Raf Gemmail

Raf Gemmail

Lean-Engineering Leader & Coach — Dev no.4 at Booking.com; Ex-BBC iPlayer, Morgan Stanley

Empowering teams to deliver impactful, lasting products.

Professional Summary

Hands-on engineering leader experienced in delivering and operating large-scale SaaS products in production. Strong background in cloud-native architecture, SaaS production engineering, cloud capacity planning, reliability, incident management, and cost control. Leads distributed teams while working directly in the code and partnering with product and senior leadership to deliver reliable outcomes.

Specialises in platform and reliability teams at scale. Uses empirical metrics and FinOps practices to drive delivery, leads pragmatic AI adoption for developer productivity, and integrates AI capabilities into SaaS products where they deliver measurable customer value.

Community & Speaking

A sample of public content and community contributions (some of my InfoQ and community work):

Professional Experience

  • Senior Director of Engineering (Moved with Acquisition) Dec 2025 – Present
    Zeta Global - Loyalty
    • Following the acquisition of Marigold’s Enterprise division, I continued and expanded my role at Zeta Global.
    • Supporting technical integration into one the planet's largest AI First MadTech platforms.
    • Experience: Close to the code, Java, Scala, Rails, Python, AWS (EKS/ECS/Lambda), Kafka, Terraform, Databricks, CI/CD, BDD, Observability (Datadog), AI tooling, SOC 1/2, various bigdata and rdbms
    Senior Director of Engineering (reporting to CTO) March 2025 – Dec 2025 (acquisition)
    Marigold Loyalty
    • Head of engineering leadership assumed from a departing VP, for a Forrester-recognised loyalty platform — driving a multi-region high-performance product & serving global retail & hospitality brands.
    • Led ~40–50 engineers & managers and leads across across NZ & Philippines; created Staff+ innovation team and ran Gen-AI assisted development experiments during hackdays.
    • Championing shifting left and right, SRE-collaboration, security by design, petabyte data pipelines and POS/ecommerce integrations; coached leads on measurement (cost, reliability, delivery) and waste capture.
    • C-suite collaboration, as well as client and internal/external stake-holder engagement.
    • Supporting teams through M&A
    • Experience: Close to the code, Java, Scala, Rails, Python, AWS (EKS/ECS/Lambda), Kafka, Terraform, Databricks, CI/CD, BDD, Observability (Datadog), AI tooling, SOC 1/2, various bigdata and rdbms
  • Director of Engineering — Platform Capabilities July 2024 – March 2025
    Marigold / Sailthru
    • Oversaw UI, Mobile Push, Data Engineering and Core Platform teams across multiple time zones; introduced hybrid ShapeUp + Big Room planning for prioritisation.
    • Optimised petabyte-scale data workflows and drove FinOps to reduce cloud costs while improving reliability.
    • Experience: Close to the Code: Java, Python, node, AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, Kafka, Spark, SQL/Redshift/Databricks, CI/CD, SOC/HiTrust, postgres, mongo
  • Engineering Manager — Mobile Messaging & Platform/SRE Teams July 2022 – July 2024
    Marigold / Sailthru
    • Directly managed and contributed to two cross-functional platform teams delivering billions of email/push/in-app messages per week for enterprise customers.
    • Accountable for availability, cost management, incident response (PagerDuty) and DevEx improvements; mentored ICs into leadership roles.
    • Experience: Rails, Elixir, Java, ECS/EKS, Kafka, AMQ, Terraform, Docker, CI/CD, Datadog, BDD, mongo/atlas, postgres, DynamoDB
  • Head of Technology (promoted from Head of Product) November 2020 – July 2022
    Developers Institute
    • Hired, designed courses, designed teaching solutions and scaled a cloud-native edtech startup from single-digit to hundreds of learners; designed NZQA-accredited pathways and work-based training partnerships.
    • Architected secure, data-driven SaaS (Python & AWS), recruited/mentored tech leads, and ran product experiments & focus groups.
    • Deployed and guided contractor teams for clients (including Northpower), and wrote SOWs during secondment to our contracting entity.
    • Experience: Python, AWS, Terraform, Lambda, Postgres, CI/CD, BDD/ATDD, Agile coaching, mongo
  • Senior Technical Consultant (DevOps) February 2020 – November 2020
    Assurity Consulting (clients incl. NZQA)
    • Consulted on DevOps & BDD; coached ATDD and paired with BAs to write self-validating BDD requirements; built AWS serverless prototypes.
    • Experience: Java, Spring Cloud Functions, AWS (Lambda, API GW), Concordion, ATDD, CI/CD
  • Contract — Agile & DevOps Coach Nov 2019 – Feb 2020
    NZTA
    • Coached leadership & teams through cultural change and vendor-trust issues; supported Azure/ADO delivery improvements on large public programmes.
    • Experience: Azure DevOps, Angular, C#, Kanban, Lean, Agile coaching, leadership facilitation
  • Remote Computer Science Professor (contract) 2019 – 2022
    OpenClassrooms (remote NZ & Paris)
    • Authored and filmed undergraduate modules: ATDD in Java, Debugging, Modern Java Concurrency, Building REST APIs with Spring Data; designed assessments and real-world projects.
    • Experience: Java, Spring, ATDD, TDD, Concurrency, REST APIs, teaching & curriculum design
  • Lead Eng and Agile & Technical Consultant Jun 2018 – Jan 2019
    MPorium (London)
    • Stepped in during CTO absence as hands on contributor, faciltator and lead; coached teams, contributed code to an ML powered ad-bidding product, demystified Spark via mob-programming, and helped recruit a permanent CTO.
    • Experience: Scala, Spark, Python, ML pipelines, Agile coaching, mob programming
  • Technical Design Lead Jan 2018 – Jun 2018
    Bank of New Zealand
    • Led strangler pattern from JEE monolith to microservices, ran DDD workshops and improved mobile CI/security practices.
    • Experience: Java, JEE, Spring, Redshift, CI/CD, DDD, event-driven design
  • Technical Coach & Lead May 2015 – Jan 2018
    Stuff.co.nz / Fairfax Media
    • Coached teams across JVM/JS stacks; championed mob programming, trunk-based development, CI/CD, and an experimentation culture for high-traffic news systems.
    • Experience: Java, Node.js, AWS (ECS, Lambda), Serverless, CI/CD, BDD, Mob programming
  • Solutions Architect & Iteration Master Oct 2013 – May 2015
    Catalyst IT
    • BDD-focused solution design; collaborated with Spotify Partner API and led agile delivery on a sizeable government programme (~40 ICs + BAs + testers).
    • Experience: Java, Node, BDD, AWS, Microservices, Agile facilitation, CI/CD
  • Senior Software Engineer (contract) Apr 2013 – Oct 2013
    BBC iPlayer
    • Rapid delivery of business-critical Java microservices; migrated legacy Perl microservices to Spring & Apache Camel on AWS using BDD methodologies.
    • Experience: Java, Spring, Apache Camel, Perl, AWS, BDD, CI/CD
  • Contract Senior Software Engineer Jan 2012 – Apr 2013
    Headforwards / NTT
    • Architected parts of NTT's enterprise cloud solution, and led TDD practice; delivered automated pipelines for cloud VM images and services.
    • Experience: Java, Perl, Python testing, TDD, Cloud automation, Jenkins, Linux
  • Contract Senior Software Engineer Oct 2010 – Jan 2012
    BBC iPlayer
    • Performance optimisation of high-traffic services; built versioned REST APIs and visualised metrics to enable continuous delivery.
    • Experience: Java, Perl, Performance tuning, REST APIs, memcache, webscale, ops, CI/CD, monitoring
  • Contract Senior Software Engineer Jul 2009 – Oct 2010
    Trinity Mirror Digital Recruitment
    • Architected and optimised a large job-board platform; performance tuned Apache Lucene indexes and rewrote major components to improve throughput and reliability. Began migration from perl to spring framework.
    • Experience: Java, Lucene, MySQL, Perl, Spring, Performance tuning
  • Software Engineer Aug 2007 – Jul 2009
    Morgan Stanley (Securities Reference Data)
    • Designed high-performance ETL services for market reference & timeseries data; refactored caching managers and promoted TDD practices across the team.
    • Experience: Java, Sybase, MQ, C, Perl, Benchmarking, TDD, Sybase, DB2
  • Software Engineer Nov 2006 – Aug 2007
    VisionOSS
    • Refactored C/Perl CMDB code for Cisco VoIP configuration; implemented batch queue engine in C with perl web UIs for device configuration.
    • Experience: C, Perl, PostgreSQL, SOAP, CGI, XS, C# (testing), VoIP integration
  • Senior Asset Control Developer Feb 2005 – Nov 2006
    Abbey Financial Markets / Santander
    • Built high-performance message-oriented middleware and APIs to support traders; wrapped C APIs for Perl clients and implemented XML schemas + real-time notifiers.
    • Experience: Perl (Inline::C), C, J2EE/JSP/JMS/MQ, XML, SOAP, Swing, Sybase
  • Experienced Software Engineer Feb 2003 – Feb 2005
    ING Bank (Global Market Database)
    • Developed event-driven corporate actions applications and timeseries tooling; created Perl/Java/C++ integrations and graphical tools for front-office workflows. Delivered YAPC-Paris talk on Inline C.
    • Experience: Perl, C++, Java, SOAP, XML, Sybase, mod_perl, libgd
  • Senior Software Engineer (Developer #4) Feb 2002 – Feb 2003
    Booking.com / Bookings.nl
    • Hired by Booking's founder. Refactored legacy Perl systems to OO design; normalised databases and implemented a next-gen MVC architecture for bookings.
    • Experience: Perl, PostgreSQL, Template Toolkit, mod_perl, MySQL, FreeBSD
  • Software Engineer & Systems Administrator Jan 2001 – Feb 2002
    Codix.net Ltd
    • Sysadmin for client servers and in-house hosting; bespoke mod_perl development and templating for customer projects.
    • Experience: FreeBSD, Solaris, Apache, mod_perl, MySQL, XSLT, Perl
  • Junior Software Engineer Feb 2000 – Jan 2001
    Sportingbet.com
    • Worked on internationalisation, statistical betting engines and interactive TV/web applications; early production experience of high-throughput transactional systems.
    • Experience: Perl, CGI, MySQL, Apache, I18N, Interactive TV

Examples of Skills & Capabilities

Education & Certifications

BSc (Hons) Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence
University of Birmingham
1994 – 1999
Dipartimento di Informatica, Università di Pisa (1997–1998)
ICP-ACC — ICAgile Certified Professional (Agile Coaching)
Trained by Shane Hastie (ICAgile)
2016

Interests

Homeschooling dad passionate about science & futurism . Amateur astronomer, coastal runner. Lifelong musician (guitar & ukulele) . Tinkering with VR, OSS AI models, video transcoding & NixOS in spare time.