CV / Resume

Operator-grade two-page export for CTO and VP Engineering roles.

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Zi Makki

CTO / VP Engineering / Head of Engineering

Engineering leader and operator who builds the system around the product: teams, delivery operations, and the software or embedded stack underneath. Most recently scaled Wildflower into Barcelona's largest last-mile delivery operation while building an autonomous smart-locker platform in-house. Earlier work spans turnarounds, zero-to-one market launches, and high-throughput platform rebuilds.

30 -> 1,000 parcels/day

Scaled Wildflower into one of Barcelona's largest last-mile delivery operations.

EUR130k -> EUR45k burn/month

Took over as CEO at 4Doctors and reset the cost base to extend runway.

13 -> 3,000+ books/day

Rebuilt The Book of Everyone platform from PHP to Elixir without service disruption.

Founder & CTO · Wildflower

Barcelona · 2023–Present

Smart locker infrastructure and last-mile logistics

Founded and scaled a dual-track operation: a carrier-grade parcel delivery business and an autonomous locker platform spanning PCB design, Nerves firmware, and Phoenix/Ash services.

  • Scaled parcel volume from 30 to 1,000 per day and transitioned the operation into a TIPSA agency footprint.
  • Built the internal operating stack for routing, barcode workflows, customer checkout, and field-driver tooling.

Selected systems

  • Arca.bot locker platform - PCB, firmware, telemetry, remote commands, and fleet management.
  • DeliveryMap + Ninja - Back-office logistics operations with driver workflows and barcode handling.
  • Arca Delivery checkout - Customer booking, Stripe payments, and TIPSA courier integration.

Interim Country CTO / VP Engineering · Prima

Barcelona · 2021–2022

Spain launch for a venture-backed car-insurance scale-up

Hired and integrated the Spanish engineering team, aligned it with the Italian core platform, and launched the Spanish insurance product in ten months.

  • First employee in Spain; built the local engineering function from zero.
  • Bridged product delivery across country teams while establishing a market-ready operating cadence.

CTO · Mipasa

Barcelona · 2020–2021

Replatformed an unworkable Java estate onto Elixir

Joined to replace a brittle microservices stack, retrained the team on Elixir, and moved a prototype into production within six weeks.

  • Delivered a production-superior prototype in six weeks and used it to replace the incumbent system.
  • Scaled the engineering team by hiring 15 developers once the new platform direction was proven.

CTO · The Book of Everyone

Barcelona · 2015–2017

High-throughput personalisation platform rebuilt in place

Led a strangler-pattern migration from legacy PHP through Laravel to Elixir/Phoenix for a personalised publishing platform with 150,000+ assets.

  • Scaled throughput from roughly 13 books per day to 3,000+ with stable production behaviour.
  • Relocated to Barcelona for the role and rebuilt the platform without a stop-the-world rewrite.

Founder & CTO · Shopa

London · 2012–2015

Consumer social-commerce startup through Series A scale-up

Co-founded and built the product from the ground up, moving from the Microsoft ecosystem to Ruby on Rails and later Go where workloads demanded it.

  • Raised one of the UK's largest Series A rounds of the period.
  • Built a fast-moving engineering organisation while retooling the stack for startup speed and cost.

Senior Developer -> Head of Build & Release -> Actuarial Technology Consultant · Beazley

London · 2006–2012

Six-year progression across engineering, delivery, and actuarial partnership

Progressed from hands-on development into change management and then actuarial technology consulting inside a major Lloyd's insurer.

  • Introduced PowerShell-based CI/CD automation years before that approach was mainstream in Microsoft shops.
  • Acted as the bridge between developers, DBAs, infrastructure, underwriting, and actuarial teams.

Earlier roles: Moneycorp and SPML / Lehman Brothers, London (2001-2006) - .NET delivery, team enablement, and mortgage / foreign-exchange systems.

Leadership
Org design, hiring, turnarounds, first-market launches, founder-to-scale-up transitions
Platforms
Elixir, Phoenix, Ash, LiveView, Postgres, real-time systems, migrations
Embedded & operations
Nerves, firmware, PCB design, device telemetry, logistics operations, payments
Range
Ruby, Go, Rust, .NET, AI-assisted workflows, internal tooling, zero-to-one product delivery

BSc Computer Science

Oxford Brookes University

Oxford · 1996-2000

Community: Founded Elixir Barcelona in 2015 and hosted speakers including Jose Valim.