Fractional CTO
Samy Zarour
I design scalable engineering organizations and production-grade systems, combining technical depth with strategic leadership.
About
Between strategy and code
I bridge the gap between business and technical teams, translating product goals into actionable engineering roadmaps. Founded and scaled a startup as CTO, and have since led cross-functional teams delivering scalable, production-grade systems.
I bring rigor to engineering quality, streamline processes, and define lean AI adoption strategies that keep platforms current without costly lock-in.
I still code.
My Mantras
Hyper-communication
Clarity scales teams. Say it twice, write it down, follow up.
Automate the boring
Engineers solve novel problems. Machines handle the rest.
Process over heroics
Reliable systems eliminate guesswork, reduce errors, and free mental load.
Skills
Technical expertise
Languages
TypeScript 
Python Frameworks
React 
NestJS 
FastAPI Infrastructure
AWS 
Docker 
Terraform 
Grafana AI / ML
TensorFlow 
LangChain Data
PostgreSQL 
MongoDB 
Pinecone Languages
🇫🇷 French Native (C2)
🇬🇧 English Native (C2)
🇪🇸 Spanish Fluent (C1)
🇦🇪 Arabic Fluent (B2)
Experience
Professional journey
2025
Enterprise AI for procurement intelligence Dubai, UAE (Remote) Feb 2025 — Present
Director of Engineering Current
- Lead two engineering teams across AI and Full-Stack, balancing fast-paced AI prototyping with safe, stable client-facing apps
- Designed a lean AI adoption strategy, enabling quick adoption of the latest trends without costly lock-in or refactors
- Spearhead AI-assisted development practices, communicated, adopted, and enforced weekly across all teams
- Drove SOC 2 compliance to completion, implementing security controls and audit processes across engineering
- Architected and enforced a blue/green deployment pipeline and end-to-end testing framework, reducing deployment risk
- Bridge the gap between business and technical teams, while architecting features and identifying process limits to improve
TypeScript Python AWS LangChain Terraform 2023
Cross-border remittance platform Montreal, Canada (Remote) Mar 2023 — Sept 2024
Lead Software Engineer
- Identified a high-impact limitation in financial processes within first month, built a POC in one sprint, and led the technical architecture for an automated reconciliation system, saving millions annually
- Designed a proactive alerting system monitoring bank balances across countries, enabling operations teams to act before disruptions, reducing bank fees and incident handling costs
TypeScript Python Grafana 
Airflow 2019
Casino table game monitoring via CV Montreal, Canada (Remote) Jun 2019 — Mar 2023
Co-Founder & CTO
- Built a real-time computer vision platform for casino table game monitoring, capturing bet values, round outcomes, and cheating probability. Developed a POC in 12 weeks that led to a multi-million dollar deal
- Hired, mentored, and led a team of 7 engineers, establishing an async-first culture with a clear flow from KPIs to epics to stories to tickets, maximizing developer focus and stakeholder visibility
- Built a testing framework that made nondeterministic CV pipelines reliable, fast, and regression-proof on every PR, allowing dynamic training of state-of-the-art models while minimizing regression risks
- Led Design Thinking workshops with casino clients in English, French, and Spanish, translating complex technical capabilities into actionable business solutions
Python TensorFlow Docker React 2018
Watson Machine Learning Toronto, Canada Jul 2018 — Jun 2019
Software Engineer
- Selected for IBM's Watson Machine Learning Core Team, working on resource management, computation pipelines, and data processing optimization for the platform serving over 100 million users worldwide
- Led a team to win 1st place in IBM's 9-month Design Thinking Jumpstart, building a secure digital identity system for orphanages using Blockchain and NLP
- Identified recurring dependency conflicts slowing the team, took initiative to audit and modernize critical packages across the product, eliminating recurring blockers
Python 
Kubernetes 2015
Smart City IoT Montreal, Canada May 2015 — Dec 2017
Software Engineer
- Delivered a new smart city POC for Montreal every month, spanning diverse domains from NFC-based digitized metro cards to electric grid data visualization with Elasticsearch
- Built a broad technical foundation through rapid rotation across IoT, NFC, data visualization, and emerging technologies, with a fail-fast prototyping mindset
Java IoT 
Elasticsearch 