Skills programme architect · AI competency assessment
Programmes where you can see what people actually learned.
I design and deliver national-scale skills competitions, hackathons and accelerators, and build the AI competency-assessment infrastructure around them. In the WorldSkills movement I built the partner system on the road to Kazan 2019, the largest WorldSkills Competition in history. Since 2023 I have run assessment and delivery for programmes of up to 3,800 participants.
- 1,354
- competitors from 63 countries at WorldSkills Kazan 2019
- 3,800+
- participants assessed against 25 competencies in one 9-day intensive
- 12
- national hackathons produced
- 5 min
- from the last pitch to the signed jury report
What I do
Three things, usually together
Programme architecture
Competitions, hackathons and accelerators for hundreds or thousands of people: format, roles, participant diagnostics, team building, day-by-day scenario and the technical venue.
Competition delivery
Expert and jury workflows, scoring rules that survive appeals, reports ready the same evening, live streaming across halls and regions.
AI competency assessment
Models that support human experts rather than replace them: assessment briefs for the jury, participant competency profiles, transcription and analysis of every session. Runs on the client's own servers.
Selected work
Where this has been tested
-
2016–2019
WorldSkills Kazan 2019, the largest WorldSkills Competition ever held
Architect of the partner system
1,354 competitors · 63 countries · 56 skills · ~270,000 visitors
A world championship of this size is built over years: national competitions, an expert community, partners who supply equipment and venues. My part was the partner system. Across three national competitions I brought in RUB 80 million in sponsorship and 150+ new partners, and set up the CRM that kept those relationships out of individual inboxes.
I also worked on equipping the national team for the WorldSkills Competition in Abu Dhabi, so I have seen a Gulf mega-event from the inside.
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July 2025
Competency assessment and knowledge capture for a national innovation intensive
Lead of the methodology track
3,800+ participants · 88 regions · 25 competencies · 156 transcripts
A nine-day intensive with a dedicated track on unmanned aerial systems. I designed the assessment methodology for 25 competencies from scratch and ran a 30-person team that recorded, transcribed and analysed the programme on site, on the client's own infrastructure.
Output: a reusable assessment package for 25 competencies, 700+ GB of recorded content processed locally, and the basis for an on-premise event-intelligence product.
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September 2025
Regional education and hackathon programme
Lead methodologist
759 invited · 400+ active · 77 regions · 14 challenges
Joined as technical director and ended up redesigning the content of the IT track. Five diagnostics before day one (Big Five, Belbin, Budner, Thomas–Kilmann, IT skills) with 87–97% coverage, automated team matching, and two-layer assessment so that strong newcomers were not lost from the talent pool.
Every participant left with a digital competency profile, and the client kept a working methodology.
-
2026
Hackathon assessment platform, tested in a regional and a corporate hackathon
Founder and product lead
22 teams · 374 scores · 20 judges · 6 challenges
Built during a regional hackathon where I was a technical judge, then deployed at a corporate hackathon with six parallel challenges and 20 judges. Mobile QR scoring for judges, per-judge PDF sheets, a private Git server with automatic submission lock, and screens synchronised across five halls.
AI prepares checklists for the jury but has zero weight in the ranking: we measured its agreement with human judges first (0.74 vs 0.81–0.90 between judges).
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2023–present
Series of 12 national hackathons
Head of broadcast and hybrid delivery
12 hackathons · up to 30 people per event
Hybrid production for a national hackathon series: online checkpoints, live links with remote speakers, opening and closing ceremonies, one venue and a remote audience in sync.
About
Background
Based in Moscow, travel regularly. 17+ years delivering large programmes for people. Started as an IT engineer (Ernst & Young, IKEA, Ogilvy & Mather), then IT director for venues and ceremonies of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics and for the Eastern Economic Forum 2015.
2016–2018: partner system for the WorldSkills movement. 2018–2019: managing director of an IT integrator with 50+ staff, profit doubled in two years. 2019–2023: product owner in a national R&D lab on data-driven human development, where we ran competency diagnostics and training for 3,900 university teachers. Since 2023: independent programme architect; since 2025 founder of EdTechAgent, a set of on-premise AI tools for education and events.
Languages: Russian (native), English (fluent, comfortable in calls and written proposals). Open to subcontracting with programme and assessment providers.
Contact
Talk about a programme or an assessment
If you are preparing a competition, hackathon, accelerator or training programme and need to know what participants can do at the end of it, write to me. The first call is free.
- hello@edtechagent.ru
- e-popov
- Telegram
- @ealpopov