Scalefast
Ten years at Scalefast, from employee number six to SVP Software Agency, through its acquisition by ESW in 2022.
Problem
Scalefast was a B2B2C e-commerce platform that took the whole of e-commerce off brands’ hands: not only the store, but payments, stock and warehouse, anti-fraud and compliance. As the company grew from six people to 400, its engineering had to grow with it.What I did
Roles, newest first
- SVP Software Agency –
- VP Engineering –
- Head of Software Development –
- Project Manager, one of the first; later ran the Madrid PM office –
- Full-Stack Web Developer –
- Joined as employee number six.
- One of the first Project Managers; later ran the Madrid PM office. Kept the Square Enix US/EU store able to process 15,000 orders an hour.
- As Head of Software Development, reworked how the team built and shipped code: a common Git workflow on GitLab, standard local and virtual environments for every project, and an internal project for developers to explore new technologies.
- As VP Engineering, led over 50 developers and engineers.
- Led the engineering and SDLC changes for Scalefast’s SOC 2 certification.
- Created the DevOps team and split engineering into Product/Platform and Agency teams.
- As SVP Software Agency, led 40+ developers and 10 project managers. Launched 7 e-commerce stores, redesigned 3 and ran 30+ events.
- As SVP Software Agency, managed a business with over $150M GMV in 2022.
- Took part in the due diligence of the Scalefast–ESW merger (acquired side).
Stack and architecture
- One in-house e-commerce platform with its own API, customised for each client’s store.
- PHP (Laravel) back end and JavaScript/TypeScript (Angular) front end on MySQL (Percona).
- Git workflows on GitLab and, later, a DevOps team running delivery across the company.
Outcome
- The company grew from 6 to 400 employees.
- Acquired in 2022, in a reported ~$300M acquisition by ESW.