RESUME
Houssem Hajlaoui
Fractional CTO · Hands-on Architect · Builder of Teams & Platforms
Head of Technology and fractional CTO who builds two things: high-performing, multi-country engineering teams, and the platforms they ship.
I'm a hands-on architect who leads from the engineers' side, protecting their focus and earning their trust on the hard technical calls. In two decades, only one engineer has ever resigned from a team I've led.
Whether embedded as a leader or advising from the outside, I'm at my best taking early-stage ideas to production systems that scale, lately architecting AI-powered platforms.
Experience
Head of Technology
Feb 2023 – PresentSustainable Square, Dubai
Leading the engineering and technology department of Sustainable Square Consulting: setting technical strategy, building and managing the team, and owning the company's product and infrastructure direction, including its flagship ESG platform, Squarely.
sustainablesquare.com ↗Head of Engineering
Feb 2021 – Jan 2023Lami, Nairobi
Leading the engineering of the Lami digital insurance platform. Managed a team of 20 engineers from 4 different countries. Orchestrated the development of an award-winning, end-to-end insurance platform now used by top corporations across Kenya and the wider region.
lami.world ↗Backend / DevOps Lead
2019 – 2021Project Bloc, Washington DC
Engineered and maintained the full infrastructure of Project Bloc, a blockchain platform for real estate, and led backend development.
Founder & Principal Consultant
2017 – Present (Fractional)Venatoria Consulting, USA
Fractional CTO and consulting services to startups and first-time tech builders, delivered under the Venatoria Consulting brand and operated through Venatoria LLC (Wyoming, USA), my central business entity.
venatoria.consulting ↗CTO, Co-founder
2013 – 2017Inkyfada, Tunis
Co-founded and led the technology behind Inkyfada, an independent long-form digital media platform. Built the publishing platform, editorial tooling, and infrastructure powering a high-traffic, content-heavy publication.
inkyfada.org ↗Project Manager
2011 – 2014Nawaat, Tunis
Directed the development of Nawaat's publishing portal and the tools and technologies behind it, helping shape a small project into a fully functional digital media organization.
nawaat.org ↗Founder, CEO
2007 – 2011Venatoria Network, Sfax
My first venture, founded straight out of university: a firm providing technology and strategy consulting to Tunisian businesses moving online. Where I learned to run a company and serve clients from the ground up, and the origin of the Venatoria name I have carried across my brands ever since.
Top Recent Projects
Squarely — AI-Powered ESG Reporting Platform
MVP launched Oct 2023Sustainable Square
Architect and lead development of Squarely (7-person team): ESG data management with enterprise-grade RBAC, plus an AI layer for auto-drafting reports, data validation, and insights & visualizations. Now the central ESG platform for 20+ leading GCC corporations.
squarely.tech ↗Nawaat Chronicles — AI Interface Over a 20-Year Content Archive
Delivered March 2026via Venatoria Consulting
Led the build (assembled and directed a team of designers and developers) of a conversational AI layer over a 30,000+ article archive spanning 20+ years of content. RAG-based; the system narrates and explains rather than just retrieving, generates timelines on demand, and works seamlessly across Arabic, French, and English.
chronicles.nawaat.org ↗Technology
AWS architecture & cost optimization, DevOps / CI-CD, infrastructure-as-code, containerization, observability
Model selection & routing, build-vs-buy, RAG & agentic workflows, cost governance across leading LLM platforms
System design, enterprise integrations, data pipelines and cross-system data flow
Distributed / multi-country teams, hiring & delivery, technical strategy & advisory
Education
Bachelor's Degree — Information Technology
Faculty of Economic Sciences and Management — Sfax, Tunisia (2006)
Baccalaureate — Mathematics
Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia (2000)
Languages
- Arabic — mother tongue
- French — fluent (written and spoken)
- English — fluent (written and spoken)