Rafael Sabirzanov

Head of Technology / CTO — Tech & IT Transformation — Europe

• Led the end-to-end transformation of the technology and IT function (~40 staff, 100+ daily users) from five years of organic chaos to a managed, value-creating system — setting strategy, operating model, and roadmap.
• Cut technology operating costs ~$96K/year: −$80K/year on server infrastructure (full inventory, scream-tests, and provider consolidation across 35 providers) and −$16K/year on SaaS subscriptions — with zero outages.
• Built a data layer and MCP connecting clean Amazon SP-API & Ads reporting to ClickUp, company files, and Slack, powering per-department AI "brains" that answer questions on live data in seconds instead of manual reporting.
• Closed years of accumulated security risk: migrated secrets from spreadsheets to a managed vault, enforced 2FA, revoked external file shares at scale, and tied access to a clean offboarding process.
• Migrated tens of thousands of company files from personal accounts into governed Shared Drives (tri-tenant by business unit), creating a foundation both people and AI can navigate.
• Established the IT operating model — request intake, onboarding/offboarding SOPs, and a single source of truth — shifting the function from firefighting to building internal products.

Senior Product / Tech Lead (Internal Platforms, Analytics & AI) — Office, Belgrade, Serbia

• Owned internal platform roadmap influencing $1.2M/month ad spend and $4.5M/month GMV across 4 functions (Marketing, Media Buying, Ops, Engineering); led delivery team of 6 (3 engineers, 2 analysts, 1 designer) serving 85 active users.
• Launched AI knowledge platform ("AI Brain") with 70% adoption; reduced repeat-question resolution time by 40% and cut new-hire onboarding ramp by 30% through structured taxonomy, Q&A workflows, and self-serve documentation.
• Built full-funnel analytics (content cost → ad spend → sales) that collapsed reporting latency from 1.5 days to 2 hours, accelerating budget reallocation and creative prioritization decisions by 25%.
• Shipped content auto-launch system increasing media-buying launch velocity 3× (48h → 6h) and internal task tracker adopted by 40 users, improving on-time completion by 22% and reducing cross-team status overhead by 33%.
• Accelerated product discovery 80% (idea → prototype) using Claude Code + Cursor; reduced scope churn 28% through early prototypes and explicit trade-off conversations with stakeholders.

Product & Operations Lead (Marketplace, Logistics & AI) — UAE

• Built delivery operations from scratch (hiring, playbooks, SLAs, performance management); achieved 93% on-time delivery and reduced lead time by 30% after process stabilization.
• Led engineering end-to-end (roadmap, PRDs, releases) and implemented AI-enabled customer communication and parts matching; reduced response time by 65% and improved lead-to-order conversion by 9%.
• Established sourcing workflows and optimized pricing logic; reduced "item-not-available" cancellations by 18%, improved gross margin by 2 pp, and increased quote win-rate by 8%.

Founder

• Built consumer brand from zero to $20K/month revenue; owned product specs, manufacturing, marketplace go-to-market, and unit economics. Exited via sale.