Marko Koen | Software Architect

About

Based in Stellenbosch, I’ve worked across fintech, e-commerce, and on-demand delivery platforms. I’m bilingual in Afrikaans and English, and I’ve performed in high-pressure environments, from trading software to high-volume production systems, solving complex problems while protecting uptime. I enjoy architecting distributed systems, improving developer workflows, and helping teams scale without losing delivery quality.

Work Experience

May 2026 - Present

Principal Software Engineer @ Fumopay Ltd

Partnering with Fumopay to build the financial intelligence layer for the modern economy.

Feb 2023 - May 2026

Software Architect @ Zulzi

Zulzi develops the technical solutions that power the Checkers Sixty60 platform, South Africa's fastest and largest grocery delivery service.
Architected new microservices inside a large distributed, event-driven ecosystem and improved backend deployment stability.
Led the transition to trunk-based development, including Bitbucket pipeline design to keep testing and code quality strong as the team scaled.
Spearheaded Jaeger distributed tracing across backend services and set up a dedicated environment for developer access and performance monitoring.
Integrated SonarCloud into custom Bitbucket pipeline workflows for continuous quality checks and more maintainable, secure codebases.

Dec 2022 - Jan 2023

Technical Lead @ Mara

Helped stabilize team delivery and platform reliability during a critical business restructuring period.
Selected to lead a new lean team after major layoffs following the FTX collapse.
The business later closed after Coinbase Ventures halted funding.

Apr 2022 - Dec 2022

Engineering Team Lead @ TFG Labs (Bash)

After TFG acquired Quench, our team became part of TFG Labs (now Bash) as the Last Mile Squad.
Supported the existing Quench e-commerce platform, including Dis-Chem DeliverD.
Contributed to building out group-wide last-mile technology capabilities.

Apr 2021 - Mar 2022

Chief Technology Officer @ Quench

Built and scaled the development team, including hiring and growth conversations.
Drove technical strategy and managed third-party integrations and partnerships with organizations such as Woolworths and Dis-Chem.
Quench was acquired by TFG in December 2021.

Jul 2020 - Mar 2021

Senior Software Engineer @ Quench

Led adoption of cloud infrastructure across GCP, Terraform, and Helm.
Developed new microservices in Ruby on Rails and Golang.
Delivered and supported e-commerce solutions for major third-party clients.

Jan 2017 - Jun 2020

Software Developer @ Estuary Solutions

Integrated the EMAPI gateway into the existing Swordfish platform, with a focus on trade management and commissions.
Provided live production support during market hours in high-pressure trading environments.
Implemented Telegram API notifications to replace SMS alerts and reduce operational cost.
Improved release and platform stability, including auto-release tooling that reduced release cycles from weeks to a single night.
Worked client-facing with large corporate banks to onboard and train teams on the software.

Nov 2015

Software Tester (QA Internship) @ Matogen Corporate Web Development

Completed internship experience in quality assurance and software testing.

Skills

Turning chaos to calm AI Builder / Product Engineer Leading development teams Creating developer environments Translating business to devs and devs to business Customer-first product ownership

Technologies

Focused on scalable backend architecture, reliable delivery pipelines, and strong engineering team enablement.

OpenAI CodexGoLangAWSGCPTerraformHelm Ruby on RailsC#.NET FrameworkSQLDocker PrometheusGrafanaSentrySonarCloudBitbucket Pipelines JavaScriptPythonJavaPHPGit

Education

B.Sc. Mathematical Science (Computer Science Major)

Stellenbosch University

2014 - 2016

Cambridge IGCSE O-Levels & A-Levels

Petra High School (Petra College), Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

2010 - 2013

Contact

I'm always keen to connect. Send me a message.

Hi, I’m Marko Koen.