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Hi, I'm Alin Alexandru.
I help eCommerce teams ship fast, resilient stores.

CTO & Solution Architect at INNOBYTE. Building scalable, secure and high-performance eCommerce systems for over 15 years.

Experience
15+ years
Team led
20+ engineers
Focus
VTEX · Headless
Based in
Bucharest, RO
Get in touch See experience

About

Solution Architect, hands-on engineer, and team builder. I focus on the intersection of scalability, performance and developer experience.

For more than 15 years I've designed and operated eCommerce platforms that have to perform under load — especially during peak windows like Black Friday. Today, I lead the engineering organisation at INNOBYTE, where my team delivers VTEX-based commerce projects on top of VTEX IO and AWS.

My day-to-day blends solution architecture, code reviews and long-term technology strategy: choosing the right tools, growing the DevOps practice, shipping CI/CD pipelines, and making sure the systems we build stay observable, secure and cheap to evolve.

  • Performance under pressure

    Black Friday readiness, load testing, PHP & DB tuning.

  • VTEX & headless

    Storefront, IO services, marketplace and headless integrations.

  • Cloud & DevOps

    Scalable infra on AWS, GCP, DigitalOcean — with CI/CD by default.

  • Engineering leadership

    Hiring, mentoring and steering teams of 20+ engineers.

Experience

  1. Chief Technology Officer · Solution Architect, VTEX Projects

    INNOBYTE · Bucharest, Romania

    Jul 2016 — Present · 9 yrs 9 mo

    Driving technical direction and team performance across a 20+ engineer organisation delivering eCommerce solutions, with a strong focus on VTEX integrations running on VTEX IO and AWS.

    • Lead the team responsible for VTEX integration projects since 2022.
    • Design solutions capable of handling high throughput on scalable infrastructure.
    • Grew the DevOps department and shipped CI/CD pipelines for every team.
    • Conduct performance audits before Black Friday — load, PHP, database tuning.
    • Set technical direction and evaluate emerging technologies for strategic fit.
    • Improve company-wide processes, quality and engineering practices.
    • VTEX IO
    • VTEX Headless
    • AWS
    • Google Cloud
    • DigitalOcean
    • PHP
    • TypeScript
    • Node.js
    • CI/CD

  2. Senior PHP Developer

    INNOBYTE · Bucharest, Romania

    May 2014 — Jul 2016 · 2 yrs 2 mo

    Built and integrated large eCommerce systems for major retailers, with a recurring focus on Black Friday readiness and platform robustness.

    • Integrated one of the largest online retailers with a major fashion retailer using REST APIs and RabbitMQ.
    • Spearheaded load testing for critical software systems during peak periods.
    • Defined performance improvement strategies tailored to Black Friday traffic.
    • Helped customers maximise revenue opportunities by improving checkout and catalog flows.
    • PHP
    • Symfony
    • Magento
    • MySQL
    • RabbitMQ
    • REST APIs

  3. PHP Web Developer

    Smart Programs S.R.L · Bucharest, Romania

    Jan 2010 — Jan 2013 · 3 yrs

    Developed 123reduceri.ro, an aggregator for online coupons, using Symfony 1.4 and MySQL.

    • Built and maintained the entire 123reduceri.ro coupon aggregator platform.
    • Worked with Symfony 1.4, MySQL and Git in a small, fast-moving team.
    • PHP
    • Symfony 1.4
    • MySQL
    • Git

  4. Software Engineer

    Silentale

    Oct 2009 — Oct 2010 · 1 yr

    Built an Outlook plugin in C# / XAML for Silentale, an information technology startup.

    • Developed an Outlook plugin in C# with XAML.
    • Worked in a small product engineering team on desktop integration.
    • C#
    • XAML
    • Outlook plugin

Skills & Toolbox

A pragmatic mix of leadership, architecture and hands-on engineering — grouped the way I actually use them on real projects.

Leadership & Strategy

  • Engineering management (20+ engineers)
  • Technology strategy
  • Solution architecture
  • Hiring & mentoring
  • Process & quality

Architecture & Integrations

  • VTEX IO
  • Headless commerce
  • Microservices
  • Event-driven (RabbitMQ)
  • API design (REST / GraphQL)

Backend

  • PHP
  • Symfony
  • Magento 2
  • Node.js / TypeScript
  • MySQL
  • ElasticSearch
  • Redis

Cloud & DevOps

  • AWS
  • DigitalOcean
  • Google Cloud
  • Docker
  • CI/CD pipelines
  • Infrastructure as code

Performance & Reliability

  • Black Friday readiness
  • Load & stress testing
  • PHP optimisation
  • Database optimisation
  • Cache strategy
  • CDN & edge

eCommerce Domain

  • VTEX (Storefront, IO, Headless)
  • Magento 2
  • Marketplace integrations
  • Payments & checkout
  • Catalog & search

Areas of impact

Highlights from my role at INNOBYTE: large-scale VTEX delivery, Black Friday performance work, and DevOps / CI/CD foundations across the organisation. These are professional initiatives and programmes — not public GitHub repositories.

VTEX integrations platform

Architected and led delivery of a VTEX-based commerce platform serving high-traffic retailers, with services running on VTEX IO and AWS.

  • VTEX IO
  • VTEX Headless
  • AWS
  • TypeScript
  • Node.js

Black Friday performance audits

Recurring program of pre-Black-Friday audits — load stress testing, PHP profiling and database tuning — for high-traffic eCommerce clients.

  • Performance
  • Load testing
  • PHP
  • MySQL
  • Redis
  • ElasticSearch

DevOps practice & CI/CD foundations

Built the DevOps department from the ground up and rolled out CI/CD pipelines to all engineering teams.

  • AWS
  • Docker
  • CI/CD
  • GitHub Actions
  • Infrastructure as Code

Let's talk

Happy to connect about VTEX, eCommerce, performance, and engineering leadership. The fastest way to reach me is LinkedIn.