Riga, Latvia · UTC+2/+3 · fully remote

Maksims
Burcenko

AI project manager

Twenty years getting people who do not report to me to change a process that does not work — in a bank, in a municipal company I directed, and for seven years in national public administration. Since 2025 I build and run my own AI agent systems in daily production.

Download CV (PDF) maksims.burcenko@gmail.com +371 29225571

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In numbers

20+years of professional delivery — banking, municipal government, national administration
7years leading ICT projects and development teams
9person IT department led at the National Health Service of Latvia
3external institutions — Prosecutor's Office, KNAB, Court Administration — in a working group I founded and chaired; none reported to me
4years running national ICT programmes remotely — my whole 2021–2025 role, not an arrangement I am asking to try
3countries lived and worked in outside Latvia, English as the working language
2025the year I started running my own AI agent systems in daily production

These are volume figures, and they are true. I do not publish percentage improvements for my AI work, because I do not have measured before-and-after numbers I am willing to state as fact.

Summary

I am a project manager. For twenty years my job has been to take a process that does not work, find out why, and get people who do not report to me to change it. Since 2025 I have built and operated my own fleet of AI agents in daily production use. That is not a hobby beside the work; it is the same work with better tools, and it is the reason I now start from the process rather than the software.

AI adoption does not fail because the tool is bad. It fails because the staff do not use it.

Current practice · 2025 — present

AI agents and process automation

Independent practice, run solo and unsupervised — which is also the honest proof that I work remotely without someone standing over me.

Agent fleet in daily use

Task automation, drafting, monitoring, reporting and handoff — built, operated and owned end to end.

Skills files

I author and iterate the instructions that define how agents behave, and rewrite them when real usage proves the instruction was wrong.

LLMs through APIs

Claude and Gemini. Model choice per task, weighed against cost and output quality — including version changes and failure scenarios, not the assumption that one model stays available forever.

Data residence

Local database, local memory layer. Every external call is a deliberate choice, not a default.

MCP servers and tool access

Connecting agents to the systems they need — browser control, databases, scheduled jobs — and troubleshooting when the connection is the problem.

Written by default

Prompt and SOP engineering, so a workflow can be repeated by someone who did not build it.

Governance

Three levels, set before an agent runs

An agent without a boundary is not an efficiency; it is an incident waiting for a date. The boundary is written first, not after the first mistake.

Allowed outright

Tools the agent may use on its own — reading, searching, drafting, local processing. Reversible work inside my own systems.

Requires human approval

Anything that leaves the machine, costs money, or cannot be undone — publishing, sending, external calls, deletions. The agent prepares; a person releases.

Forbidden

Credentials, financial transactions, destructive operations, and any action a person did not ask for. No exception is granted at runtime by the agent itself.

A solution that worked last month can quietly break after the next model release. That is why checks get re-run after a model, prompt or data change — silent breakage is the normal failure mode, not the rare one.

How I got here

AI, dated and unrounded

  1. 2024Introduced AI tools into daily operations at the Competition Council — drafting, summarisation, analysis. Completed "AI methods for everyday work" at the State Administration School of Latvia.
  2. 2025Started building and running my own agents rather than using someone else's product.
  3. 2026"AI tools and agents in daily work and business" — timefor.ai, 29 hours, certificate.

I started my career in a bank, so the demands of a regulated environment are not new to me — including a calm expectation that AI adoption there moves slower than it does in a demo.

Experience

IT Project Manager

Competition Council of Latvia, Riga

2021 — 2025

  • Worked remotely throughout those four years. It started because the pandemic made on-site work impossible, and it stayed that way. Everything below was delivered that way — the programmes, the reporting, the working group.
  • Owned ICT development programmes from business requirements through rollout and testing, coordinating 10–12 contributors across business owners, analysts and developers.
  • Initiated adoption of E-lieta, the national e-case platform: authored the development concept and defended it before the national oversight committee, where it was accepted.
  • Founded and chaired a cross-agency working group — Prosecutor's Office, Corruption Prevention Bureau (KNAB), Court Administration, alongside my own institution. None of those people reported to me, and participation was voluntary.
  • Held priorities steady against competing demands; reported progress, budget execution and risk to executive leadership.
  • Authored an EU support programme application and organised a peer-exchange visit to Finland.

Head of IT Development Department

National Health Service of Latvia, Riga

2018 — 2019

  • Led a 9-person IT team developing the national E-health information system.
  • Managed the ICT project portfolio; planned resources, methodology and rollout across institutions.

Warehouse supervisor; production operator

Templine (Kettering); Rigid Containers Ltd (Desborough), United Kingdom

2016 — 2018

  • I worked in manufacturing in England to support my family, and in those same years earned ILM Level 3, Team Leader / Manager (EQV (UK) Ltd) in the evenings.
  • A few months after returning I was leading a nine-person IT department. I do not hide this period, because it explains why learning a new field from zero is ordinary work for me rather than an exception.

Co-founder, board member, head of marketing and sales

SIA Psaiho.lv, Riga

2011 — 2015

  • Co-founded the company and served on its board as a part-owner.
  • Ran marketing and sales: customer acquisition, and maintaining and improving service quality.

Director, board member

PSIA Jurmalas Attistibas Projekti, Jurmala

2010 — 2014

  • Director of a municipally owned company: accountable to the owner for operations, budget and reporting.
  • Worked under municipal oversight — justifying decisions and defending them in a political environment.

Project Manager

SIA Sintegra, Microsoft Gold Partner, Riga

2008 — 2009

  • Delivered IT implementation projects in the private technology sector: client requirements, rollout planning and communication.

Securities and FX settlement specialist; earlier customer service and cash desk

AS SEB banka, Riga

2005 — 2008

  • Back-office processing of securities and currency transactions in a regulated financial environment.
  • Before that, customer service and cash desk duties — the first three years of my working life were spent facing customers directly.

2019–2021 is a deliberate gap: parental leave after my elder daughter was born. I state it rather than let a reader guess.

Working across borders

Four years remote inside an institution

My entire 2021–2025 role at the Competition Council was worked remotely. It began because the pandemic made on-site work impossible and simply stayed that way. Every line in my delivery record from those years — the programmes, the budget reporting, the cross-agency working group — was produced remotely.

Remote and unsupervised

Since 2025 I have run an independent practice solo: my own priorities, my own deadlines, my own systems. No one checks whether I started.

English as working language

Lived and worked in three countries outside Latvia — United States (2003), New Zealand (2010), United Kingdom (2016–2018). ILM Level 3 taught and assessed in English.

People who don't report to me

Founded and chaired a cross-agency working group of volunteers with no reporting line to me; seven years coordinating ministries, courts, prosecution and anti-corruption bodies.

Contract and self-employment

Company director and board member; comfortable operating as a B2B contractor with my own invoicing and reporting.

Time-zone overlap

Riga, UTC+2/+3. An afternoon-to-evening shift overlapping US Eastern hours is workable.

Software product organisations

To learn. My operational depth is public-sector and services delivery, not a software product company. I would trace the process end to end before telling anyone how it should run.

Education & certification