Bryan Arbelo, Head of Engineering and CTO

Today · Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

Bryan Arbelo

Head of Engineering and Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

Fifteen years from a first engineering job, learning English on the side, to running engineering for Australasia's largest automotive aftermarket parts distributor.

Hands-on engineering leader with 15+ years spanning full-stack engineer to Chief Technology Officer, comfortable as a player-coach across scale-up and enterprise. Repeat startup CTO across marketplaces, fintech, healthtech and e-commerce who built the Jarvis home-services marketplace zero-to-one and led it through acquisition by category leader Whizz. Builds applied generative-AI products on AWS and leads AI-enabled engineering teams.

Titles held
Head of Engineering; Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at four companies - Hudled, Match My Makeup, Whizz Technologies and Jarvis Home Services; Development Lead; Front-End Development Lead; Software Engineer.
Leadership
Engineering leader and player-coach: building, hiring and growing engineering teams, engineering management and performance, technical strategy and roadmap, solution architecture across teams, executive and board-level communication, technical due diligence through an acquisition.
Industries
Automotive aftermarket and retail, e-commerce and headless commerce, two-sided marketplaces, fintech and B2B SaaS, healthtech and telehealth, augmented reality and computer vision.
Cloud and stack
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Microsoft Azure; TypeScript, JavaScript, Node.js, React, Next.js, Vue.js and Nuxt, GraphQL, PostgreSQL; Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform and CI/CD.
AI
Generative AI and large language models (LLMs) in production on AWS, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), conversational analytics over a data warehouse, and leading AI-enabled engineering teams.
Based
Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, working remotely with teams across Australia.

LinkedInhello@bryanarbelo.com

2018 - today

Tree

Leading engineering, from startup CTO to enterprise Head of Engineering.

– Present · Remote, Australia

GPC Asia Pacific Head of Engineering, Asia Pacific (Digital Division)

Australasia's largest automotive aftermarket parts distributor, a subsidiary of the NYSE-listed Genuine Parts Company.

Stack AWS, TypeScript, Vue.js and Nuxt, GraphQL, headless commerce, ERP and POS integration, CI/CD, generative AI

  1. Scale

    1,000,000+

    SKUs on the digital commerce platform

    Live inventory availability, transactional integrity and synchronisation between commerce, ERP and store systems.

  2. Milestone

    A major platform program driven to production

    Reset architecture, delivery cadence and engineering standards, then took it live.

  3. Milestone

    Generative AI on AWS

    A conversational analytics assistant over governed data models, giving business teams natural-language access to their own data.

  • Lead a multi-disciplinary engineering group (engineers, QA, design) and act as cross-team solution architect across a large IT organisation.
  • Established the engineering operating model end to end - Git workflow, CI/CD, cloud architecture, sprint planning.
  • Delivered in-store kiosk and POS solutions, B2B trade portals, finance-system integrations and warehouse/fulfilment software.

– · Remote, Australia

Hudled Hands-on Chief Technology Officer

An Antler-backed Sydney SaaS fintech.

Stack TypeScript, React, Next.js, Node.js, GraphQL, PostgreSQL, Google Cloud (Firebase, Cloud Functions), CI/CD

  1. Scale

    ~US$100M

    SaaS spend under management

    Across ~300 customers during my tenure.

  • Led the engineering and technology function (team up to 7), owning roadmap-to-sprints delivery, code review, hiring and standards.
  • Delivered on TypeScript, React/Next.js and Node on Google Cloud; drove SEO-led growth.

– · Remote, Australia

Match My Makeup Chief Technology Officer (Contract / Interim)

Stack Java, microservices, AWS (ECS, Lambda), Docker, Terraform, Next.js, React, TypeScript, Node.js, GraphQL, PostgreSQL, Tableau

  1. Milestone

    Monolith to microservices

    Re-architected a legacy Java monolith into containerised microservices on AWS, with CI/CD and infrastructure as code.

  • Built business-intelligence reporting and managed contractors across data modelling, forecasting and analytics.

– · Remote, Australia

Whizz Technologies Chief Technology Officer, Jarvis product

Stack Stripe and Stripe Connect, native iOS and Android apps, AWS (Docker, Kubernetes, Lambda), TypeScript, Node.js, React and Redux, GraphQL, PostgreSQL, Jest

  • Retained through Whizz's acquisition of Jarvis to own engineering for the Jarvis marketplace, folding its platform and payments into the acquirer's stack.
  • Ran Stripe / Stripe Connect payments and automated payouts, native iOS/Android apps, and matchmaking.

– · Australia

Jarvis Home Services Chief Technology Officer and Shareholder

Stack Two-sided marketplace, native iOS and Android apps, Node.js, React, GraphQL, PostgreSQL, Stripe Connect, SEO and marketing automation

  1. Acquisition

    Acquired by Whizz, 2020

    Led the technology function as an equity-holding CTO through the acquisition by category leader Whizz, owning technical due diligence and handover. The combined business was around $25M.

    Reported in the AFR, October 2020

  • Built a two-sided home-services marketplace end to end - native iOS/Android apps, backend and matchmaking - with Stripe Connect payouts.
  • Ran marketing, SEO and email/SMS automation supporting customer growth.

2013 - 2018

Seedling

Engineer to lead - telehealth, computer vision, SaaS at scale.

– · Sydney, Australia

Genbook Front-End Development Lead / Software Engineer

Stack React, Redux, single-page applications, Webpack, Jest, Babel, Java/Spring and Node.js on AWS

  1. Scale

    22,000+

    merchants on the rebuilt front end

    A decade of legacy front-end re-architected into React/Redux single-page applications.

  • Stood up a front-end and automation team from scratch, owning hiring, architecture and tooling.

– · Melbourne, Australia

Attend Anywhere Development Lead / Software Engineer

Stack WebRTC, Node.js, Socket.io, React and Redux, iOS (Swift), migration from .NET (C#, SignalR)

  1. Milestone

    Telehealth in hospitals, two countries

    A WebRTC telehealth platform deployed across major Australian hospitals (Healthdirect) and NHS Scotland.

  • Migrated a legacy .NET real-time stack to Node and built a React/Redux management application and an iOS app.

–

Thinkful Web Development Mentor (part-time)

Stack JavaScript, AngularJS, HTML5 and CSS3, Git, data modelling, code review

–

Modelit Software Engineer (contract to Salesforce.com)

Stack AngularJS, Node.js, MongoDB, Salesforce API

–

GlamST Software Engineer - AR virtual makeup, computer vision

Stack Augmented reality (AR), computer vision and facial-landmark detection (C++), Windows 8 / WinJS, .NET, Microsoft Azure

Later acquired by Ulta, 2018.

2011 - 2013

Seed

The launch pad. A first job, a degree and a new language, all at once.

–

Tata Consultancy Services Software Engineer, Target Corporation account

Stack Finance, payment and reporting systems - mainframe COBOL/DB2, .NET/C#, SQL Server

  1. Milestone

    First engineering job

    Tata Consultancy Services, on the Target Corporation account.

  2. Milestone

    BSc, Computer Science - Bios University, 2012

    Finished while working that first job.

  3. Milestone

    University of Michigan Certificate of Proficiency in English, 2011

    Learning English at the same time.

What I work with

Leadership
engineering leadership · engineering management · team scaling and hiring · mentoring, coaching and performance management · technical roadmap and technology strategy · engineering culture and delivery · Agile and Scrum · executive and board-level communication · technical due diligence · player-coach (hands-on)
Architecture and Platform
software, system and solution architecture · microservices · distributed systems · platform engineering · legacy modernisation and digital transformation · systems and ERP integration · API and GraphQL design · payments (Stripe / Stripe Connect) · reliability and high availability
Cloud and DevOps
Amazon Web Services (AWS) · Google Cloud Platform (GCP) · Microsoft Azure · Kubernetes · Docker · serverless (AWS Lambda) · CI/CD (continuous integration and delivery) · DevOps · infrastructure as code (Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, AWS CDK) · test automation (Jest)
Languages and Frameworks
TypeScript · JavaScript · Node.js · React, Redux and Next.js · Vue.js and Nuxt · GraphQL · PostgreSQL · Java · .NET and C# · native iOS and Android apps · WebRTC
AI
applied and generative AI (GenAI) · large language models (LLMs) · conversational AI and chatbots · retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) · natural-language querying of data warehouses · AI-enabled engineering teams · computer vision and augmented reality
Domains
e-commerce at 1M+ SKU scale · headless commerce · marketplaces · B2B SaaS · fintech · healthtech and telehealth · retail technology (kiosk, POS, B2B trade portals) · warehouse and fulfilment · SEO

Education and certifications

Contact

Email hello@bryanarbelo.com or connect on LinkedIn.

Contact

Slow Tide, an original bossa nova in F, 132 BPM. Composed as a lead sheet in code (melody and changes), arranged by my own rule-based engine (rootless piano voicings, walking bass, bossa groove) to MIDI and rendered through FluidSynth soundfonts. The Portuguese verse is generated with ACE-Step conditioned on the band stem, best of four takes by harmonics-to-noise ratio and Whisper transcription accuracy.

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