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CTO | VP Engineering

CTO | VP Engineering

Executive technology leader specialising in platform strategy, systems leadership, and organisational design.
Proven track record restoring leverage in complex technology organisations by aligning engineering, product, and business systems.

Over three decades of engineering leadership across SaaS, platform, data, and regulated environments. Known for rebuilding delivery foundations, reducing structural drag, and turning technical complexity into strategic clarity. Comfortable operating at executive level, shaping long-term technical direction while ensuring execution remains grounded, measurable, and accountable.

Author of The Leadership Chronicles, including An Evolution for a Revolution, Gears, Triggers and Systems, and Foundations of Excellence — a body of work focused on systems thinking, craftsmanship, and durable excellence in modern technology organisations.

Core Expertise

  • Technology & Platform Strategy
  • Systems Leadership & Organisational Design
  • Engineering Operating Models & Team Topologies
  • Platform-as-a-Product & Developer Experience
  • Scaling Delivery Systems & Reducing Organisational Drag
  • Executive Alignment, Decision-Making & Trade-offs
  • Cost, Risk, Reliability & Performance Management
  • Platform & Data Transformations (SaaS, B2B / B2C)
  • Regulatory & Compliance-Aware Engineering (SOC2, PII)

Experience

Veriff

Director of Engineering (Platform)
January 2025 – Present

Brought in by the CPTO to reset platform strategy and restore delivery leverage across core capabilities, shifting the organisation from infrastructure-centric execution to platform-as-a-product thinking.

  • Held accountability for platform scope, ownership boundaries, and operating model across ~40 engineers, restoring clarity, autonomy, and delivery leverage at scale.
  • Led coordinated platform and organisational changes, redefining team missions and responsibilities to reduce organisational friction and improve delivery predictability.
  • Re-architected platform responsibilities to align with business growth, improving developer experience while balancing speed, reliability, and cost constraints.
  • Introduced a pragmatic platform maturity model to guide team resets, close feedback loops, and reduce structural drag without adding process overhead.
  • Partnered closely with product and executive leadership to embed long-term systems thinking and lay foundations for sustainable product velocity.

ShipMonk

Director of Engineering | Platform (Contract)
April 2024 – October 2024

Engaged on a time-bound mandate to stabilise platform delivery, reduce operational toil, and restore engineering leverage during a period of high operational pressure.

  • Streamlined operating models across four operational teams (~25 engineers), reducing delivery toil by approximately 50% and restoring focus on value-generating work.
  • Rebooted data and reliability practices, reintroducing DORA metrics and SLO-based alerting to improve predictability and transparency.
  • Improved CI/CD and delivery foundations, recovering approximately 3% engineering capacity across a 70-engineer organisation and increasing overall operational efficiency by ~20%.
  • Reduced dependency on central SRE and fulfilment centre support by redesigning platform responsibilities and self-service capabilities.

NewStore GmbH

Director of Engineering | Platform
February 2022 – April 2024

Brought in to scale and stabilise a rapidly growing omnichannel SaaS platform, addressing cost, reliability, and organisational fragmentation while enabling international expansion under regulatory constraints.

  • Led the restructuring of five platform and operational teams (~30 engineers), clarifying ownership and simplifying operating models to restore predictable delivery.
  • Drove a platform modernisation effort reducing infrastructure costs by ~40% and transaction costs by ~70%, directly improving unit economics.
  • Rebuilt integration and extensibility foundations, accelerating systems integrator onboarding from months to weeks and enabling MACH-aligned partner ecosystems.
  • Expanded the platform across 10+ countries with complex fiscal, hardware, and regulatory requirements, ensuring operational reliability and successful annual SOC 2 renewals.

HelloFresh

Director of Engineering | Data
November 2020 – February 2022

Mandated to transform fragmented operational data teams into a coherent data platform, increasing decision leverage for the business while improving reliability, governance, and developer experience.

  • Reorganised three data squads (~20 engineers) into a platform-oriented operating model, enabling stream-aligned teams to publish and consume trusted data products.
  • Delivered a PII-compliant Data Mesh ecosystem, balancing regulatory requirements with speed and enabling multi-million-dollar operational and strategic decision-making.
  • Established self-service data platform capabilities (ingestion, transformation, query engines, orchestration) for non-data teams.
  • Introduced DORA metrics and SLO-based alerting within the data ecosystem to improve predictability, incident response, and continuous improvement.

Frontier Car Group (OLX)

Director of Engineering
January 2020 – July 2020

Brought in during a post-merger phase to stabilise delivery, restore execution cadence, and realign cross-functional teams.

  • Re-established effective operating models across three cross-functional teams (~30 engineers), improving DORA metrics and delivery predictability.
  • Recovered daily delivery cadence for core marketplace domains.
  • Accelerated integration of local teams following acquisition by OLX, reducing organisational friction across geographies.

Hudson’s Bay Company

Engineering Manager
November 2018 – January 2020

  • Founded and delivered the Cart domain within one quarter, significantly improving e-commerce capability.
  • Built and led a high-performing engineering team delivering full domains in under three months.
  • Delivered Salesforce-to-legacy middleware, coordinating five teams (~15 engineers) across complex enterprise constraints.

Amazon

Tech Lead
May 2018 – October 2018

  • Contributed to the maintenance and evolution of global monitoring infrastructure (StreamQuery) supporting large-scale AWS fleets.
  • Operated within Amazon’s high-bar engineering culture, reinforcing disciplined operational practices and large-scale systems awareness.

De Persgroep Nederland (Autotrack)

Engineering Manager
June 2016 – May 2018

  • Built and scaled cross-functional teams (~15 engineers), eliminating reliance on external consultants.
  • Reduced infrastructure costs by ~50% and increased platform SLA from 95% to 99.5%.
  • Delivered a major platform migration with zero downtime and enabled high-frequency delivery (LTTC < 1 day).

Early Career & Foundations — Enterprise, Telecom & SaaS

Senior Engineer / Technical Lead / CTO · 1998 – 2016

  • Senior Engineer / Technical Lead across regulated and large-scale environments (Thales, BNP, Bouygues Telecom, Infovista, Irdeto, Eligotech).
  • CTO & Co-Founder at Coordialis, delivering an AFNOR-normalised address and phone data service and owning product and delivery end to end.
  • Software Engineer roles across finance, telecom, and enterprise software, building strong engineering fundamentals and systems awareness.

Education

INSA Toulouse

  • PhD in Applied Physics
  • Engineer in Physics

Languages

  • French (native)
  • English (fluent)
  • Spanish (proficient)

Certifications

  • SCM Basics — APICS
  • Certified Scrum Master — Scrum Alliance
  • ISTQB Certified Tester (Foundation Level)