Software · Systems

Kris Khaira

Software Engineering Consultant github linkedin

Software engineering consultant since 2001, based in Malaysia — working solo and alongside teams across travel, film, education, non-profits and HR, from Sukabumi to Hungary.

These days I specialise in scaling remote-friendly teams that can solve whatever technical problem you throw at them.

CV

Tech leader, engineering manager, consultant and former startup CTO. I've been building software and teams since 2001, in HR, travel, cinema, transport, education, media, arts, culture and non-profits.

Experience

Engineering Manager — Hirer Shared Services

SEEK

Jul 2022 – present · Kuala Lumpur

Managed a program to migrate 16 teams from legacy .NET monoliths to a TypeScript microservice architecture. Led an initiative that cut my domain's annual cloud cost by AUD 1.1M. Helped create organisational BAU tech guidance and the IC engineering pathway as part of the respective councils.

Stakeholders have included our Director of Engineering, Heads of Engineering, Principal Architect, CTO, Distinguished Engineer and MD of Tech.

Created processes and led a working group to make my department's tech metrics (cloud cost, security, operational availability) more transparent and easier to review. Co-organised SEEK events to improve tech hiring in Asia.

One of the joys of the work has been mentoring my direct reports and mentees and creating mobility opportunities for them — Staff Engineers, Lead Engineers, a Senior BA, Senior Software Engineers, Software Engineers, Graduate Engineers and contractors.

Engineering Manager — Indirect, Aggregation & Platform Reliability (Asia)

SEEK

Mar 2021 – Jun 2022 · Kuala Lumpur

  • Managed a team of 8. Increased ad postings by ~250%, reduced total P1 downtime by ~75%, and modernised legacy APIs.
  • Hiring, onboarding, mentoring, removing workflow impediments, backlog grooming, sprint planning and retrospectives; planning OKRs and the long-term roadmap with partners and stakeholders across the organisation.
  • Beyond my own team:
    • Improved domain-wide practices for collecting and analysing tech health metrics
    • Helped improve how teams run team health surveys
    • Helped create SEEK's new engineering IC career pathway
    • Helped other teams hire through an engineering-wide central hiring team
    • Led a team to improve technical documentation practices
    • Advised executives on remote, async work

Principal Engineer

SEEK

Jun 2020 – Mar 2021 · Kuala Lumpur

  • Helped my team of 6 modernise legacy architecture with a DevOps culture and better security
  • Shared knowledge with other engineers through pair-programming (Docker, Git, UNIX shell)
  • Improved pull-request, review, Git and engineering-support processes
  • Improved API monitoring with CloudWatch and X-Ray
  • Sys admin for upgrades and maintenance on legacy Windows servers
  • Configured AWS, S3, SSM and Buildkite CI/CD pipelines for hybrid environments
  • Cost monitoring, optimisation and Cloudability integration
  • Worked closely with the Engineering Manager to shape team culture; coordinated sprints and other Agile events
  • Improved documentation for legacy systems
  • Helped a cross-regional team find security issues in the codebase and manage the impact of a related P1 incident
  • Provided engineering support to other SEEK teams for architecture my team owned

Consultant Engineer

SEEK

Nov 2019 – May 2020 · Kuala Lumpur

  • Configured hybrid environments using AWS SSM
  • Debugged search back-end issues in PHP
  • Extracted and queried data for scam investigations
  • Fixed legacy Selenium tests to run across dev environments
  • Supported customers with job-post configuration

Software Consultant

Freelance

Dec 2012 – present · Kuala Lumpur

  • Clients: Gun.io, Atrium, Bread Advertising, Bluetoffee Books, Streething, Arts Education Archive Malaysia, Lassdan, Socialist Party of Malaysia, Aldeburgh Festival, SUARAM, Amnesty International Malaysia, DemiRakyat, Malaysiakini, Logistics Consulting Asia
  • Tech: Ruby on Rails, Drupal Commerce, Ubercart, WordPress, OpenX, Symfony, CakePHP, Shopify, Magento Commerce
  • Hosting: Heroku, Ubuntu, CloudLinux, FreeBSD
  • Built development teams of up to 8
  • 2022: Software architecture design for headless commerce
  • 2021: Custom crypto portfolio tracker using spreadsheets and the CoinGecko API
  • 2019: Improved pricing scrapers and internal algorithms (Lumen, PostgreSQL, MySQL); integrated third-party APIs (eBay, Flipsy); debugged search back-ends (PHP)
  • 2019: Improved hosting infrastructure (Docker, AWS) and monitoring (CloudWatch, Datadog); improved developer onboarding
  • 2019: Front-end apps (Ember.js, Mithril), online ordering and mailing forms, and end-to-end tests (Jest, Puppeteer, Cypress)
  • 2018–2019: SQL for business analytics; data ETL for scam investigations; helped client teams work in Agile; wireframed new web and mobile features
  • 2016: Modernised teams' DevOps stack and infrastructure
  • 2015: Data recovery and security auditing (macOS, Windows, external storage); DDoS and intrusion recovery
  • 2014: Data migration; UX/UI for websites and intranets; ad inventory bidding, management and scheduling
  • Migrated legacy sites (Drupal 5 and below) to Drupal 7; designed and customised Drupal and CiviCRM themes
  • Python and bash automation to deploy sites for new clients quickly
  • Trained dev apprentices from the Communication Workers of America (CWA)

Chief Technology Officer

AirAsia Activities (formerly Touristly)

May 2017 – Jul 2018 · Kuala Lumpur

An activity-booking API and white-label web app provider that also built Vidi, a video-based travel discovery feature.

  • Scaled engineering to 10 engineers (infrastructure, web front-end, iOS, Android)
  • Technical advice to the CEO and other managers; turned stakeholder requirements and user feedback into technical specs
  • Introduced Agile, Lean, Scrum, Kanban, DevOps, Infrastructure as Code and TDD
  • Introduced a remote, async workflow to make a distributed team more productive
  • Ran daily and weekly scrums as ScrumMaster; introduced Pivotal Tracker and GitHub

Senior Web Developer

AirAsia Activities (formerly Touristly)

May 2014 – Apr 2017 · Kuala Lumpur

  • Introduced Terraform, CircleCI, AWS Lambda, Elastic Transcoder, EC2, SNS and S3
  • Introduced Ruby on Rails, Ember.js and a JSON:API-based API
  • Led design and development of a reusable white-label system for AirAsia, Tune Hotels and other partners
  • Introduced monitoring: New Relic, Pingdom Server, Skylight, Airbrake
  • Led integration with AirAsia's EDM systems
  • Front-end styling with HTML5, CSS3, Sass and Susy
  • Introduced testing practice — TDD, CI, manual testing guidelines, live cross-platform integration testing (RSpec, Capybara, VCR, WebMock, QUnit, ember-cli-mirage, JSON Schema, New Relic Synthetics, Ghost Inspector, Runscope); wrote SIT and UAT guidelines for AirAsia integrations
  • Led the video transcoding and geofencing back-ends
  • Code review, training and guidance for other developers

Web Developer

MUBI

Jul 2013 – Jan 2014

An online cinema for watching, discovering and discussing great films.

  • Front-end development (JS, CSS, HTML5)
  • Helped with UX and Ruby on Rails development

Front-End Designer/Developer

Grab (then MyTeksi)

Jan 2012 – Nov 2012 · Kuala Lumpur

Second full-time developer and employee #3.

  • Front-end: Ember.js, HTML5, CSS, Compass, Susy, Sencha Touch 2, Zepto.js
  • Designed and built the UI for the operator/admin dashboard and a responsive, mobile-first web booking UI
  • Built an admin-facing accounting app and the first PhantomJS test suite for web booking
  • Designed UI/UX and prepared design assets for the native iPhone, Android and Windows 8 apps
  • Generated coupons with PhantomJS, jquery.qrcode.js and WebKit on the back-end team's API
  • Designed marketing EDMs and print (leaflets, posters, ads); helped manage iOS App Store releases; wrote API documentation

Web Developer/Designer

Freelance

Jan 2009 – Dec 2011 · Penang

  • Languages: PHP, Python, JS, C · Frameworks: Drupal, Django, WordPress
  • Sys admin for Ubuntu Server, Apache, SSL, MySQL
  • UI/UX design — wireframes and mockups in Balsamiq and OmniGraffle
  • Clients: Penang Heritage Trust, Arts-Ed, Penang Watch, ALIRAN, Penang Island City Council, Siminars

Web Developer

MUBI

Oct 2006 – Jan 2008 · George Town

  • Front-end: CSS, JS, Prototype, AJAX, Flash
  • UI/UX design

UI Designer/Developer

LifeLogger

Jan 2005 – Jan 2006 · Kuala Lumpur

A social network partly funded by DiGi Telecommunications. As lead front-end developer I built it in XHTML and CSS, making it one of the first websites in Malaysia to use them. Also built promo sites for advertisers and improved LifeLogger's online identity.

Web Designer

Emanon Sdn Bhd

Jan 2004 – Dec 2004 · George Town

  • Clients: Dell, Penang YTL-Arts Festival, Penang Butterfly Farm, Sim Leisure
  • Designed and built the UI for the in-house CMS
  • Led W3C-compliant CSS and XHTML development at the company, early in the Malaysian web industry

Web Designer/Developer

Freelance

Jan 2001 – Dec 2003 · Penang

  • Web development and design for local dev shops and design agencies while studying full-time
  • Back-end: PHP, Textpattern, WordPress · Front-end: JS, CSS
  • Clients: Surforever, DocuXpress, Binggles Interactive

Education

Bachelor's Degree, Computing Studies

Northumbria University

2001 – 2003

Also

  • Languages: English, Malay (native)
  • Brown belt, Brazilian jiu-jitsu
  • Certification: Communicating for Impact