A new season, a new CTO … Josef founder Kirill Kliavin steps down

With all the events happening in the world and in my country (for those who don’t know, I’m Ukrainian), I’ve decided it’s a good time to step down from the CTO position at Josef, and into a new role as Solution Architect.

As a co-founder of Josef, I always knew my most significant responsibility was to surround myself with talented people and empower them. 

For years I was the one building and designing the platform to welcome the first wave of Josef builders. I couldn’t leave my laptop at home or travel beyond mobile reception, but it was a fun and joyful experience. We watched as hundreds and then thousands of users began to build on Josef.

I lead the creation of our unbeatable document automation engine that to this day isn’t matched by any of our competitors. I got to witness clients like MinterEllison navigating through COVID regulations and see local CLCs supporting the LGBTQI+ community.  I enjoyed being a leading player in the capital-raising process; under my technical supervision, Josef successfully raised multiple rounds of funding.

As we grew, so did the product and engineering team and with it came the new experience of leading our expansion efforts and finding the right talent. We have built a remote-first engineering team spanning Europe to Japan to Australia, all working together asynchronously. I feel very proud of the team we have built. It’s inspiring to see the progress Avina Al has delivered since joining as Head of Product and the efficiencies Toby Somerville has driven since joining as VP of Engineering. 

After 5+ years of striving to achieve our vision, Josef has now reached a point where I can feel confident stepping out of my role. I’m excited to pass the torch to others who have the skills to unlock Josef’s full potential. It’s why I am very happy to announce that our VP of Engineering Toby Somerville will be promoted to the role of CTO.