Photo: cottonbro studio / Pexels
Alpamys Sarzhigitov from Aktobe joined Higgsfield at 19 and, by his own account, became the youngest developer on the team. He got in after a test task that he finished in 3–4 hours instead of the two days he was given (digitalbusiness.kz). Now Alpamys builds AI products.
What happened
Representatives of Higgsfield AI invited Alpamys to a programming contest by email. After he submitted the task, a recruiter got in touch: the company’s engineers had rated his solution highly.
Then came two technical interviews and a final meeting with Almas Zainoldin, head of product and development. Alpamys accepted the job offer and two days later flew from Aktobe to Almaty.
What Alpamys Sarzhigitov does at Higgsfield
On the team of the Kazakhstani startup, Alpamys works on AI agents: programs that carry out a user’s tasks on their own. He handles both the interface and the technical side of the product. It took him one day to get familiar with the work, and then the first assignments began.
“I’m self-taught. I never took any courses. I watched YouTube to see how other people code,” Alpamys said. He believes that working with code on his own gave him his technical foundation.
He earned his first 70 thousand tenge from a website
Before programming, Alpamys did figure skating. He got his first website order after a conversation in the locker room of a sports club. A visitor overheard a chat about a school portal and offered him a job: build a website for his medical laboratory.
Alpamys finished the order in 2–3 weeks and received 70 thousand tenge. According to him, at 16 he was earning 350–400 thousand tenge. Later, income from more complex projects reached 800 thousand tenge a month.
He shut down two startups before getting hired
Alpamys launched Quoku, a platform for preparing to apply to foreign universities. By his account, at least 400 people used it. The non-commercial project lasted about a year: it turned out to be too expensive to keep running.
Next came Snapcore, a service that evaluates developers by their code and contributions to projects on GitHub. With it, Alpamys got into the Antler Berlin startup support program and spent three months in Berlin.
To get investment, he needed to find a co-founder, but that proved difficult. Alpamys returned to Kazakhstan before the program ended and shut down Snapcore. 2–3 weeks later, Higgsfield representatives contacted him.
