Georg Buske - Co-founder

São Paulo, Brazil

Experience

Jan 2021 - Present

3 years 7 months

Germany

Co-founder

Buildaz

Delivered a KPI project (20+ core business metrics) on modern data stack (dbt, airflow, BigQuery, looker studio) for Carrefour, enabled the product team to access relevant data 3x faster than before.

Jan 2020 - Dec 2022

2 years

Brazil

Senior IT Director

Facily

Facilitated hiring and development of a high-performance team to scale Facily, fastest growing startup in LatAm (unicorn), scaling of a total technology team from 30 to 400+ FTEs (incl. ~70 external) in less than 1 year.
Developed company-wide training programs at Facily in both lab/academy and on-the-job.
Supported Facily’s marketplace strategy through seller ranking algorithms.
Delivered considerable cost reductions of up to 80% at Facily of 1mm USD / month through right sizing, rewrites/migrations, and optimizing SaaS and vendor contracts, and establishing FinOps processes.

Jan 2010 - Dec 2021

11 years

Chief Technology Officer

Dafiti Group

Led transformation of Dafiti into an AI-first organization by implementing AI insight sprints (utilizing design thinking) within operational areas and mentoring employees to pursue internal AI projects.
Built and operated search and recommendation engines using third-party vendors, open source, and custom technologies, including collaborative filtering and NLP. Boosted Dafiti's conversion rate by over 10%. Additionally, introduced a visual search feature MVP at Dafiti in record time.
Championing engineering excellence through techniques like Domain Driven Design (DDD), Test Driven Development (TDD), Technology Radar, standards and scaffolding as well as improving availability and software delivery focusing on DORA metrics (DevOps Research and Assessment).
Executed various successful cloud migrations, e.g. moving a running e-commerce (Dafiti) site with millions of users from on-premise to AWS in 2016 (lift-and-shift moving towards a cloud native architecture enabling scalability and cost efficiency).
Ensured a high degree of availability, while scaling the operations to millions of users/orders on various occasions (high traffic events), e.g. 10+ Black Fridays without major downtime.

Jan 2010 - Dec 2021

11 years

Brazil

Head of Innovation, Software Architecture and IT strategy (Consultant / Contractor)

Dafiti Group

Pioneered a system used by major global e-commerce sites, starting with dafiti.com.br. Revamped Dafiti's site in 6 months for scalability and TV campaigns.
Choosing the right tool for the job: if monolith or microservice, focus on business outcome, skill level and long term view - this meant introducing distributed systems, caching and message queues (such as RabbitMQ as early as 2010) when needed.

Jan 2010 - Dec 2021

11 years

IT Director LatAm

Dafiti Group

Strengthened regional workforce by building out tech hubs in Argentina, Chile and Colombia, establishing Helix Organizational Structure with local tech leaders, restructuring QA and Test Engineering, resulting in increased quality of software delivery process and better alignment between the 4 LatAm countries.
Successfully scaled massive promotion campaigns such Cyberlunes and during COVID-19 by stabilizing the technology stack and improving cross-country alignment leading to 3x growth in top line revenue.
Played a vital role in driving e-commerce growth during COVID-19, resulting in 10x increase in GFG share price.
Achieved overall 50% YoY cost reduction in CAPEX and OPEX at Dafiti with area wide cost cuttings, capitalization processes and on-premise to cloud migration, while maintaining high operational excellence.
Implemented and integrated CRMs like SalesForce and Zendesk, migrated ERPs to SAP and SAP4/HANA, and ensured compliance with auditors such as E&Y for sustainable growth in the GFG Brazil/LatAm sector.
Successfully led the implementation of PCI certifications and re-certifications and compliance related requirements related BACEN policies (brazilian central bank) to mitigate risk.
Implemented advanced cybersecurity frameworks, like CIS and NIST, to devise action plans and enhance information security capabilities.
Focused on strategy execution with an emphasis on continuous learning, empowering teams, and streamlined goals, while adopting cyclic approaches like PDCA for problem mapping and utilizing tools such as RACI, Balanced Scorecards, and OKRs.

Jan 2010 - Dec 2021

11 years

Brazil

Senior IT Manager / Head of R&D

Dafiti Group

Trained and mentored hundreds of employees, establishing an agency, SEI LTDA, with young engineering talents (10 FTEs) as a side business in 2013. Developed company-wide training programs at Dafiti in both lab/academy and on-the-job. Encouraged formal (classroom-based with syllabi) and informal (guilds, tech talks) training methods.
Simulated Dafiti’s product flow for a major global warehouse automation project with Autostore™. Implemented advanced forecasting techniques for customer reactivation and repeat purchases.
Integrated 2 acquired e-commerce operations, leading to profitability for Dafiti, Brazil's largest online fashion retailer.

Jan 2010 - Dec 2021

11 years

Brazil

Software Architect / Technical lead

Dafiti Group

Pioneered a system used by major global e-commerce sites, starting with dafiti.com.br. Revamped Dafiti's site in 6 months for scalability and TV campaigns.

Jan 2010 - Dec 2021

11 years

Germany

Senior Software Engineer

Rocket Internet GmbH

Launched lamoda.ru, Russia's top fashion e-commerce, sold for 100mm EUR in 2022.
Pioneered a system used by major global e-commerce sites.

Jan 2001 - Dec 2011

11 years

Germany

IT Specialist

Deutsches Institut für Marketing GmbH (DIM)

Jan 2001 - Dec 2011

11 years

Germany

Software Developer / Project manager trainee

ESH GmbH

Jan 2001 - Dec 2011

11 years

Germany

Software Developer / Sysadmin

EuropeAlive Medien GmbH (mitfahrzentrale.de)

Jan 2001 - Dec 2011

11 years

Germany

Software Developer / Team Lead

Klickfreundlich GmbH / Media Ventures GmbH

Participated post M&A activities of digital asset integrations of various acquisitions at Media Ventures (VC).
Choosing the right tool for the job: introducing distributed systems, caching and message queues (such as RabbitMQ as early as 2010) when needed.

Jan 2001 - Dec 2011

11 years

Germany

Software Developer

Neu.de GmbH

Participated post M&A activities of neu.de acquisition by meetic.

Summary

married, 2 kids, originally from Germany, since 12+ years in Brazil (came for Dafiti through Rocket Internet)
Budget responsibility (CAPEX/OPEX w/o HC) of up to 20 mm USD / year
hands-on full stack generalist; strong data-, AI-, software- and system/cloud engineering and architecture knowledge
executive focus on financial results, data enablement, digital capabilities, value creation, business outcome and long term team building