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BH

About

about.

Engineering manager and AI trainer, based in Amsterdam.

I started as a software engineer, moved into solution architecture, then into leading teams. Along the way I kept teaching: coding, cloud, soft skills and now AI. Most of my work has been on consumer platforms with large audiences, in streaming, retail and e-commerce.

Belal Haikal, smiling, in a white shirt and navy waistcoat

Two sides of the same job

Part manager

  • Lead two teams and 13 engineers at bol, in Marketing and Advertising
  • Set technical direction: cloud architecture and system design
  • Shape team topology and service ownership so delivery flows
  • Work with product as a partner, owning the outcome together
  • Hire, onboard and coach engineers to decide well without me

Part trainer

  • AI for Finance, a four-day masterclass for finance teams
  • Working with AI coding assistants, for engineering teams
  • Trained 50+ engineers in AWS at iflix; 13 became certified
  • Show the manual way first, then the AI way
  • Honest about cost, risk and what to keep out of a model
Belal working on a laptop late in the evening

A few facts

  1. 14+ years in software, as engineer, architect and engineering manager.
  2. Based in Amsterdam.
  3. Worked at bol, Decathlon Digital, Fortanix, DAZN, Talpa Network and iflix.
  4. Led four teams and 20 engineers at Decathlon, shipping to 75+ countries.
  5. Delivered the FIFA World Cup 2018 and the Premier League live at iflix, with zero downtime.
  6. Spoke at TechEx, Tweakers Developers Summit and AWS Media Summit Singapore.
  7. Lead the AWS User Group in Syria.
  8. Founder of echo3s.io, an AI audiobook platform.
  9. Co-founder of Fikra Ventures, an NGO backing early-stage founders in Damascus.

What that looked like

  • 200×

    faster secure ML workloads, on confidential NVIDIA H100 GPUs

    Fortanix

  • Zero

    downtime through the FIFA World Cup 2018 and the Premier League

    iflix

  • Millions

    of new users onboarded in the NFL season migration, without an outage

    DAZN

  • 13

    engineers AWS-certified through a training programme I ran for 50+

    iflix

Next steps

  • Hire me to lead

    You need an engineering leader for a team, a domain or a transition.

    See how I lead

  • Book a training

    You want your team using AI well, safely and without wasted spend.

    See what I teach

  • Look at the work

    Teams, courses and products, with the story behind each one.

    Open the portfolio

  • Say hello

    Tell me what you are working on and I will reply.

    Get in touch