Based in London, moving to Watford

Maksym Bessarab

Leads teams. Gets the numbers right. Delivers the brief.

I'm Merty, a Customer Adviser at VodafoneThree. Before that I led a team at Pret A Manger and reconciled high-value transactions to FCA standards at Wolfo Banking. I study Computer Science and build software, games and 3D art in my own time.

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The board from Cube Defence, my 3D tower-defence game. Drag it to turn it.
  • 120%Average of my sales target over the last three months, up from 100%
  • 18 monthsLeading a store team at Pret A Manger, after promotion from Barista in six months
  • FCAStandards I worked to at Wolfo Banking, with KYC, AML and full audit trails
  • 3Languages: Ukrainian, Russian and English

About me. People, numbers and a habit of building.

I work best where people, money and process meet. I've led a team through busy shifts, reconciled high-value transactions to FCA standards, and lifted my sales average from 100% to 120% of target over the last three months.

I'm careful with the details that matter: cash that balances, records that stand up to an audit, and work that matches the brief. In my own time I build software, games and 3D art, which taught me to plan a production, write a clear brief and give feedback that moves the work forward.

Based in
London, moving to Watford
Working
Customer Adviser, VodafoneThree
Before that
Operations Specialist at Wolfo Banking, Team Leader at Pret A Manger
Studying
BSc Computer Science, Southampton Solent University, two days a week
Languages
Ukrainian, Russian, English

Leadership, money and compliance. Where I've been trusted with people, cash and rules.

Team leadership

Team Leader at Pret A Manger for 18 months

  • Promoted from Barista to Team Leader within six months.
  • Led and scheduled the store team, giving out responsibilities by each person's strengths and performance.
  • Trained and developed new team members on our standards and service.
  • Ran opening and closing, and used store performance data to drive improvements.
  • At Wolfo Banking, kept compliance and operations teams aligned across several cross-border workstreams.

Money management

Pret A Manger, Wolfo Banking, VodafoneThree

  • Daily cash reconciliation, stock control and supplier coordination at Pret A Manger.
  • Checked and reconciled high-value B2B fiat-to-crypto transactions at Wolfo Banking, catching discrepancies before they reached clients.
  • Revenue-targeted sales at VodafoneThree, reviewed every month against KPIs with SMART action plans.
  • Built invoicing software that stores every amount in whole pence and blocks any export whose totals don't reconcile.

Regulation and compliance

FCA, GDPR, KYC and AML

  • KYC and AML screening at Wolfo Banking to reduce financial crime risk.
  • Full digital audit trails for every transaction, kept to FCA and international standards.
  • Customer agreements and personal data handled in line with FCA and GDPR rules at VodafoneThree.
  • UK GDPR responsibilities designed into the 808 Bikers CRM from the start, so customer data never leaves the shop.
  • Food safety and compliance standards kept on every shift at Pret A Manger.

Client services. What I'd bring between brand, creative and production.

Relationships and stakeholders

Be the main point of contact and keep every voice aligned, Legal included.

Managed B2B client relationships in Salesforce at Wolfo Banking, kept compliance and operations teams aligned, and hold consultative conversations with customers every day at VodafoneThree.

Briefs and creative feedback

Turn briefs into clear plans and guard the quality of the work.

Wrote the design brief for Lattice and direct the look of my games: I set the style from reference images, review every asset, and give precise feedback on lighting, scale and colour until it matches.

Delivery to deadline and budget

Run the end-to-end process, on time and on budget.

Kept cross-border workstreams on deadline in Jira and Monday.com, and run my own projects in milestones with clear pass-or-fail checks. At Pret I balanced cash, stock and staffing every day.

Reporting and trackers

Keep stakeholders informed and own the trackers.

Write monthly KPI reviews with SMART action plans, and build records people can trust, from Salesforce client records to a CRM whose totals reconcile to the penny.

Experience. Customer-facing roles with growing responsibility.

  1. Jun 2025 to nowLondon

    Customer Adviser, retail sales

    VodafoneThree (formerly Three UK)

    • Raised my average performance from 100% to 120% of target over the last three months.
    • Run consultative conversations that turn each customer's needs into the right mix of handsets, upgrades, broadband, insurance and accessories.
    • Handle customer agreements and personal data in line with FCA and GDPR requirements, checking every order for accuracy.
    • Review my results each month against KPIs (accessories, insurance attach, upgrades, MPO and CV) and set SMART actions to close the gaps.
    • Resolve problems quickly, from retention conversations with customers thinking of leaving to troubleshooting store tech such as barcode scanners on iPads.
  2. Dec 2024 to Jun 2025

    Operations Specialist

    Wolfo Banking

    • Managed B2B client relationships and kept accurate client records in Salesforce.
    • Checked and reconciled high-value fiat-to-crypto transactions, catching discrepancies before they reached clients.
    • Ran KYC and AML screening to reduce financial crime risk, and kept full digital audit trails to FCA and international standards.
    • Kept several cross-border workstreams on deadline in Jira and Monday.com, and kept compliance and operations teams aligned over Slack.
  3. Jan 2023 to Dec 2024London

    Team Leader, previously Barista

    Pret A Manger (Team Leader from Jun 2023)

    • Promoted from Barista to Team Leader within six months.
    • Led and scheduled the store team, giving out responsibilities by each person's strengths and performance.
    • Ran opening and closing, including daily cash reconciliation, stock control and supplier coordination.
    • Trained and developed team members, and kept food safety and compliance standards on every shift.
    • Applied visual merchandising standards and used store performance data to drive improvements.

Work. Software I built for a real business.

808 Bikers Workshop CRM

An offline desktop CRM and invoicing system for a motorcycle repair workshop. Customer and financial data never leaves the shop's own computers.

It tracks customers, bikes and repair jobs from booking to collection, records parts, labour, services and delivery as line items, and produces exports whose totals always reconcile.

  • Electron 33
  • Vite 5
  • Node.js
  • HTML
  • CSS
  • JavaScript
  • SQLite
  • better-sqlite3-multiple-ciphers
  • electron-builder
Data
Encrypted SQLite with linked customers, jobs and line items, and job stages such as awaiting parts and collected.
Security
Fully offline by design, an app PIN stored as a bcrypt hash, database backups and JSON exports.
Accuracy
Every amount held as whole pence. A grand-total checksum blocks any export that doesn't reconcile.
Distribution
Built on Windows and packaged for Mac as separate Apple Silicon and Intel builds, with Gatekeeper quarantine and ad-hoc signing handled.

£12.50is stored as1250p

Every amount is stored as whole pence, so a total can never drift by a rounding error.

Companion tool: offline invoice importer

Turns the workshop's existing Word and PDF invoices into data the CRM can import, with no network access at all.

  1. Word and PDF invoicesThe workshop's existing paperwork
  2. Parsepython-docx and pdfplumber read each invoice table
  3. CheckGrand totals, duplicate customers and ID clashes
  4. ReviewLow-confidence fields are highlighted for a quick fix
  5. ImportClean JSON goes straight into the CRM

Next step explored: two computers on a private local link, with an API in front of SQLite and UK GDPR responsibilities designed in from the start.

Creative projects. Where I write the brief and judge the work.

Night, with my in-game map editor open
Day, mid-wave

Cube Defence

  • 3D game
  • Godot 4.7

A tower-defence game played on a rotating cube, with a different biome on each face. I learned Godot for it from scratch and direct the look, from concept art to feedback on every asset.

Lattice

  • 2D game
  • Godot 4.7.1

A minimalist tower-defence game with a large upgrade tree, aimed at Steam. I wrote the design brief and act as director while AI coding workers build it in milestones.

3D art in Blender

  • Blender 5.2
  • Low-poly

Props, buildings, animated birds and clouds for my games, modelled with an AI assistant to my style and polygon budgets.

Working with AI. New ways of working, with me setting the brief and checking the output.

  • Connected AI to my creative tools

    Set up MCP servers so an AI assistant can work directly in Blender and Godot, and fixed the desktop configuration when an entry dropped out.

  • Designed a multi-agent workflow

    For Lattice: a lead agent plus up to four workers, one directory and git branch per workstream, a shared contract file and pass-or-fail gates on every milestone.

  • Wrote specs for AI coding tools

    The invoice importer was specified test-first, with hard limits: fully offline, money in pence, a checksum on every export, and open questions settled before coding.

  • Managed parallel AI sessions

    When two sessions edited one project, I made re-staging and diffing before every commit the rule, so neither overwrote the other.

  • Kept the work organised

    After a Windows reinstall I reorganised my projects, university work and assets into a documented folder map with a move log and an undo script. My notes live in Obsidian.

Education. Computer Science in two countries.

BSc Computer Science

Southampton Solent University, London campus

September 2024 to now, studying two days a week

  • Programming Fundamentals (C/C++)
  • Data Structures and Algorithms
  • Object-Oriented Programming
  • Operating Systems
  • Computer Architecture
  • Databases
  • Software Engineering

CCNA: Introduction to Networks

Cisco Networking Academy, through Solent University. Completed 19 March 2026.

IP addressing, how Ethernet works at the physical and data link layers, and connecting switches, routers and end devices.

Verify on Credly

Computer Science

Zaporizhzhia National University, Ukraine

3 years

Three years of undergraduate Computer Science.

Secondary education

Zaporizhzhia secondary school, Ukraine

Completed June 2021

Average grade 9 out of 12.

Toolkit. What I used on the work above.

Business and project tools
  • Salesforce
  • Jira
  • Monday.com
  • Slack
  • Microsoft 365
  • Obsidian
Creative tools
  • Blender 5.2
  • Rigging and animation
  • Godot 4
  • glTF
Programming languages
  • JavaScript
  • HTML
  • CSS
  • Python
  • GDScript
  • C
  • C++
  • SQL
Software and data
  • Electron
  • Vite
  • Node.js
  • SQLite (encrypted)
  • Git
  • VS Code
AI tooling
  • Claude Code
  • MCP servers for Godot and Blender
  • Multi-agent workflows
Networking and hardware
  • CCNA: Introduction to Networks
  • Static IP and LAN design
  • Zebra scanners
  • OBS capture

Beyond work.

Interests

  • Game development
  • Fishing
  • Reading
  • Travel
  • Live music
  • Psychology and sales research

What's next

  • A casual puzzle game for Android and iOS in the style of Woodoku and Minesweeper, now in research and planning
  • A local-first smart-home assistant: a Home Assistant hub, local voice and vision, and a segmented home network
  • Finishing my degree and growing into a role where customer understanding meets building software

Let's talk.

Email is the quickest way to reach me.

Email bessrab2200330022@gmail.com
Write an email
Phone 07735 248967
Call

Based in London, moving to Watford.