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Products
Small, focused software built under the CYBIND umbrella. Every product solves a problem I live with directly, and every product uses modern AI as real engineering material — not as a pitch-deck flourish.
An independent software studio · Lisbon, Portugal
Software built by a cyber mind.
CYBIND is my senior software practice in Lisbon. Twenty years of shipped work — streaming platforms used by 3 million viewers, multi-brand CPG portfolios, multi-bank financial software — now with modern AI as a core engineering material.
Andrew Kovalenko Principal engineer · CYBIND
Shipped at, ongoing for, or built by
Streaming & OTT
- Locast
- WFMZ‑TV
- WeatherNation
Multi-brand CPG
- Ken’s Foods
- Sweet Baby Ray’s
- Green Valley Naturals
Consulting & ongoing
- Jaybird Group
- OnQ
- TAXCLARA
- 3M Locast viewers
at peak - 31 US markets
served - 9×8 WFMZ+ channels
× platforms - 99.9% Uptime
over 3+ years
One engagement at a time. A senior principal’s full week, not a sliver across multiple clients.
One principal, full week, shipping every Friday. No ticket queues, no BD layer, no sliver of someone’s attention. It’s what a senior engineer with modern AI looks like in practice.
— How CYBIND works
From engineers I’ve shipped with
We worked together on the Locast.org project. Andrew brings an outstanding mix of strategic thinking, technical skills, and hands-on problem-solving — and a consistent high standard of quality.
Senior Software Engineer
Five years working with Andrew. Deep understanding of the trade-offs in high-traffic applications, project infrastructure, and system design. His AWS expertise is admirable.
Software Engineer & Tech Lead, Jupser
Deep technical expertise plus exceptional communication. Andrew brings thoughtful architecture, reliable delivery, and the ability to turn ambiguous requirements into pragmatic solutions.
Senior Software Developer, Geoforce
One of the most effective and reliable people I've met in my career. Strong technical skills, and the ability to set priorities and keep difficult projects moving.
CTO, PinMy / MaboaSoft
Direct client references available on request.
The practice
Two kinds of work.
I make software in two registers. The first is my own — products I own, ship, and support for the long haul. The second is for others — a small consulting practice for teams that need a senior principal with real AI fluency.
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Consulting
Selective engagements for teams that want to put modern AI into a shipping product, or collapse what used to need three engineers into one senior principal with the right tools. Three to six months, retainer-based.
Working with me
How an engagement works.
Most CYBIND engagements look the same on paper. Here’s the default shape — variations on request.
Shape
Monthly retainer
Fixed monthly fee. Clear scope, clear deliverables, renewable month to month. Invoiced from a Portuguese legal entity, in EUR or USD.
Duration
3–6 months typical
Long enough to ship something real, short enough to reassess. Some clients renew once or twice; a few run multi-year.
Start
Two calls, then an SOW
First call scopes the problem. Second call confirms fit and pricing. Then a one-page SOW, an NDA if you need one, and a start date — usually within two weeks.
Capacity
One engagement at a time
I don’t run parallel clients. A senior principal’s full week, not a sliver. Current engagements and earliest start date on request.
Pricing
From €12K / month
Typical retainer band €12–25K / month depending on scope and depth. Fixed-price scopes for smaller deliverables on request. Invoiced via Portuguese legal entity.
Procurement & ops
- Invoiced by CYBER MIND Unipessoal LDA, Lisbon · NIF 517 391 007
- Portuguese VAT registered · EU invoice-ready
- NDA and MSA on file, or sign yours
- Paid in EUR or USD · Net 14
- GitHub / Slack / Notion / Linear · your stack
What I’ve shipped
Streaming is the specialty. Four domains in range.
My deepest work — and strongest proof — is in streaming and OTT. The rest of the range covers multi-tenant financial software, multi-brand CPG, and modern AI product engineering. Every block below is live somewhere or has been.
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Streaming & OTT platforms
Broadcasters and publishers who want to stream their own content, on every screen their audience owns, without paying an enterprise vendor a tax for every viewer. One platform, one brand, one bill. Currently runs nine live channels for a regional NBC affiliate — originally built under Jaybird TV, now under my ownership.
- Peak viewers
- ~3M (Locast)
- Markets
- 31 US cities
- Platforms live
- 8 (WFMZ+)
- Uptime
- ≥ 99.9% / 3 yrs
Web · iOS · Android · Apple TV · Android TV · Fire TV · Roku · Samsung Tizen · LG webOS
See the streaming & OTT practice → Read the Locast engineering case study →
02
Property management
Accounting, operations, and booking systems for property management companies — including a large-scale migration off PropertyWare onto a modern, in-house platform. The kind of work most teams outsource and most outsourcers don’t finish.
- Legacy migrated
- PropertyWare → in-house
- Booking sites live
- 2+ rental portfolios
- Accounting
- Double-entry, multi-tenant
Double-entry accounting · multi-tenant billing · reconciliation workflows
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Accounting & financial software
Software that turns bank activity into a number someone can act on — reliably, in plain language, at the right moment of the month. Multi-bank aggregation, AI assistant, transaction categorization, planned-payment tracking, multi-currency ledgers, and a companion mobile app — working product, still in active development.
- Platforms
- Web · iOS (SwiftUI)
- Banks connected
- Millennium · NovoBanco · Wise
- AI-assisted
- Strategy, insights, categorization
Next.js 15 · Prisma · PostgreSQL · SwiftUI · PSD2 open banking · Claude API
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Multi-brand consumer systems
One codebase, many brand voices. Full portfolio of sites for Ken’s Foods — Ken’s, Sweet Baby Ray’s, Sticky Fingers, Kogi Sauce, and the foodservice variants — plus the initial build of Green Valley Naturals. Every brand keeps its identity; every fix ships to the family at once.
- Brands shipped
- 5 (Ken’s family)
- Codebases
- 1 monorepo
- Deploy pipelines
- Per-brand, automated
Monorepo architecture · shared design system · headless content · per-brand deploy pipelines
Approach
AI isn’t a feature. It’s how the work gets done.
My degree was in intelligent decision-making systems — neural networks, optimization, adaptive control. For a long time that felt like an academic curiosity. It doesn’t anymore. Modern AI now sits inside every engagement as a genuine co-worker: Claude in the editor, LLMs in production, agents running background jobs that would have been manual labor a year ago.
The practical effect is worth naming clearly. The shape of what one engineer can own has changed. Design, build, ship, maintain, support — functions that used to need separate people now compress into one practitioner with the right tools. That’s not a promise; it’s a description of how I work every day, on AWS infrastructure (Lambda, ECS, Bedrock, SageMaker) with the same observability and cost accounting as anything else in production.
What it doesn’t mean: dashboards labelled “AI-powered” for a press release, or replacing human judgement with prompts. What it does mean: a team that used to need three engineers to ship something now needs one senior engineer with real AI fluency. That’s what CYBIND is built to be. Full background on about.
Recent writing
A senior engineer + AI
What AI actually does for a senior IC working alone.
The Locast years
Streaming platform engineering at 3M-viewer scale.
One codebase, five sauces
Multi-brand CPG on a single monorepo, one engineer.
Twenty years shipping
What two decades of production work taught me.
CYBIND is one person
Why the studio is a single engineer on purpose.
Jaybird DXP
The engineering backbone behind Ken's, Locast, WFMZ+.
Frequently asked
A few quick answers.
- What is CYBIND?
- An AI-native software studio in Lisbon, run by one senior principal engineer. Two decades of shipped work in streaming (Locast, WFMZ+), multi-brand CPG (Ken’s Foods), and modern financial software, now combined with modern AI as a core engineering material.
- How does an engagement work?
- Monthly retainer, 3–6 months typical. Two calls to scope and confirm fit, then a one-page SOW and a start date — usually within two weeks. Invoiced from a Portuguese legal entity in EUR or USD. Renewable month to month.
- What does CYBIND cost?
- Retainers run €12–25K per month depending on scope and depth, with fixed-price scopes for smaller deliverables on request. Pricing reflects a senior principal’s full week, not a sliver across multiple clients.
- Who is behind CYBIND?
- Andrew Kovalenko — principal engineer, founder, and the only person inside the studio. CS degree in Ukraine, twenty years at Jaybird Group as principal, now operating independently from Lisbon as CYBER MIND Unipessoal LDA.
- Does CYBIND take multiple clients at once?
- No. One engagement at a time. A senior principal’s full week, not parallel slivers across three accounts. Current engagements and earliest start date available on request.
- What does “AI-native” mean here?
- Modern AI used as real engineering material — in the codebase, in the dev loop, in the shipped product — not as a marketing flourish. Concretely: LLMs and retrieval as production primitives, agentic tooling integrated into client repos, AI assistance treated as a co-worker, not a demo.
Contact
Let’s build something.
One inbox, no ticket queues, no BD layer. Tell me what you’re working on and what’s blocking it. If two decades of engineering plus modern AI can help, I’ll say so. If not, I’ll say that too.
Book a 20-min intro call →
or send a brief
— Andrew Kovalenko, CYBIND