineering—often focusing on subtle runtime and code-generation issues that improve language interop in widely used open-source projects. He is direct about recruitment interest and prioritizes technically rich, hands-on engineering challenges.
9 years of coding experience
5 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor's degree, Applied Mathematics, 5.0 out of 5.0, Bachelor's degree, Applied Mathematics, 5.0 out of 5.0 at Novosibirsk State University (NSU)
High School Diploma, Mathematics/Physics/Programming/whatever, High School Diploma, Mathematics/Physics/Programming/whatever at The Specialized Educational Scientific Center of Novosibirsk State University (SESC NSU)
Contributions:7 releases, 611 reviews, 235 commits in 4 years 5 months
Contributions summary:Svyatoslav primarily worked on the Kotlin/Native infrastructure. They fixed bugs related to worker jobs and autorelease pools, and type-safe barrier bridges, demonstrating a focus on improving the runtime environment and interop features. The user also added tests for CStructVar declared in source code, and overriding methods of Any, which indicates a strong knowledge of the underlying systems and testing methodologies within this project. Furthermore, the user modified Objective-C export generation, including enum values.
Contributions:209 reviews, 1495 commits, 43 PRs in 6 years 5 months
Contributions summary:Svyatoslav primarily contributed to the Kotlin programming language's native compilation, particularly focusing on improving the interoperability with Objective-C and Swift, especially for the new memory manager. Their work included implementing, debugging, and optimizing features related to interoperability, such as thread state switching for Obj-C interop, better handling of Kotlin exceptions in interop scenarios, and fixing issues related to calling Swift functions from Kotlin and vice versa. Furthermore, the user also addressed problems related to compilation, like handling of exceptions or code generation.
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Svyatoslav Scherbina - Software Engineer at JetBrains