Brent Greeff

Pretoria, South Africa

gigz.co.za/brentgreeff

Summary

Senior Software Engineer and technical founder with 18+ years of experience across product engineering, infrastructure, and team leadership. Built and scaled a 23-person engineering team from scratch; delivered platforms for clients including Barclays, NBCUniversal, Channel 4, and Dana Petroleum. Known for full-cycle ownership — from architecture and infrastructure to deployment — across Rails, React, AWS, Kubernetes, and Docker environments.

Experience

Founder & Lead Engineer · CDSoft · Jan 2023
  • Founded a boutique product engineering studio in Stellenbosch, building bespoke platforms for Ginon Mobility Group, Autoraptor, and Postsnap.
  • Designed and built AXS, a full-stack fleet and mobility management platform for GMS Mobility, covering contract generation, fleet reservations, driver onboarding, order management, invoicing, and financial reporting — sole engineer across the full stack.
  • Delivered sophisticated CRM functionality including dynamic email templating and scheduled automated reminders, reducing manual account management overhead.
  • Integrated ActionMailbox for inbound document processing, enabling automated ingestion and routing of client-submitted files without manual intervention.
  • Built entirely on Rails 7 with a Hotwire and Stimulus.js architecture, prioritising low-latency UX without a separate front-end build pipeline.
Founder & Lead Engineer · Shnoopsta · July 2018 – Dec 2022
  • Founded a software consultancy in Hong Kong, delivering engineering services to clients including LinkNBuild, Belighted, PolicyMogul, IMBU, and BitZesty.
  • Built a B2C telehealth portal enabling patients to connect with pharmacists, upload prescriptions, and order medication — React front-end with a GraphQL API back-end.
  • Designed and implemented an API gateway for Scheidt & Bachmann using nginx to proxy and mediate traffic between a legacy Golang API and a new Rails application, enabling zero-downtime migration.
  • Rebuilt AWS infrastructure from scratch using Docker Swarm and GoCD, replacing an ad-hoc deployment process and delivering a repeatable, automated CI/CD pipeline.
  • Led full migration of PolicyMogul from Heroku to AWS with Docker and Kubernetes, improving deployment reliability and reducing hosting costs.
  • Onboarded and mentored a team of React developers for PolicyMogul, establishing coding standards and accelerating their ramp-up to production velocity.
  • Delivered performance optimisations on a Rails-based finance platform targeting the Australian personal loans market for Shuntyard.
Head of Development · Isarr (Physical Security & Asset Management) · June 2011 – July 2017
  • Grew the engineering team from zero to 23 employees within the first three years, hiring across development, QA, and infrastructure functions.
  • Owned the full product lifecycle — from requirements definition with the founder through to deployment, stability, and ongoing infrastructure management — for a risk and asset management platform serving clients including JLT, Dana Petroleum, NBCUniversal, and Barclays.
  • Designed and maintained isolated per-client server infrastructure, with dedicated physical servers, databases, Redis instances, and dependent node services for each enterprise account.
  • Led daily pair programming sessions and architectural reviews with developers, raising code quality and reducing rework across a 23-person team.
  • Partnered with the founder to maintain and prioritise the product roadmap, balancing client delivery commitments against long-term platform investment.
Lead Developer & Scrum Master · Dynamic Futures · August 2008 – July 2013
  • Delivered as Lead Developer and Scrum Master across projects for Channel 4, CollectPlus, Bandcentral, Scholastic, Agilisto, and Rawnet.
  • Led development of the CollectPlus parcel service platform at collectplus.co.uk, coordinating remote developers in Belarus with product owners and stakeholders in the UK.
  • Drove development of Bandcentral from day one — the platform won a SXSW Interactive Award in 2010, placing ahead of Spotify in its category.
  • Acted as Scrum Master on the Channel 4 web application engagement, embedding Agile ceremonies and coaching the team on sprint-based delivery.
  • Improved team velocity by identifying and de-scoping non-critical features, keeping delivery focused on highest-value outcomes per sprint.
  • Trained developers in object-oriented design principles and TDD, and introduced code metric analysis to define and prioritise refactoring efforts.
Ruby on Rails & PHP Developer · Ominor · Dec 2006 – Sep 2008
  • Delivered over 20 Ruby on Rails e-commerce sites, building end-to-end from back-end logic through to front-end integration.
PHP Developer · Kelly's Storage · March 2006 – November 2006
  • Built a web log analysis and KPI reporting tool in PHP, giving the marketing team visibility into site traffic patterns and campaign performance.
Database Assistant · Parador Properties · February 2005 – February 2006
  • Designed and built a Purchase Order management system in PHP and MySQL, replacing a manual process and improving procurement tracking.

Skills

Languages

Ruby, JavaScript, PHP, Golang

Frameworks & Libraries

Ruby on Rails, React, Hotwire, Stimulus.js, GraphQL, ActionMailbox

Infrastructure & Cloud

AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, Docker Swarm, nginx, GoCD, Heroku

Databases

MySQL, Redis

Methodologies

Agile, Scrum, TDD, Pair Programming, CI/CD

Leadership

Engineering Team Scaling, Technical Mentoring, Product Roadmap Ownership, Scrum Master, Remote Team Management