Entrepreneurial & Leadership Experience#

Hlistan Zolerani, LDA#

Founder

January 2024 - Present Porto, Portugal

Launched a specialized consultancy focused on engineering high-performance, bespoke cloud-native environments. My work combines deep industry expertise with cutting-edge technology, leveraging principles of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and GitOps to empower businesses and transform their infrastructure into a competitive advantage.

  • Spearheaded the design of scalable, fault-tolerant cloud architectures for clients in the hosting and e-commerce sectors, resulting in measurable improvements in application latency and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

Baxet Group Inc#

Board Member

December 2019 - Present Delaware, United States

Following the successful acquisition of just.hosting, I joined the Board to provide strategic continuity and technical oversight.

  • Strategic Guidance: Advised the executive team on technology strategy, cloud infrastructure scaling patterns, and product roadmaps, drawing on over 20 years of expertise in the hosting and SaaS sectors to shape long-term vision.
  • Technical Authority: Acted as a key subject matter expert and speaker at company events, sharing deep insights into horizontally-scalable distributed systems, CI/CD pipelines, and emerging market trends like serverless and container orchestration.
  • Post-Acquisition Leadership: Oversaw the seamless technical integration of just.hosting assets, ensuring high client retention and optimizing the acquired bare-metal and virtualized infrastructure for performance and cost-efficiency.

just.hosting#

Co-Founder & CTO (Acquired by Baxet Group Inc.)

April 2010 - December 2019 Moscow, Russia

  • Business Scaling: Co-founded and scaled a hosting provider from a bootstrapped startup to a company serving over 30,000 clients, culminating in a successful acquisition by Baxet Group Inc.
  • Full-Stack Architecture: Architected a bespoke, full-stack billing and management ecosystem from scratch, designing a hyper-optimized KVM-based hypervisor configuration that minimized hardware costs while maximizing revenue streams.
  • DevOps Transformation: Spearheaded the adoption of CI/CD pipelines, enabling seamless, automated, zero-downtime deployments across a geographically distributed network of 300+ nodes in over 40 locations worldwide.
  • Team Building: Assembled and mentored high-performing teams of infrastructure engineers and customer support specialists, fostering a culture of technical excellence and customer obsession.

Professional Experience#

FARFETCH#

Engineering Lead

August 2022 - January 2024 Porto, Portugal

As an Engineering Lead, I led the development of a connected retail infrastructure that empowered luxury brands to integrate their applications and websites with the FARFETCH platform. My role involved driving technical excellence, improving internal microservices, and fostering a high-performing team to deliver scalable and resilient solutions.

  • Led a cross-functional team of 5 engineers in the successful delivery of a new microservices-based architecture for the integration of partners systems with the FARFETCH platform, enriching brand applications and sites with real-time data and functionality.
  • Mentored and coached team members, fostering a culture of continuous learning and professional growth, resulting in two internal promotions within a year.

Senior Software Developer

January 2020 - August 2022 Porto, Portugal

  • Contributed to the development of the connected retail infrastructure, focusing on the creation of robust APIs and services that enabled brands to seamlessly integrate with the FARFETCH platform.
  • Played a key role in improving internal microservices by refactoring critical code paths, optimizing database queries, and enhancing the overall resilience of the system.
  • Collaborated with product managers and designers to translate business requirements into robust, scalable technical solutions.
  • Authored comprehensive technical documentation and conducted knowledge-sharing sessions to onboard new team members and improve cross-team collaboration.

Quest Software#

Senior Software Developer

August 2006 - April 2010

  • Product Innovation: Drove significant enhancements to “Recovery Manager for Exchange” by architecting and implementing a PowerShell API, which enabled granular, item-level restoration and became a key competitive differentiator.
  • Quality Assurance Leadership: Championed and implemented Test-Driven Development (TDD) from the ground up, scaling the project’s automated test suite from zero to over 5,000 unit tests. This initiative drastically reduced regression bugs and accelerated time-to-market.
  • Legacy Modernization: Led the critical modernization of the application’s core by refactoring low-level C++ code to be 64-bit compliant, enabling compatibility with Exchange 2010 and beyond. Additionally, integrated support for Lotus Domino databases, expanding the product’s market reach.

Key Skills: C++, Managed C++, C#, XML, VSS, AD, MS Exchange, Lotus Notes, PowerShell, Distributed systems.

Bell Integrator#

Software Developer

October 2005 - August 2006

  • Real-Time Visualization: Engineered a high-availability, web-based dashboard using ASP.NET and AJAX to visualize real-time telemetry from critical cellular network infrastructure, enabling immediate operational responses.
  • Self-Service Reporting: Developed a centralized web portal for on-demand infrastructure reporting, streamlining data access for enterprise stakeholders and reducing manual report generation overhead by 80%.
  • Process Automation: Built a specialized ETL system for the automated control and orchestration of enterprise data collection workflows, ensuring high data integrity and operational efficiency.

Key Skills: C++, C#, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, MS SQL Server, MS SQL Reporting Services.

MEDIA Service#

Software Developer

March 2005 - October 2005

  • System Interoperability: Engineered a C++ interoperability library to bridge legacy systems with modern sensor platforms, ensuring seamless backward compatibility and extending the lifespan of critical software.
  • Real-Time Data Processing: Developed a Java application for real-time analysis of gas concentration levels, handling data acquisition and processing from a diverse range of gauges with high precision.
  • Automated Alerting Systems: Implemented complex logic to validate parameter thresholds and trigger automated alerts for critical environmental conditions, enhancing safety and operational awareness.
  • Custom Database Engine: Designed and built a lightweight, custom database engine with a transactional data integrity service to meet stringent resource constraints where traditional SQL solutions were not viable.

Key Skills: C++, Java, Distributed Systems, Low-level Data Processing.