Five Questions – with Serge Ovcharenko, Senior Engineer and Sanity CMS Specialist.

For our first installment, let us introduce Serge Ovcharenko, Senior Engineer at Engine Digital. Serge has deep expertise working with the Sanity Content Operating System (known for their headless CMS platform) and Next.js, building scalable, accessible, and high-performance digital experiences. Let’s get into it.

Serge, your chosen tech stack is Next.js and Sanity CMS. You’ve even created the Page Builder Starter Template. What was it that made you choose this tech stack?

The Page Builder Starter Template, Schema UI, came from a real pain point I experienced working with both marketing and development teams. I kept seeing the same cycle: marketing teams would request landing pages, dev teams would build them, then marketing would want changes, and suddenly we're in endless back-and-forth cycles that slow everyone down. I wanted to solve this by giving marketing teams running on Sanity the control they need to build landing pages faster, without requiring developer involvement for every small change.

The key was creating a system where developers and designers could build a collection of robust, tested UI components once, and then marketing could assemble them into pages without breaking anything. This is fundamentally different from traditional solutions like WordPress themes or Webflow, where marketing teams can easily break the entire website by adding complex CSS or making structural changes they don't fully understand. With WordPress, I've seen too many sites break after theme updates or plugin conflicts. With Webflow, teams often run into issues where custom CSS breaks layouts or where updates cause unexpected styling problems.

My approach with Next.js and Sanity eliminates these risks. Marketing gets a simple, controlled environment where they have access to pre-approved components. No more broken pages, no more emergency fixes, just clean, fast page creation.

Sanity has a lot of value to offer brands investing into content, but what are some of the less known benefits to a business considering migrating to Sanity?

One of the most underrated advantages of migrating to Sanity is how much operational overhead it removes from both development and content teams. Real-time collaboration and structured content aren’t just “nice to have” features – this fundamentally changes how teams work together.

Marketing can assemble and update landing pages using a curated set of components, without risk of breaking layouts or introducing technical debt. This is a huge step up from other solutions where too much flexibility can often lead to inconsistencies or even broken end user experiences.

For me as a developer, the real game-changer is Sanity’s fully managed infrastructure. Too often, teams underestimate the long-term burden of running their own CMS with a custom database. It’s not just about spinning up a server – suddenly you’re responsible for uptime, scaling, backups, security patches, and compliance. That’s a massive distraction from actually shipping product features.

Sanity abstracts all of that away. You get a globally distributed, secure, and auto-scaling backend with daily backups and robust migration tools. No more late-night database restores, no more worrying about schema drift, and no need to build out DevOps pipelines just to keep your CMS running. The time and risk you save here is significant.

The bottom line: Sanity lets developers focus on delivering value, not babysitting infrastructure. You get a modern, API-first platform that’s ready for whatever comes next, whether that’s a new front-end framework, a mobile app, or integration with third-party services. For teams that value speed, stability, and scalability, that’s going to be a huge win.

For an organization evaluating different content management solutions, what are some of the more important technical considerations they should keep in mind?

For teams evaluating CMS options, there’s a lot to consider, but I recommend prioritizing these technical fundamentals:

API-First vs. Monolithic Lock-In

Many CMS platforms tightly couple content to a single presentation layer, making it difficult to adapt as new channels emerge. A true headless CMS, like Sanity, exposes content through flexible APIs so content is truly portable and easy to deliver across any channel, whether it’s today’s website, tomorrow’s AR experience, your mobile app, or in-store screens. This means your brand stays consistent and adaptable, allowing you to reach audiences wherever they are, without being boxed in by legacy technology.

Content Modeling Flexibility

With Sanity, you can define strict validation rules while still giving marketing teams the freedom to experiment and iterate quickly. Its schema validation ensures content stays structured and consistent, reducing errors and protecting brand integrity while its portable text format keeps rich text fields clean and flexible, so marketers aren’t locked into rigid templates or forced to wrestle with messy HTML. This means faster content updates, more creative control, and a smoother path from idea to live experience without compromising on quality.

Performance by Design

When evaluating a CMS, consider support for modern performance optimization out of the box. For example, Sanity works seamlessly with Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) and Sanity’s live content updates integrate directly with Next.js tag-based revalidation, enabling content updates to appear instantly without the need for manual cache purges. Additionally, Sanity’s asset optimization pipelines automatically handle image format conversion and global CDN delivery. This means your site stays fast, responsive, and up-to-date, giving visitors a smooth experience while minimizing manual overhead for your team.

Zero-Trust Security Posture

Security should be a core consideration when choosing a CMS, and Sanity also has this well covered offering role-based access control to manage who can edit or publish content, audit logs to track changes, and SOC 2 compliance to meet rigorous security standards. With Sanity, teams can move faster and more confidently, knowing that content integrity and brand trust are protected at every level. Self-hosted solutions often become security liabilities without dedicated DevOps oversight.

Extensibility Without Fragility

A strong CMS should make it easy to extend and customize functionality without introducing unnecessary complexity or risk. Sanity enables this through native support for serverless functions, so you can run custom logic, automate workflows, and integrate external services directly on its managed infrastructure without relying on plugins or maintaining additional backend code. It also integrates with CI/CD pipelines for schema migrations and supports version control over content models. This means teams can move faster, innovate more easily, and keep content stable and adaptable as business needs change.

Developer Velocity Multipliers

If time to market matters, then speed and flexibility are going to be critical when launching or evolving a digital experience. Sanity accelerates developer workflows by allowing new content types to be created in minutes. This means teams can quickly respond to new opportunities or changing marketing needs without getting bogged down in complex configurations often required by traditional systems. By reducing technical friction, Sanity helps speed up the process so content can launch faster.

The Hidden Cost of “Flexible” Databases

Building and managing your own database stack can seem appealing at first, but it often introduces challenges like complex schema migrations, inefficient N+1 queries in API responses, and the need for constant manual index optimization. Sanity’s managed document store eliminates these operational headaches while still offering the flexibility developers expect, but without the maintenance burden. With features like daily backups, robust migration tools, and built-in scalability, teams can focus on delivering great experiences, not managing infrastructure behind the scenes.

How are you seeing AI impacting how content is managed? What are you most excited about when it comes to AI and CMS?

AI is rapidly changing how we manage content, and Sanity is leading with practical, developer-friendly tools. Sanity AI Assist brings LLM-powered automation right into the Studio, letting teams automate repetitive tasks like metadata generation, translation, and content summarization - all using reusable, document-aware instructions that actually understand your schema. This means less manual busywork and more time spent on real engineering and strategy.

Sanity Canvas is another big leap: it’s a collaborative, distraction-free writing space with AI “ghostwriting” built in. Teams can brainstorm, draft, and then instantly structure content to fit existing models - no more copy-paste or manual mapping. Both tools are deeply integrated, so you get real AI augmentation, not just isolated features. For me, the most exciting part is how these tools let developers and content teams move faster together, without sacrificing structure or quality.

Beyond AI, what other new or emerging technologies are you interested in that our clients know about?

We’re always exploring new ways to extend our capabilities to deliver better experiences for our clients. Right now these are a few of the emerging technologies we’re spending time exploring.

Component-Driven UI and Design Systems

The shift toward reusable, framework-agnostic UI components like shadcn/ui is changing how we approach front-end development. Using modular components lets us build faster and create a more unified user experience. For clients, this means brand consistency and increased speed-to-market become much easier to achieve.

Edge Computing & Serverless

With platforms like Vercel and Cloudflare Workers, we can now run logic and serve content much closer to users which improves performance and reliability. This is especially important when we’re building for a global audience, where latency and downtime can negatively affect engagement.

Sustainability and Performance

There’s a growing emphasis on building lighter, more energy-efficient websites. By optimizing code, reducing unused scripts, and minimizing API calls, we not only improve site speed but also lower the environmental footprint of digital experiences. For brands, this aligns with broader sustainability commitments while enhancing user satisfaction.

No-Code/Low-Code Tools

No-code and low-code platforms are opening up new opportunities for rapid iteration. These tools allow non-developers to prototype and build simple interfaces, speeding up experimentation and reducing reliance on engineering resources. For clients, this means faster experimentation, fewer engineering bottlenecks, and greater agility.

If you’re interested to learn more about Sanity, Next.js, or how these technologies can help you power a more comprehensive approach to content, reach out to us or connect with Serge on LinkedIn.