Natalja Logvinenko joined Wallester in August 2021 as an Onboarding Client Manager. She became Operations Specialist a year later, and in November 2023 was appointed Operations Department Team Lead, a role she’s held for close to three years. Before Wallester, she worked in hospitality, airport ground handling, and customer service roles across different industries, and originally trained in graphic design.
In this interview, Natalja talks about her path into fintech operations, what the operations function does at Wallester day to day, and how the team has changed as the company has scaled.
Interviewer:You joined Wallester in August 2021 as an Onboarding Client Manager, and you’re now Operations Department Team Lead. For people outside the company, what does the operations team do?
Natalja: We’re one of the teams keeping the whole system running smoothly. We know the technical and product sides of everything we do, whether it’s Wallester White-Label or Wallester Business. Since we work directly in the system every single day and stay in constant contact with our clients and partners, we’re basically the eyes and ears of the company. We act as their main emergency contact when urgent issues arise.
Clients and partners come to us with any kind of question, and we need to have the answer, from a simple question about a card to a complex payment investigation. On top of that, we act as an internal knowledge hub, helping other teams across the company with product or technical questions. We also serve as the main bridge between business departments and IT: filtering issues, validating potential bugs in the system, and making sure everything operational runs without a hitch.
Interviewer: Before Wallester, you worked in hospitality, airport ground handling, and customer service roles across different industries. How did that path lead you into fintech operations?
Natalja: I worked in very different industries before, so when I joined Wallester, I didn’t have a massive background in fintech.
Working directly with people in high-pressure environments, hospitality, restaurants, airports, and other B2B companies, taught me the most important foundational skills: how to handle serious stress, how to multitask, and how to pay attention to the smallest details.
At Wallester, those skills went to a completely new level. Starting in onboarding gave me a solid baseline to understand our product inside out, and once you have that baseline, if you’re open to learning, everything else becomes a bit easier.
Interviewer: You originally trained in graphic design. Does that background show up anywhere in how you approach operational processes?
Natalja: Graphic design is a finished chapter for me, though art and drawing are still my hobbies when I want to create something for myself.
But studying abroad gave me something much bigger: independence and a high tolerance for stress. Moving to a new country completely on my own meant building a brand-new life in an entirely unknown environment from scratch. That’s where I really developed my adaptability, problem-solving skills, and resilience.
As for design itself, it trained my eye for detail and structure. When you design, you try to make complex things look clean and easy to navigate. I treat operational processes the same way: I try to make them clear, intuitive, and efficient.
Interviewer: You moved from Onboarding Client Manager to Operations Specialist within about a year. What changed in your day-to-day work at that stage?
Natalja: At that stage, we were building the Operations and Support department from scratch. The processes, the team, the documentation, everything had to be created from zero. So I was learning and training others at the same time.
Around then, we launched Wallester Business, and it started growing rapidly. I tried to dive into every detail. Since I have a pretty good memory, that gave me a strong advantage, but I had to turn everything I learned into clear processes for the team right away. You can’t explain something to others if you don’t fully understand it yourself. It was a massive learning curve.
Interviewer: You became Team Lead in November 2023. What was the biggest shift moving from doing the operational work yourself to leading the people who do it?
Natalja: The hardest part was delegation. I’m a big perfectionist at work, so at first it was tough to trust others with tasks. It always felt like doing it myself would be faster and easier. But then I realised: if I do everything myself, I’m blocking my team’s growth. I had to learn to step back, trust them, and only step in during real emergencies.
Another shift was handling our rapid growth. The company grew so fast that I had to remind myself that new joiners weren’t here from day one. They don’t know the full backstory, or have the same baseline at this stage.
Interviewer: Wallester has grown very quickly over the past few years. What does that growth look like from inside operations, and where does the pressure show up first?
Natalja: From the inside, it felt like moving at lightning speed. When Wallester Business took off, the volumes just kept growing and growing. Naturally, the pressure hits the first line of support first: suddenly you have a massive wave of chats, tickets, and calls.
For operations, the real challenge is that pressure always shows up where a process isn’t fully structured yet. The key is to catch those moments right when they first appear, before they turn into chaos that takes twice as long to fix. It really tests how fast you can adapt and organise a dynamic mess into a working system.
Interviewer: What’s a process or system your team has had to rebuild or rethink as the company scaled?
Natalja: Honestly, we’re constantly rebuilding and optimising as we grow. A big focus for us has been automation and task distribution. We redesigned how internal requests are submitted to us, making sure we get all the necessary information upfront so we can resolve issues much faster.
We also introduced smart automation into our daily workflows, things like automated checklists and reminders built directly into our tasks. When you handle huge volumes, keeping everything in your head is impossible, so we build systems that do the remembering for us instead.
Interviewer: What’s the hardest kind of operational problem to catch, the kind that doesn’t show up on a dashboard until it’s already an issue?
Natalja: The hardest problems to catch are the ones hiding inside processes that look like they work fine. Sometimes everything looks great, and the final result gets delivered. But look closely, and you realise your team is doing five unnecessary manual steps just to get there. Employees get used to these workarounds, so they don’t complain. But if you don’t spot those inefficient steps early and automate or streamline them, they will slow you down or break the moment volume doubles.
Interviewer: What does a good day look like for your team, and what does a bad one look like?
Natalja: A good day is a day with zero incidents. Anyone in tech or operations will relate to that.
But a really great day is one where we have time to stop dealing with urgent issues, take a breath, and focus on improving a process for the future without any rush.
A bad day is when several high-priority issues hit at the exact same second. Even on those days, our team spirit saves us. We have a great team: we support each other, we know when to speed up, and most importantly, we laugh a lot. Our laughter probably sounds a bit hysterical to outsiders sometimes, but that humour and mutual support give us the few seconds we need to reset and stay sharp during high-stress moments.
Interviewer: What would you tell someone joining an operations team at a fast-growing fintech, something you wish you’d known five years ago?
Natalja: I’d give them three simple rules.
- Document as you go. If you do a task twice, write down the steps. Good documentation saves you and your team hundreds of hours later.
- Don’t rely only on your memory. Fintech moves too fast and task volumes are too large. Use your tools, set system reminders, and log everything.
- Look beyond your own corner. Don’t just learn your narrow responsibilities. Try to understand how the whole product works, how neighbouring teams operate, and how the pieces fit together. Curiosity is what makes you grow insanely fast.
Interviewer: Outside of work, what do you spend your time on?
Natalja: For me, it’s all about balance. Morning workouts at the gym help restart my brain and get me energised for the day.
In the evenings, gaming, whether it’s PS4 or board games with friends, helps me completely switch off and unwind. And whenever I get the chance, I love to travel and explore new places.
