Dimitris Hantzis

Principal Software Engineer & Systems Architect

Enterprise Platforms • Architecture & Technical Strategy • Engineering Leadership • Platform Modernisation

About

Principal Software Engineer and Systems Architect with 20 years of experience architecting, delivering and evolving enterprise-scale platforms across e-commerce, logistics, fulfilment, inventory, and financial domains, combining hands-on architecture and delivery with senior technical and people leadership across business-critical platforms.

Specialised in leading the modernisation and architectural transformation of business-critical platforms under live operational constraints, balancing technical change, operational continuity, and long-term maintainability.

Proven track record of owning cross-system architecture, building resilient operational platforms, and resolving high-impact business risks through pragmatic, observable, and scalable engineering.

Operates at the intersection of engineering, operations, and business, combining technical and people leadership with close collaboration across engineering teams and with senior stakeholders in operational and commercial functions to translate complex business needs into pragmatic, reliable, and scalable technical solutions.

Incorporates AI-assisted software engineering where it adds value, helping accelerate solution design, improve engineering productivity, and enhance software quality while maintaining strong engineering fundamentals and sound architectural judgement.

Key Impact

Platform Ownership

  • Architected, delivered and evolved the central Order Management System (OMS), acting as the operational coordination layer across inventory, purchasing, fulfilment, warehouse, storefront, and financial systems.

Transformation

  • Led architectural transformation and modernisation of legacy systems and business-critical workflows.
  • Rebuilt and repurposed the core Warehouse Management System (WMS) from PHP 5.6 to PHP 8.4.

Engineering Leadership

  • Provided cross-team technical leadership and engineering direction across business-critical platform initiatives, aligning engineers and Tech Leads around architectural decisions, technical approaches and delivery.

Operational

  • Prevented critical operational and financial risks across business-critical workflows.
  • Designed and delivered resilient operational infrastructure incorporating queue orchestration, automated recovery, observability, auditability, and fault-tolerant workflow execution across critical business systems.

Technical

  • Optimised legacy data models and system-level algorithms, significantly improving performance, efficiency, and scalability across high-volume transactional systems.
  • Designed and implemented scalable integration architecture enabling reliable synchronisation and data interchange across storefront, warehouse, ERP, and financial platforms.

Engineering Standards & AI

  • Established AI-assisted development standards, system-specific engineering blueprints, and architectural reference frameworks across multiple enterprise platforms.

Professional Experience

For complete responsibilities and achievements, see the full CV

May 2023 - Jun 2026

Senior Lead Software Engineer (Principal Engineer scope)

BrandAlley - London, UK

Served as the principal technical authority across interconnected business systems, providing technical and people leadership while leading architectural transformation of warehouse, fulfilment, order management and financial platforms. Architected and evolved the central Order Management System and its cross-system integrations, introduced AI-assisted engineering practices, and improved operational resilience across business-critical workflows.

Oct 2021 - Apr 2023

Lead Software Engineer

Internet Fusion Group - London, UK

Led a cross-functional team of 7 across engineering, QA and product responsible for bespoke warehouse logistics platforms supporting order management, inventory and financial workflows. Acted as technical owner of the central WMS while multiple engineering teams delivered concurrent changes, coordinating technical dependencies, overlapping development and releases across team boundaries to maintain platform stability. Improved platform reliability, performance, and maintainability through architectural modernisation, database optimisation, and the establishment of structured engineering practices.

Feb 2020 - Oct 2021

Lead Software Engineer

3ev (3rd Eye Vision) - Hove, UK

Led the technical design and delivery of backend capabilities across multiple client platforms, working across a TYPO3 legacy monolith alongside separate legacy Laravel applications and API services supporting booking and third-party integrations. Led platform modernisation, major PHP/Laravel upgrades, observability and reconciliation capabilities, cloud migration, and the design and development of a new integration service, taking projects from conception and solution design through successful production delivery.

Nov 2016 - Dec 2019

Senior Software Engineer

Tillo - Hove, UK

Designed and evolved transaction APIs and integrations supporting financial transaction processing and gift card services. Developed secure integration workflows, reconciliation and validation mechanisms, and third-party integrations with external partners and enterprise systems including SAP, contributing to the evolution of the platform from an early-stage product to a stable production system supporting increasing transaction volumes.

Jun 2016 - Nov 2016

Senior Software Engineer

22PointSix - Burgess Hill, UK

Delivered backend applications and REST APIs across multiple client projects, combining PHP/Symfony application development with responsibility for production infrastructure, maintenance, technical documentation, and ongoing platform improvements.

Jan 2013 - Dec 2015

Senior Full-Stack Web Developer

Mosaic Digital - Brighton, UK

Developed and delivered bespoke web applications and CMS platforms across a diverse portfolio of client projects, designing reusable backend components while working across application development, infrastructure, testing, deployment, and ongoing production support. Contributed to the development of the agency’s Drupal 7-based CMS platform.

Jul 2012 - Jan 2013

Freelance Software Engineer

Thessaloniki, Greece

Jul 2009 - Jun 2012

Full-Stack Software Engineer

Tera Media - London, UK & Athens, Greece

Oct 2006 - Jul 2009

Freelance Software Engineer

Thessaloniki, Greece

Apr 2006 - Oct 2006

Software Engineer (BSc Internship)

Alexander Technological Educational Institute, Greece

Mar 2004 - Apr 2006

Freelance Software Engineer

Thessaloniki, Greece

Military Service

Sept 2011 - Jul 2012

Second Lieutenant (Reserve) - Head of the Research and Informatics Office

88 Military Command, Hellenic Army - Lemnos, Greece

Completed military service as a Reserve Second Lieutenant in the Hellenic Army, serving as Head of the Research and Informatics Office at the 88 Military Command on the island of Lemnos. Led a technical team responsible for maintaining IT infrastructure across multiple military units while serving as Brigade Communications Officer on a rotating basis.

Technical Expertise

Architecture & Systems

Distributed systems, modular and monolithic architectures, system design

Synchronous/asynchronous integrations, REST APIs, queue-based processing

Resilient operational infrastructure, queue orchestration, resilience patterns, fallback mechanisms

Domain & Platforms

WMS, OMS, fulfilment, inventory, logistics, financial systems, payment processing

ERP (Business Central, SAP), e-commerce platforms (Magento), third-party API integrations

Engineering Leadership

Technical leadership, people leadership and mentoring, engineering standards

Architectural decision-making and facilitation, cross-functional stakeholder alignment

Modernisation under live operational constraints, incremental delivery

Backend & Web

PHP (4 - 8.4), Laravel (4.2 - 13), Symfony, Lumen, Zend

Filament, JavaScript, AJAX, jQuery, HTML5, CSS3, Jekyll, Liquid

Data & Storage

MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite

Redis, Memcached

High-volume transactional systems, data modelling, performance optimisation

Infrastructure & DevOps

AWS, Google Cloud (GCP), DigitalOcean, Docker, Linux, Bash

CI/CD, deployment workflows, system observability

Engineering Practices

Non-functional requirements: reliability & availability, performance & scalability, resilience & recoverability, data integrity & consistency

Observability, auditability & traceability

Code quality, testing strategies, secure development practices

AI-Assisted Engineering

AI-assisted software engineering, LLM-assisted architecture and implementation

System-specific engineering standards, architectural documentation and structured development workflows

Claude, Codex, ChatGPT

Education

  • MSc Design and Digital Media

    University of Edinburgh, UK

  • BSc Informatics Engineering (Computer Science)

    Alexander Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki, Greece

  • Reserve Infantry Officers Academy

    Signal Corps & Research and Informatics Corps

    Hellenic Armed Forces, Greece

Professional Development

Attended industry conferences including Laravel London, AWS London, and UX Brighton.

Languages

  • English (Fluent)
  • Greek (Native)