Christophe Popov

INTERIM CTO ¦ ENGINEER | ENTREPRENEUR

Christophe is a hands-on technical leader, engineer and entrepreneur. He is a strong advocate of Agile, Lean and System Thinking. He likes to challenge traditional thinking.
Coming from a software engineering background (20 years experience post MSc in computer science), he has also developed management and business knowledge through an MBA and the involvement with many startups. He has a background in CTO, VP of Engineering, Engineering Manager, Architect roles.
Key interests: Tech, Startups, Agile, Fintech, Blockchain / DLT, LegalTech, Sports betting, Property and Proptech…

"It's been an utmost pleasure to work for Chris. I have seen him in no time performing drastic transformations of the Development from complete chaos to smoothly functioning Agile teams, Chris has increased several times the size of the Dev team...He is an A player hiring A players and giving them freedom to do their work the best way. He always conveys trust and never micro-manages, which builds a great environment. Chris has enormous expertise in many areas - business, technology, governance... Chris is a unique leader and I would follow him on his next venture without hesitation"

Ivan Boyko

DevOps

"In my experience Christophe's in-depth, diverse technical expertise has only been matched by his great general business and management skills. He is an all-around outstanding engineer, manager and colleague. He has impeccable work ethic, will not settle for anything less than perfect and has a "get things done" attitude in everything he does. He is a natural problem solver and never stops learning".

Arthur Bilalov

Head of UK Wheely

"Christophe is one of those rare CTOs who naturally serve as an inspiring mentor for the whole staff. Christophe exhibits strong interpersonal skills and a unique capacity for analytical thinking. These qualities most notably translate in his ability to motivate a team to care about its project and be invested in the project’s success. Christophe is the go-to person for technical questions and problem solving. Though he's never one to draw attention to himself, Christophe's positive attitude and the respect others feel toward him are palpable."

Alexander Bogdanovski

Software developer at Erudika

STARTUP AND SCALE OUT

Chris has been involved with multiple startups (Proptech, LegalTech, iGaming, Blockchain, Fintech, Events, Sports) mainly in early stages as a co-founder, advisor, part-time and fractional CTO.
He works well in Strategy by asking the right (sometimes difficult) questions, and he can help with
● IT architecture roadmaps.
● Product.
● Software delivery process….

CONSULTING

Chris has been working as an independent contractor/consultant for different large and small organisations including O2, Financial Times, Daily Mail, Tesco, TUI and a number of startups.
Currently focusing on advisory and Interim CTO roles including Software Engineering, DevOps, Agile Delivery, Interim and CTO advisory.

PLATFORM BUILD AND SCALE OUT

Joined as Head of Technology to take the business beyond MVP stage and scale it up.

Rebuilt the Tech Team from zero as well as the trading platform in order to ensure scale and smooth operations 24/7.

Key responsibilities
• Recruitment and People management (25 direct reports).
• Agile and Lean best practices.
• Technical Product Management and Architecture.
• Technical Leadership (Java, Node, Python, Databases, AWS, DevOps, Mobile, Data).
• Business and product strategy.
• Compliance and Security, IT Operations and Cloud Infrastructure.

Key achievements
• Hired, coached and developed a distributed team.
• Re-architecture of the system and future tech strategy.
• Built a data stack with BigQuery and Looker BI.
• Integration with Nasdaq UME.
• Introduction of Agile and DevOps practices, IaaS, automation and micro-services with Kubernetes…

EDUCATION & CERTIFICATIONS

MBA – Open University – 2015 Computer Science
MSc – University of Bordeaux – 2003 IT
MEng – ENSEIRB Bordeaux – 2003
Certifications: Scrum Master, PO, Product Management, AWS Solution Architecture