About Me

I'm Alastair, a Software Engineering Leader based in Cape Town, South Africa.

I enjoy mobile & full-stack development as well as solving challenges (both organisational & software) at scale, and I've worked on multiple large-scale systems for some of South Africa's largest online companies over the past 10 years.

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Bash

Principal Engineer

I joined The Foschini Group in 2021 and worked to transform the online offering into a world-class e-commerce platform, with a focus on the mobile experience.

  • I spent the end of 2021 planning the e-commerce re-platform project & growing the engineering organisation from about 20 contractors to 50 full-time engineers.
  • In 2022, I split my time between managing a division of the engineering organisation as an Engineering Director and leading development of new core services required for the re-platorming project and launch of bash.com, moving from an outdated Oracle ATG commerce platform to a modern and scalable architecture using VTEX, AWS & Kubernetes to name a few technologies.
  • In 2023, I switched to the role of Principal Engineer, focusing on the development of new foundational services and the evolution of the platform. You can read about one of the more ambitous projects here.

In 2024 I expect to continue with the Engineer/Manager Pendulum, ensuring we have a robust yet flexible architecture and empowering teams to deliver an exceptional online (and offline) shopping experience.