"CTO in Focus" Sergey Kastukevich, SOFTSWISS

Kevin Jones
May 11
7 min read

As CTO at SOFTSWISS, Sergey Kastukevich oversees the tech infrastructure powering the company's Casino, Sportsbook, and Game Aggregator solutions. He leads the company’s platforms through two significant industry transformations: the growing demand for configurable, performance-oriented systems and the increasing adoption of AI across the software development lifecycle.

Sergey argues that the bottleneck has moved from how to build something to defining precisely what to build, with code itself losing value relative to specification. It is a claim a supplier automating its own pipeline has reason to make, and one worth testing on those terms. In this conversation, he sets out how SOFTSWISS prioritises across independent product lines, what he calls SDLC 2.0 — an AI-driven development pipeline — the hiring qualities he now looks for as language-specific expertise matters less, and how compliance in regulated markets is reshaping supplier selection. He closes on which markets he considers undervalued, and why he believes entry windows have compressed beyond what most suppliers can meet.

Gaming Eminence: Across your career, what belief about technology has remained constant, and where has holding that belief created the most friction with what the business or market wanted from you?

Sergey Kastukevich: "One belief has always remained constant for me: predictability and scalability must be engineered into technology from the start. There has to be a clear understanding of how a system will behave when conditions change – whether that is traffic growth, new markets, or regulatory requirements.

At SOFTSWISS, this comes from real experience operating platforms at scale. Launching for five players per hour is easy. Launching for thousands across multiple markets is where engineering discipline matters. If the system behaves unpredictably under pressure, service quality drops, reputation suffers, and ultimately, the business pays the price.

This is where the main tension comes in. The challenge for any CTO is not confrontation, but constant negotiation. Business and technology often optimise for different things."

Gaming Eminence: So the main challenge is in finding a consensus?

SK: "Exactly. The challenge is finding the right balance. Business is sometimes willing to move faster or reduce investment, even if it means accepting higher risk. Engineering, on the other hand, focuses on building for the long term.

Business always wants things fast, high-quality, and cheap. But you can only pick two out of the three. In a startup, you can accept a 30% risk that everything might shut down tomorrow and take shortcuts. In a mature business, where assets need to scale, this is not acceptable."

Gaming Eminence: How are priorities distributed when you have several independent product lines such as the Casino Platform, the Sportsbook, and the Game Aggregator? How do teams resolve the tension between them?

SK: "In practice, there is very little direct tension between product lines, because they are independent. Each product has its own dedicated teams, and resources are not shared across products in day-to-day work.

The only real overlap exists in shared services, such as infrastructure, but even there, we have already structured teams into sub-units aligned with specific products. So at the product level, there is no constant competition for resources.

Prioritisation happens at the strategic level. Shareholders define a target, for example, increasing company value by 30%. At the board level, we then decide which products will drive that growth and where to invest more усилий and resources.

SOFTSWISS divides product work into three main streams: new product development, client-driven requests and technical debt. New development focuses on features and market opportunities the company believes are under-served. Client requests, largely from major brands, take up around 30% of team capacity. The remaining work covers maintenance, performance improvements and system-level upgrades.

These areas are balanced through regular alignment. Coordinators meet on a monthly basis to agree on priorities, and the Delivery Office formalises those commitments and ensures teams are not overloaded.

Looking ahead, this model will change significantly with the adoption of AI. AI is already compressing traditional development cycles. A machine doesn’t need retrospectives or reflection – it simply executes with a certain probability of producing the correct result.

We are currently implementing what we call SDLC 2.0. It is essentially an AI-driven development pipeline, where most of the process – from task interpretation to code generation, testing, and even deployment – is handled by machines. AI accelerates execution, while humans retain accountability.

This shift also changes the nature of intellectual property. Code itself is becoming less valuable, because it can be recreated. The real value moves to specifications: how clearly you define the problem and provide the right context for the system to generate the correct outcome.

As a result, the bottleneck is no longer how to build something, but what exactly to build and how precisely you can define it."

Gaming Eminence: This significantly changes hiring requirements. What do you look for now when building a team?

SK: "The hiring approach is definitely evolving. Today, we look beyond specific technical skills and focus more on how a person thinks and adapts.

There are three key qualities we prioritise.

First is the applied AI mindset. This is not about curiosity. We still see resistance, because people fear losing their relevance. What matters is whether a person has accepted this shift and understands how AI can amplify their effectiveness rather than replace them.

Second is ownership and the ability to operate above the level of execution. Even individual contributors need to think in terms of defining problems, setting context, and structuring systems so that reliable results can be produced, including with AI. A developer, QA, or analyst is no longer just someone who performs tasks manually. They need to define problems, set context, and manage systems that actually do the work.

Third is flexibility. The pace of change is extremely high. Tools evolve every few months, and people need to be comfortable abandoning what they’ve just built and switching to better solutions without friction.

Because of this, knowledge of a specific programming language is becoming less important. We hire engineers with strong fundamentals, knowing they can adapt quickly with the help of AI.

In that sense, everyone is becoming a kind of manager – not in terms of hierarchy, but in terms of responsibility."

Gaming Eminence: Outside roadmaps and commercial pressures, what is currently occupying your technical curiosity, and how does that private thinking find its way into your public decisions as CTO?

SK: "If we put commercial priorities aside, my focus right now is primarily on AI and distributed infrastructure.

AI is fundamentally changing how we build products. It’s not just a tool for efficiency – it’s reshaping the entire development process, from how we define problems to how solutions are produced and iterated. I’m particularly interested in how far we can push automation and how much of the development lifecycle can be handled without direct human involvement.

At the same time, I’m deeply focused on distributed infrastructure. The goal is to deliver a consistent level of performance and quality to users anywhere in the world. It doesn’t matter if a user is in Europe, Latin America, or Africa – the experience should feel the same in terms of stability, speed, and reliability.

These two areas are closely connected. AI helps us move faster and adapt, while distributed systems ensure that what we build can scale globally and operate under very different conditions.

In practice, this thinking directly influences our decisions. It shapes how we design architecture, how we prioritise investments, and how we rethink processes inside the company. Even when we’re solving immediate business tasks, these principles define the direction we move in."

Gaming Eminence: Let’s move to markets. Supplier licensing is increasingly on the agenda across regulated markets. How is that changing the way SOFTSWISS thinks about platform architecture and compliance investment, and does it represent a structural opportunity or primarily a cost burden?

SK: "SOFTSWISS is a reliable B2B provider for regulated markets. Compliance adds a significant layer of work across all areas. This includes KYC integrations and regulator-specific reporting.

It also directly affects how we choose our suppliers. If we guarantee clients a 10-minute SLA response time, we select providers who are certified and capable of meeting even higher response standards.

This means working with partners who comply with requirements such as ISO or PCI DSS and can ensure the level of reliability and speed we promise to our clients. In that sense, we are deliberately investing in higher-quality infrastructure and partnerships rather than optimising for cost.

Gaming Eminence: How have client requests changed over the past three years?

SK: "They have become more system-focused. Large operators now think in terms of systems rather than isolated features.

Previously, requests were often very specific and tactical, focused on individual interface elements or small adjustments. Today, clients are asking for flexible systems that allow them to configure and adapt the product themselves.

They also want to influence our roadmap, and we take that into account. When a client demonstrates a strong understanding of the business, their input carries real weight in shaping product direction.

Most importantly, the focus has shifted from technical issues to business metrics such as conversion, funnels, and retention. The conversation has moved from “how the system works” to “how the business performs."

Gaming Eminence: Final question. Which market do you consider the most undervalued?

SK: "Any growing economy. These markets often look less structured at first, but that’s exactly where the opportunity lies.

The key factor, however, is speed. You can no longer spend six or even three months entering a market. You need to be ready within one or two months.

New markets always come with uncertainty and loosely defined regulations. Yet some companies still manage to move faster than others. The difference between a linear executor and a leader is ownership of the outcome.

You need to anticipate risks, build fallback scenarios, and adapt quickly as conditions change. Success belongs to those who can move decisively despite uncertainty and enter promising markets ahead of others.

*The themes in this conversation extend beyond it. Sergey has helped initiate the Tech Race Summit, a forthcoming venue for CTOs and senior engineering leaders from iGaming, fintech and crypto to compare how high-load systems behave under pressure and how they are made resilient. The format is positioned around cross-sector exchange rather than vendor presentation. Further detail is at techracesummit.com

Editor's note: This is not sponsored content. The Tech Race Summit is mentioned because of its direct relevance to themes raised in the interview.