In recent years, education providers have found it increasingly difficult to manage their processes. Student numbers continue to grow, curricula require faster updates, many organizations operate across multiple cities, and the shift to online learning has added another layer of complexity. As a result, familiar tools like Google Sheets and disconnected services are no longer sufficient: information gets lost, formulas break, and the administrative workload increases. 

We spoke with Aleksandr Burmistrov, CTO of Piogroup and the creator of the DrivEd LMS, which is already used by education providers across the United States, Europe, and Australia, about how these challenges play out in practice and what measures actually help organizations operate in a more sustainable way. 

Aleksandr, what technological challenges are education providers facing today, and how do your projects at Piogroup address them? 

The main challenge for private learning centers today is that their processes are spread across multiple tools. Spreadsheets, chats, and third-party services all operate independently, without a unified structure. As the number of students grows, this leads to errors and an increasing reliance on manual work. 

At Piogroup, we address this challenge through the DrivEd LMS. It is a platform that allows education providers to bring the entire learning process into one place — from data management to communication. It is built to handle high workloads and supports a wide range of formats, including corporate programs, SAT prep, SLP prep, and others. 

The system is currently used by education networks across the United States, Australia, and Europe. They operate under different learning models, which is why many architectural decisions are driven by real-world practice. This approach allows DrivEd to remain stable even as data volumes and student numbers grow rapidly. 

You have worked as an instructor for many years and continue to run your own programming courses. How has your teaching experience shaped your approach as an engineer and as a CTO?

Teaching gave me a practical understanding of how the learning process actually works — what slows students down, where I, as an instructor, spend time on manual tasks, and what directly affects learning outcomes. This helped me quickly identify which product features are truly necessary and which ones only add unnecessary complexity. 

Alongside my work at the company, I continue to run my own programming courses. This allows me to regularly interact with students and see where difficulties arise in the learning process and how the platform impacts overall effectiveness. This kind of firsthand observation makes it easier to identify bottlenecks, which are later taken into account in product decisions. 

This experience also directly influences my work as a CTO. I focus on transparency in team processes, and we regularly discuss architectural decisions and real-world cases to avoid abstraction and unnecessary complexity. In essence, my background has become the foundation both for system design and for my approach to mentorship. 

Your courses are quite unique, as JetBrains provides educational licenses for your students. What role do such partnerships and the use of professional tools play in improving education quality, especially in programming, where technologies evolve very quickly? 

Such partnerships are highly significant. When I was studying, I learned some programming languages on my own and, not knowing what tools were best to use, I wrote code in Windows Notepad. I think many people are familiar with it. Comparing those first steps in Notepad to working in a professional development environment today is not just a matter of difference — it is an entirely different level. 

Giving students immediate access to professional tools prepares them for real-world work from the very beginning. Another important point is that when I can rely on stable, powerful software, I spend less time dealing with technical issues and more time teaching. As a result, we reduce 

the gap between the academic environment and the realities of the IT market, making the learning process more effective and relevant. 

The projects you are working on have already gained international recognition. For example, MEG Languages, which uses DrivEd, reached the finals of the EdTech Awards 2024, while Ear Academy won the Kids Judge Bett Award at BETT 2025, one of the key EdTech exhibitions. Do you see these achievements of your clients as indicative? 

Undoubtedly, awards received by organizations using our solutions serve as a clear indicator of the quality and effectiveness of our work. 

I see these achievements not as the merit of one side alone, but as confirmation that the chosen architectural decisions allow clients to build sustainable and scalable education products. The awards go to them, but the technological foundation these solutions run on is developed within

Piogroup, and for me this is an important indicator of the quality of both my team’s work and my own work as their leader. 

You have noted that professional communities have become an important source of expertise for you, and that you recently joined a large international association, Hackathon Raptors. What does this give you? 

Membership in professional communities makes it possible to work alongside strong engineers and validate my decisions against the practices of other specialists. Hackathon Raptors, for example, accepts only developers with proven experience, including engineers from companies such as Amazon and Microsoft. 

Such an environment and the exchange of experience with leading specialists in their fields make it possible to see different approaches and apply this knowledge in EdTech projects, where requirements for stability and scalability are especially high. 

Which areas are you currently developing at Piogroup, and how are new technologies, including AI, influencing your solutions? 

We have always developed multiple directions in parallel. It is a continuous research process focused on identifying what directly impacts the efficiency of learning processes. The primary areas include optimizing routine operations related to content preparation, assessment, and the processing of large volumes of educational data. Here, automation alone is not enough — proper data organization is essential so that education providers can scale their operations without disruptions. 

New technologies, including AI, are gradually becoming part of these solutions. We apply them where there are repetitive tasks and large volumes of data. AI helps speed up content preparation and reduce the workload for instructors, but it is integrated into the architecture carefully, without adding unnecessary complexity. In scenarios where AI provides real practical value, it becomes an additional layer of efficiency rather than a standalone feature implemented for the sake of the technology itself. 

And which technological challenges do you consider the highest priority for EdTech in the coming years? 

For EdTech in the coming years, the key priorities will remain process standardization, architectural resilience, and the proper integration of AI. Platforms must be able to handle data growth and operate with the same level of stability across different learning models. 

Within my area of responsibility is ensuring these principles at the architectural level of DrivEd. We develop the system so that it can operate across different countries and handle increasing loads, while new features are introduced only where they genuinely simplify processes. This approach allows us to maintain system stability and adapt to changing market requirements.