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I'm a software engineer and startup CTO with 20+ years building scalable systems and guiding technical transformations. I've architected platforms serving 50M+ monthly users, designed frameworks managing 500+ software components, and established engineering practices that boosted developer productivity across multiple organizations. My engineering philosophy is to build the machine that builds the machine—creating systems, processes, and teams that deliver outstanding products while avoiding over-engineering. I focus on developer productivity, sustainable architecture, engineering excellence, and problem-first thinking to align technology with business outcomes.…I'm a software engineer and startup CTO with 20+ years building scalable systems and guiding technical transformations. I've architected platforms serving 50M+ monthly users, designed frameworks managing 500+ software components, and established engineering practices that boosted developer productivity across multiple organizations. My engineering philosophy is to build the machine that builds the machine—creating systems, processes, and teams that deliver outstanding products while avoiding over-engineering. I focus on developer productivity, sustainable architecture, engineering excellence, and problem-first thinking to align technology with business outcomes.

Istvan Hoka

Full Stack Developer, Web Developer, Front-End Developer, +3

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I'm a software engineer and startup CTO with 20+ years building scalable systems and guiding technical transformations. I've architected platforms serving 50M+ monthly users, designed frameworks managing 500+ software components, and established engineering practices that boosted developer productivity across multiple organizations. My engineering philosophy is to build the machine that builds the machine—creating systems, processes, and teams that deliver outstanding products while avoiding over-engineering. I focus on developer productivity, sustainable architecture, engineering excellence, and problem-first thinking to align technology with business outcomes.…I'm a software engineer and startup CTO with 20+ years building scalable systems and guiding technical transformations. I've architected platforms serving 50M+ monthly users, designed frameworks managing 500+ software components, and established engineering practices that boosted developer productivity across multiple organizations. My engineering philosophy is to build the machine that builds the machine—creating systems, processes, and teams that deliver outstanding products while avoiding over-engineering. I focus on developer productivity, sustainable architecture, engineering excellence, and problem-first thinking to align technology with business outcomes.

Available to hire

I’m a software engineer and startup CTO with 20+ years building scalable systems and guiding technical transformations. I’ve architected platforms serving 50M+ monthly users, designed frameworks managing 500+ software components, and established engineering practices that boosted developer productivity across multiple organizations.

My engineering philosophy is to build the machine that builds the machine—creating systems, processes, and teams that deliver outstanding products while avoiding over-engineering. I focus on developer productivity, sustainable architecture, engineering excellence, and problem-first thinking to align technology with business outcomes.

Skills

Experience Level

Expert

Expert

Expert

Expert

Expert

Expert

Expert

Expert

Expert

Expert

Expert

Expert

Intermediate

Intermediate

Intermediate

Intermediate

Work Experience

Founder, CEO at Aissac (d/b/a ZenCash)

September 1, 2005 - Present

Founded and led Aissac, providing technical strategy and development leadership for ZenCash-related trading operations. Built high-throughput event-based system integrations for multiple invoicing applications, managed third-party integrations, and steered architectural decisions while growing the team and delivering value to clients.

Fractional CTO at TORY, LLC

October 1, 2025 - Present

Defined and executed the company’s technical vision and product roadmap. Oversaw architecture decisions and infrastructure, led AI/ML feature development and integration strategy, and guided build-vs-buy decisions to scale to 500K+ ARR. Ensured 99.5%+ uptime, 90%+ on-time delivery, crash-free rate above 99%, and managed quarterly technical debt.

Site Reliability Engineer at notonthehighstreet.com, London

January 1, 2026 - Present

Focused on platform reliability, observability, and infrastructure excellence to improve resilience and operational efficiency across services.

Principal (Staff) Engineer at Builder.ai

May 1, 2023 - May 1, 2025

Led a strategic technology transformation across 4 engineering teams, focusing on Application Assembly and Building Blocks platform to serve hundreds of SME customers. Defined platform architecture, standards, and governance; drove stack-agnostic backend improvements and component versioning.

Solutions Architect at notonthehighstreet.com, London

April 1, 2022 - April 1, 2023

Established a structured architecture framework for the tech team and evolved solution designs across the organization. Led major platform re-platforming initiatives for product catalog and guest checkout capabilities.

Principal Engineer at notonthehighstreet.com, London

February 1, 2020 - April 1, 2022

Led payments and stock management initiatives with target architecture and implementation governance. Re-evaluated asynchronous messaging to leverage AWS services and reduce coupling.

Senior Software Engineer at notonthehighstreet.com, London

June 1, 2018 - January 31, 2020

Senior Ruby engineer and de-facto tech lead of the Payments team. Led re-platforming of Basket and Checkout to microservices, designed APIs and GraphQL-based services, and resolved a compound tax rounding issue.

CTO at Digital Takeover, Dallas, TX

March 1, 2015 - March 1, 2018

Led architectural strategy and development for a media/content startup. Implemented real-time KPI dashboards, high-traffic web APIs, and real-time collaboration tools supporting tens of millions of monthly visitors.

CTO at ZenCash.com, Dallas, TX

August 1, 2011 - March 1, 2015

Led technical strategy for ZenCash with high-throughput event-based systems, integrations with seven invoicing applications, and architecture governance for multiple capabilities.

CTO at Blinksale.com, Dallas, TX

January 1, 2011 - December 31, 2018

Led technical strategy and development; migrated from VPS to PaaS, implemented CI/CD, and delivered API-first, modern frontend architecture with Rails and Ember.js. Built BlinkPay and supporting features.

Lead Developer at Blinksale.com, Dallas, TX

January 1, 2010 - December 31, 2010

Led Ruby on Rails development and contributed to product evolution as part of the early Blinksale team.

Founder at Aissac

September 1, 2005 - Present

Co-founded a development shop focused on web development, primarily using Ruby on Rails; grew the business and client base as owner.

Site Reliability Engineer at notonthehighstreet.com

January 1, 2026 - Present

Returning to Not On The High Street in a Site Reliability Engineering role, focusing on platform reliability, observability, and infrastructure excellence.

Solutions Architect at notonthehighstreet.com

April 1, 2022 - April 30, 2023

Established a structured architecture framework for the tech team; evolved solution designs for product catalog, product information management, and guest checkout.

Principal Engineer at notonthehighstreet.com

February 1, 2020 - April 30, 2022

Led payment innovations (Apple Pay), stock management capabilities, and asynchronous messaging strategy; leveraged AWS to reduce coupling.

Senior Software Engineer at notonthehighstreet.com

June 1, 2018 - January 31, 2020

Lead re-platforming projects for Basket and Checkout; designed APIs and microservices using Node.js and GraphQL; resolved a compound tax rounding issue reducing tax liability; delivered gift card capability.

CTO at Digital Takeover

March 1, 2015 - March 31, 2018

Media/content startup; architecture for a real-time KPI dashboard, a real-time collaborative workflow tool, and a high-traffic web API supporting 50M+ visitors/month.

CTO at ZenCash.com

August 1, 2011 - March 31, 2015

Led ZenCash Accounts Receivable CRM; built a high-throughput event-based system and 3rd party integrations with invoicing apps; provided technical leadership and architecture.

CTO at Blinksale.com

January 1, 2011 - December 31, 2018

Invoicing application; migrated to PaaS; implemented CI/CD; API-first design; modern Ember.js frontend; BlinkPay features.

Lead Developer at Blinksale.com

January 1, 2010 - December 31, 2010

Ruby on Rails development; early contribution to the product and codebase; helped scale the platform during transition.