Baltics Tech Stars: Top 15 Software Developers
Meet the standout software developers from the Baltics who are setting the standard in tech innovation and engineering excellence. ↓
The Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – punch above their weight in tech, producing world-class software talent.
Below we present the best software developers from this region (including those working abroad), selected for their open-source contributions, startup leadership, influence in the tech community, roles at top tech companies, or stellar programming contest records. Each profile highlights their background and why they stand out.
- Jaan Tallinn
- Tõnu Samuel
- Valery Vavilov
- Diana Jaunzeikare
- Ahti Heinla
- Justas Janauskas
- Jevgeni Kabanov
- Andris Reinman
- Pēteris Krumiņš
- Kristel Kruustük
- Mindaugas Mozūras
- Aleksejs Zajakins
- Ott Kaukver
- Domas Mituzas
- Alexei Vladishev
Now, let’s delve deeper into their remarkable journeys and lasting impacts.
Jaan Tallinn
AGI Destinations Series, Episode 2
Nationality: Estonian
Jaan is an Estonian programmer best known as a founding engineer of Skype and the peer-to-peer platform Kazaa. In the early 2000s, he helped develop the groundbreaking P2P algorithms that powered Skype’s internet telephony revolution. After Skype’s success (sold to eBay in 2005), Tallinn turned to tech philanthropy and investment.
He co-founded the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and Future of Life Institute, channeling his Skype fortune into AI safety research and emerging technologies. Despite moving into an investor role, Jaan’s inclusion here is due to his technical legacy: he proved Baltic developers can create software used by hundreds of millions.
He continues to code sporadically on scientific projects and remains a vocal influencer on tech’s global stage.
- Facebook: Jaan Tallinn
Tonu Samuel
Nationality: Estonian
Tõnu is an Estonian software developer known in Estonian IT circles as a prodigious hacker and one of the country’s early open-source contributors. Notably, he was a core developer of MySQL – the world’s most popular open-source database – contributing in its early days.
In the 1990s, Tõnu built systems for Estonia’s government and became a white-hat hacker exposing security flaws (earning him a bit of a legend status locally). He later moved to Japan and continued working in tech, serving as CTO for startups (like bitgrit) focused on data analytics and robotics.
With over 30 years in programming, Tõnu has amassed experience from low-level network programming to high-level architecture. Despite a leadership career, he remains a hands-on engineer – for example, he has recently been involved in IoT and blockchain projects as a coder.
Samuel is included for his pioneering role in open-source (being one of few Baltic developers in MySQL’s core team) and for mentoring generations of Estonian developers. He exemplifies longevity in coding – still enthusiastic about new technologies after decades.
- LinkedIn: Tõnu Samuel
- Twitter: @tonuonu
- GitHub: tonuonu
Valery Vavilov
Nationality: Latvian
Valery “Val” Vavilov is a Latvian software engineer-turned-entrepreneur who co-founded Bitfury in 2011, building it into one of the world’s leading blockchain technology companies. Born and raised in Latvia, Valery started programming at age 14 and later applied that passion to Bitcoin’s technology. Bitfury began as a Bitcoin “mining” startup and grew into a broader blockchain unicorn.
Vavilov still codes conceptually – he understands the tech deeply – while leading Bitfury as CEO. Under his leadership, Bitfury has innovated in cryptographic software, custom hardware, and open-source blockchain frameworks. Valery’s story showcases Baltic talent on the global stage: he’s frequently featured in outlets like Forbes for marrying low-level coding knowledge with business acumen.
- LinkedIn: Valery Vavilov
- Twitter: @ValVavilov
Diana Jaunzeikare
Nationality: Latvian
Diana is a Latvian software engineer who has achieved a distinguished career at Google. With a background in computer science (educated at Smith College in the USA), she joined Google and eventually became a Senior Software Engineer in the core infrastructure team.
Her specialty is large-scale distributed databases and systems, an area in which she’s authored research and patents. In Mountain View, she has been tech lead on projects that keep Google’s data processing reliable. Colleagues commend her ability to solve deep technical problems – for instance, optimizing storage systems that handle petabytes of data.
Outside of work, Diana mentors young coders (especially women in STEM) and remains connected to the Latvian tech scene through talks and events. We include Diana for representing Baltic talent in Big Tech: she’s proven that an engineer from Latvia can reach the upper echelons of engineering at Google. She continues to actively code and design systems that billions of people indirectly rely on (through Google’s services).
Her story encourages Baltic developers to aim high.
- LinkedIn: Diana Jaunzeikare
- Twitter: @diaanaj
Ahti Heinla
Nationality: Estonian
Ahti is an Estonian programmer and visionary engineer who co-developed Skype in 2003. As one of Skype’s original engineers, he wrote crucial code for its peer-to-peer communication system. Post-Skype, Ahti applied his talent to robotics: in 2014 he co-founded Starship Technologies, a startup building self-driving delivery robots. As Starship’s CEO/CTO, he remains deeply technical, reportedly still reviewing code and algorithms for their autonomous bots.
Heinla’s career exemplifies startup leadership while coding: even at the helm, he stays hands-on with engineering. He also spearheaded civic tech projects (e.g., Let’s Do It! global cleanup initiative). For his contributions, Ahti received Estonia’s Order of the White Star in 2007.
He’s included for creating software that changed how the world communicates (Skype) and for proving an elite developer can drive innovation in hardware and AI as well.
- LinkedIn: Ahti Heinla
- Twitter: @ahtih
- GitHub: ahtih
Justas Janauskas
Nationality: Lithuanian
Justas is a Lithuanian software developer who co-founded Vinted in 2008. Vinted – an online marketplace for second-hand fashion – started when Justas built a website to help his co-founder Milda sell her extra clothes. As the technical co-founder, Justas coded the early platform himself, scaling it from a small community in Vilnius to a global user base.
Under his technical leadership (he served as CEO/CTO in the early years), Vinted grew into Lithuania’s first tech unicorn. Janauskas embodies a startup founder who’s still a coder at heart: even after stepping back from day-to-day management, he’s known to prototype new ideas (like the knowledge-sharing app Qoorio he later founded).
He’s included for proving that a LT developer can create a world-class consumer platform from scratch. His journey inspires many Baltic engineers to think globally.
- LinkedIn: Justas Janauskas
- Twitter: @JJanauskas
- GitHub: jjanauskas
Jevgeni Kabanov
Nationality: Estonian
Jevgeni is an Estonian software engineer famed for creating JRebel, a developer tool that skips Java redeploys to boost productivity. In 2007 he founded ZeroTurnaround to commercialize JRebel, writing the first version of the product himself. Under Kabanov’s coding and leadership, JRebel became a staple for Java developers worldwide and put Estonia on the map for developer tools. ZeroTurnaround grew to 200+ employees before being acquired in 2017.
Jevgeni didn’t stop there – he later joined Estonian ride-hailing unicorn Bolt and is now its President, overseeing technology and product. Throughout, he’s stayed connected to code (he once said JRebel started as part of his PhD research). He also founded an annual Java conference (JavaGeeks/GeekOut) in Tallinn, sharing knowledge with the community.
Kabanov makes this list for significant open-source contributions (JRebel began with an OSS ethos) and for exemplifying how an Estonian coder can scale a company globally while remaining a “geek” at heart.
- LinkedIn: Jevgeni Kabanov
- Twitter: @ekabanov
Andris Reinman
Nationality: Estonian
Andris is an Estonian open-source developer celebrated for authoring Nodemailer, the de-facto library for sending emails in Node.js applications.
Created in 2010, Nodemailer is used by millions of developers – effectively, if you’ve ever built a Node app that sends email, you’ve likely used Andris’s code. Reinman, based in Tallinn, maintained Nodemailer as a one-person project, exemplifying the impact a single Baltic developer can have on the global open-source ecosystem.
Beyond Nodemailer, he has built related tools (like an IMAP API and EmailEngine) and contributed to the Node community. He also runs a small startup while coding full-time, embodying the builder ethos. Andris is included for his significant open-source contributions – Nodemailer’s ubiquity and utility land him among the Baltic’s best.
Despite its success, he famously kept Nodemailer free and even refused venture funding, choosing to remain independent. This humble hacker spirit resonates in the dev world.
- LinkedIn: Andris Reinman
- Twitter: @andrisreinman
- GitHub: andris9
Peteris Krumins
Nationality: Latvian
Pēteris is a Latvian software developer and serial entrepreneur who gained fame in the coding community through blogging and open-source.
As a teenager, he started the blog catonmat.net (“Cat on Mat”), where he shared programming tips, Unix one-liners, and hacking tricks. His blog posts like “Perl One-Liners Explained” garnered hundreds of thousands of hits, eventually leading Pēteris to publish the book Perl One-Liners.
Krumiņš also co-founded Browserling, an online cross-browser testing service, where he still actively codes the backend in Node.js. In the startup, he wears many hats – CEO, but also lead developer – exemplifying a founder who remains an active coder. He has released open-source tools (e.g., browserify for browser testing) and even dabbled in hardware projects. Pēteris belongs on this list for his influence as a tech communicator (popular blogger and book author) and for turning his coding prowess into successful products. Many developers worldwide were introduced to tricky topics via his accessible writing.
- LinkedIn: Peter Krumins
- Twitter: @pkrumins
- GitHub: pkrumins
Kristel Kruustük
Nationality: Estonian
Kristel is an Estonian software tester-turned-entrepreneur who founded Testlio, a global software testing marketplace, at age 23. Dissatisfied with how freelance QA testers were treated, she coded and launched Testlio with her then-fiancé in 2013 after winning an AngelHack hackathon in Silicon Valley. As CEO, Kristel remained closely involved in product development while scaling the company.
Under her leadership, Testlio built a network of thousands of testers and attracted clients like Microsoft. Kruustük stands out for actively championing diversity in tech – she regularly speaks about empowering women in IT and even funds a scholarship for female IT students. In 2022, Inc. Magazine named her in the Female Founders 100. Kristel still identifies as a tester and product person at heart, often jumping into Testlio’s platform to ensure quality.
We include her for being a startup founder still intimately involved in the tech, and as a role model inspiring the next generation of Baltic women developers.
- LinkedIn: Kristel Kruustük
- Twitter: @kristelkruustuk
Mindaugas Mozuras
Nationality: Lithuanian
Mindaugas is a Lithuanian software engineer who leads engineering at Vinted, the country’s first unicorn. As Vinted’s Head of Engineering, he oversees a large developer team and ensures the platform (which serves 100+ million users) deploys code hundreds of times per day.
Mozūras earned respect not only for his role at Vinted but for his contributions to Lithuania’s tech community. He co-founded Vilnius.js, one of Vilnius’s longest-running developer meetups, and organizes the Vilnius Tech Leads events to mentor engineering managers. An avid open-source contributor, he’s created and maintained several Ruby and JavaScript libraries over the years.
Mindaugas also gained notoriety in the Stack Overflow community – he once ranked as a top answerer for Swift and Objective-C, reflecting his broad skillset. He remains a hands-on coder at Vinted, often diving into code reviews and architecture decisions.
We include Mindaugas for blending technical excellence (driving Vinted’s engineering) with community leadership, inspiring many Baltic developers to share knowledge.
- LinkedIn: Mindaugas Mozūras
- Twitter: @mmozuras
- GitHub: mmozuras
Aleksejs Zajakins
Nationality: Latvian
Aleksejs is a Latvian competitive programmer who reached the pinnacle of global coding contests. As a high schooler, he won a Gold Medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) 2015 – the first ever gold for Latvia in a decade. He also medaled twice at IOI (Silver in 2014, Gold in 2015) and went on to compete in the ACM ICPC (International Collegiate Programming Contest) World Finals, representing the University of Latvia.
Zajakins’s algorithmic skills are legendary in the Baltic CP community – he solved complex problems in record time, achieving a world ranking among the top juniors. After university, Aleksejs continued to engage in coding competitions (winning regional contests, high placements in Google Code Jam and Yandex.Algorithm). He currently works as a software engineer (recently at fintech firm Stripe in London), where he applies his algorithmic thinking to real-world systems.
Aleksejs earns a spot on this list for his international coding accolades, showcasing Baltic excellence. He serves as an inspiration to young Latvian programmers and sometimes coaches the national Olympiad team.
- Codeforces: Alex_2oo8
Ott Kaukver
Nationality: Estonian
Ott is an Estonian software engineer and tech executive who has held senior engineering leadership roles in some of the world’s top tech companies. In the 2000s, Ott was one of the early engineers at Skype in Tallinn. He later moved to the U.S. and became CTO at Twilio, the cloud communications giant, from 2017–2019. There, he oversaw product engineering as Twilio scaled its platform to millions of developers.
After Twilio’s IPO, Kaukver took on the CTO role at Checkout.com, a London-based fintech unicorn, where he led a distributed team building payments infrastructure. Uniquely, Ott has maintained a hands-on approach to technology despite rising to C-level ranks – colleagues note he’ll dive into technical design discussions and review code for critical systems.
He’s also an active startup mentor/investor, advising companies like TransferWise and Pipedrive in their early stages. Ott exemplifies Baltic talent on the global stage, demonstrating that an Estonian developer can drive innovation in Silicon Valley and beyond. We include him for his engineering leadership and continued commitment to the craft of software development.
- LinkedIn: Ott Kaukver
- Twitter: @ottk
Domas Mituzas
Many problems can be analyzed without digging into the code. Just make a bold assumption, carefully test it, and use logical reasoning.
Nationality: Lithuanian
Domas is a Lithuanian software engineer celebrated for his work behind the scenes of the internet. In the mid-2000s, he was a core developer and systems administrator at Wikipedia – he played a key role in scaling Wikipedia’s infrastructure, optimizing its databases and PHP code. Domas was instrumental in maintaining MySQL performance for Wikipedia’s massive workloads, which led him to join the MySQL team at Sun Microsystems and later Facebook’s infrastructure team.
At Facebook (2009+), he worked on large-scale MySQL deployments, pushing the boundaries of database performance. Mituzas has contributed patches to MySQL & MariaDB (the open-source database systems) and is known in the open-source community as a MySQL performance guru. He continues to advocate open knowledge – he’s served as a MariaDB Foundation board member, and his blog posts on database internals are widely read.
Domas is included for his substantial open-source contributions and engineering prowess that helped keep Wikipedia (one of the world’s top websites) running smoothly. He represents the often unsung backend heroes whose code impacts millions daily.
- LinkedIn: Domas Mituzas
- GitHub: midom
Alexei Vladishev
Nationality: Latvian
Alexei is a Latvian software developer and the original author of Zabbix, one of the world’s most popular open-source network monitoring tools. He started the project around 2001 and released it as free software, leading to the founding of Zabbix SIA in 2005 with headquarters in Riga.
To this day, Alexei serves as CEO and product architect, guiding Zabbix’s development (now with a vast global user community) while it remains open-source. Zabbix is used by thousands of companies to monitor their servers, networks, and applications – a testament to Alexei’s engineering excellence. He still occasionally commits code and actively designs new features, embodying a founder deeply involved in the technical evolution of his product.
Vladishev’s inclusion on this list is due to his open-source contribution: he provided a free, enterprise-grade tool that rivals offerings from big corporations. Under his leadership, Zabbix has also become a successful company (sustainable through services) without compromising its open-source nature.
- LinkedIn: Alexei Vladishev
- Twitter: @avladishev
- GitHub: avladishev
Wrap Up
These legends represent exceptional talent, making them extremely challenging to headhunt. However, there are thousands of other highly skilled IT professionals in the Baltic region available to hire with our help. Contact us, and we will be happy to discuss your hiring needs.
Note: We’ve dedicated significant time and effort to creating and verifying this curated list of top talent. If you intend to share or make use of it in any way, we kindly ask that you include a backlink to the original source – EchoGlobal.
Lou Reverchuk IT Entrepreneur