CTO · VP Engineering · Director of Platform & Infrastructure
30 years building and running mission-critical infrastructure at scale — from Abu Dhabi e-Government (50+ ministries, Tier-4 sovereign platforms) to The Sandbox / Animoca Brands (8M+ users, DORA Elite, 20+ daily production deployments).
The repos here are intentional demos — self-contained tools that illustrate how I approach AI-augmented engineering: AI accelerates delivery, humans govern every decision. They are not my primary work, but they are representative of how I build.
Each repo is a standalone, deployable tool in the Cloud · DevOps · FinOps · Security space.
| Repo | What it does |
|---|---|
| aws-finops-cost-optimizer | AWS cost analysis, EC2 right-sizing (with real CloudWatch Agent memory metrics), Lambda auto-tagging. CI/CD + 19 unit tests. |
| aws-monitoring-observability-stack | Production-grade Prometheus + Grafana + Alertmanager stack on AWS. EC2 service discovery, SLO-based alerting, Terraform modules. CI validates config on every push. |
- The Sandbox / Animoca Brands — Global Director, Platform Engineering & Cloud Operations. Led 25 engineers across 5 squads. Monthly releases → 20+ daily deployments. 99.99% uptime. $250K–$750K annual FinOps savings. MTTR under 15 minutes.
- init AG (Berlin + Abu Dhabi) — Head of Platform Operations. €13M P&L, 60+ enterprise contracts. 14 consecutive years of 100% audit compliance (ISO 27001, ISO 22301, BSI IT-Grundschutz) across NATO, European Patent Office, Stuttgart Stock Exchange.
- Abu Dhabi e-Government — Built and operated Tier-4 sovereign platforms connecting 50+ ministries and banks. Led 144-person delivery organisation across UAE, India, Germany, and Romania.
Cloud AWS · Azure · GCP · Multi-cloud
Platform Kubernetes · OpenShift · Docker · Terraform · GitOps
Observability Prometheus · Grafana · Datadog · CloudWatch
Practices SRE · FinOps · DevSecOps · DORA · Zero-Trust
Compliance ISO 27001 · ISO 22301 · SOC 2 · GDPR · BSI IT-Grundschutz
The public repos here are demonstrations. Most of my active engineering work is closed-source, including:
- AI-augmented trading system — production-grade ML pipeline for systematic trading across multiple instruments. 54K+ LOC, 380+ commits, full CI/CD, circuit breakers, live retraining. Built and iterated with AI under strict human governance.
- Client infrastructure projects — architecture and delivery work under NDA for regulated-sector clients.
If you want to see more, the best way is a conversation.
Fractional CTO at Metafive — advising executive teams on AI readiness, cloud architecture, and cost governance. Open to senior permanent roles in Platform Engineering, Infrastructure, or CTO capacity.
📧 mo@metafive.ai · 💼 linkedin.com/in/benlakhoua · 🌐 metafive.ai