Ilya Boyandin
Software Engineer | Interactive Systems & Data Visualization
Experienced software engineer with a PhD in Computer Science and deep expertise in scalable web architectures, interactive front-end development, geospatial analytics, and data visualization.
Executive Summary
- 20+ years of experience in software engineering, data visualization, front-end development, distributed systems, and technical leadership.
- PhD in Computer Science focused on data visualization and interactive systems.
- Experience with ML systems, statistical classification, question answering, NLP, data processing pipelines, and LLM-powered workflows.
- Experience architecting and scaling real-time collaborative systems.
Experience
Staff Software Engineer, Maps and Data Visualization, Foursquare
July 2021 - present
- Technical leadership, architecture, and development of Foursquare Studio, a complex web-based geospatial visualization platform.
- Contributed geospatial visualization features including trips, flows, time controls, annotations, legends, and SQL notebooks with maps.
- Contributed to the Foursquare Map SDK and LLM-assisted SQL workflows.
Founder, GeoVisually
November 2020 - present
- Interactive maps and geographic data visualization consultancy.
- Architected and developed MapCanv, Flowmap City, and NGO-facing supply-chain visualization apps.
Founding Engineer, Unfolded
January 2021 - May 2021
- Helped build Unfolded Studio, later acquired by Foursquare.
Staff Software Engineer, Front End and Data Visualization Lead, Teralytics
February 2015 - December 2020
- Led front-end and visualization work for transport analytics and mobility products.
- Developed scalable origin-destination visualization tools and interactive map interfaces.
Education
PhD in Computer Science, University of Fribourg, 2013
MSc Computer Science, St. Petersburg State University, 2003
Thesis: Statistical Query Transformations for Question Answering in the Web
Skills
TypeScript, React, JavaScript, WebGL, deck.gl, Mapbox GL, D3, geospatial analytics, data visualization, real-time collaboration, Node.js, Python, SQL, LLM integrations, Cloudflare, Vercel, AWS, and Google Cloud.
Talks
- Geospatial Community of Serbia Meetup #7 Apr 2026
- FOSDEM 2026: SQLRooms and Loro Feb 2026
- FOSDEM 2026: Mobility Flow Visualization Jan 2026
- DINAcon 2025 Nov 2025
- Open Visualization Collaborator Summit 2025 Oct 2025
- DINAcon 2024 – Bern Nov 2024
- ETH Zurich guest lecture Nov 2024
- TechTalks@Foursquare Sep 2024
- OpenJS Visualization Summit London Sep 2024
- Novi Sad JS conference Oct 2022
- Deck.gl Summit Sep 2022
- DVS Fireside Chat Sep 2022
- FSQ/Unfolded: Mobility data analysis Aug 2022
- Introduction to Unfolded (in German) May 2021
- Geo Visualization Tools from Unfolded Mar 2021
- FlowmapBlue at Urban Computing Foundation Jul 2020
- AGIT Symposium talk (in German) Jul 2020
- ClickHouse talk at DataCouncil May 2020
- Flow Maps talk at the DataVis Meetup May 2020
- Visualizing Mobility talk at the DataFest Nov 2019
- Talk at the "On data and design" meetup Nov 2019
- Talk at the Urban Mobility Symposium Oct 2019
- FlowmapBlue talk at the University of Bern Apr 2019
- Visualization of OD data at UPS Mar 2019
- Human Mobility talk at CLISEL Mar 2019
- Scalable OD-data visualization at IFSTTAR Dec 2018
- Zurich ReactJS Meetup Jul 2018
- Robot programming workshop Mar 2018
- Visualizing People Movement with React Nov 2015
- DataVis with React talk at OpenVis conf Apr 2015
- SICHH Forum Data Visualization talk Sep 2014