Ash Lane

Chief Technology Officer

Dubai · Open to Global & Remote

Professional Summary

Chief Technology Officer with a decade leading engineering, product, and platform organisations across SaaS, edge-native infrastructure, IoT hardware, and mobile. I scale teams from early product-market fit to multi-product portfolios, combining architectural depth with strong people leadership. Experienced driving technical roadmaps, operational excellence, and cross-functional execution while partnering with boards and executive teams on long-range strategy.

Core Skills

Technology Strategy & Governance

Vision, multi-year roadmaps, and investment planning across platform and product portfolios
Architecture councils, standards, and technical OKRs aligned to business outcomes
Risk management, security, compliance, and cost optimisation

People & Culture

Org design, senior leadership hiring, coaching, and succession planning
Engineering culture, performance management, compensation philosophy
Cross-functional alignment with product, design, growth, and operations

Execution Excellence

Developer experience platforms, CI/CD, observability, incident response
Program management, portfolio prioritisation, and outcome-driven cadences
Scaling edge workloads, IoT fleets, data pipelines, and mobile deployments

Stakeholder & Corporate Alignment

Board communications, investor relations, M&A due diligence and integration
Partnerships with CFO/COO on budgeting, vendor strategy, and ROI
Customer-facing evangelism, analyst relations, and strategic partnerships

Director-Level Scope

Director-level ownership across product roadmap, delivery governance, stakeholder communication, vendor selection, budget trade-offs, and cross-functional operating cadence.
Experience leading product, engineering, operations, GTM, implementation, and partner teams through 0-to-1 launches, regional expansion, and platform scaling.
Translate founder, board, and executive priorities into OKRs, portfolio plans, hiring needs, delivery metrics, risk management, and customer-facing execution.

Professional Experience

Founder & CEO – Chief Technology Officer

Topolo Technology Inc

Mar 2022 – Present Global / Remote

Built the technology foundation for a multi-product software platform spanning identity, CRM, planning, billing, AI, admin, commerce, media, and workflow systems.

Owned architecture across Cloudflare Workers, React/TypeScript, Astro, serverless APIs, D1/KV/R2/Vectorize/Queues, Durable Objects, containers, mobile clients, and SQL-backed services.
Established shared services for OAuth/OIDC identity, service-to-service auth, scoped JWT/JWKS authorization, tenant data, developer onboarding, billing, notifications, AI gateway usage, and deployment governance.
Implemented CI/CD, generated manifests, staging/production targets, observability, CloudControl tooling, and deployment orchestration to support repeatable releases across many apps.
Set technical standards, documentation, API contracts, and operating cadences for a broad product portfolio and distributed delivery model.
Partnered with product and commercial leadership on roadmap priorities, platform investment, risk posture, capacity planning, and cost optimisation.

CTO – Food Tech Platforms

Fresh Ventures – Livefreshr, JustCook, JustFeed

Mar 2014 – Present Dubai, UAE

Served as CTO responsible for the end-to-end technology strategy powering Livefreshr’s subscription operations, consumer apps, and partner integrations.

Directed technology roadmap spanning production systems (JustCook), customer apps (JustFeed), data, and lifecycle automation.
Managed engineering hires, budgets, vendors, and cross-functional planning as the business scaled across the UAE.
Implemented CI/CD, observability, and incident management that improved reliability and reduced operational overhead.
Aligned technology investments with commercial and operations goals, reporting to founders and investors on progress and runway.

Solution Consultant / Project Manager

XpertLearning

Feb 2013 – Sep 2016 UAE

Implemented enterprise learning and talent management platforms, bridging client requirements, vendor capabilities, and future roadmaps.

Served as the first Cornerstone OnDemand certified solution consultant in the GCC, leading discovery, configuration, and deployments for major regional clients.
Owned RFP responses, solution demonstrations, admin training, and post-launch optimisation for performance, learning, and talent products.
Provided structured feedback and enhancement requests to vendors based on real-world client usage and adoption patterns.

Mid-Market Sales Manager / TPP Partnerships Manager

Cvent

Apr 2019 – Mar 2021 Dubai, UAE

Brought a product-minded approach to selling Cvent's event tech platforms into the Middle East market.

Drove product-qualified opportunities through deeply consultative discovery and tailored demonstrations.
Partnered with product and implementation teams to ensure commitments made in the sales cycle translated into successful deployments.

Technical Skills

Technology Stack

Node/TypeScript, React/Next, Flutter/Dart, Laravel/PHP, Vue, Go/Rust services, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Firebase, Cloudflare Workers/D1/KV/R2, AWS/GCP-aware architecture, Git, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD, and release workflows.

DevEx & Operations

GitHub Actions, CircleCI, ArgoCD, Backstage, Datadog, Sentry, OpenTelemetry, LaunchDarkly, incident response playbooks.

Security & Governance

Threat modelling, SOC2/ISO readiness, zero trust edge networks, data privacy, vendor management, enterprise SLAs.

SaaS Tools & Platforms

CRM, GTM & Lifecycle

Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Apollo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Mailchimp, Braze, Customer.io, WhatsApp Business API, Stripe, Google Ads, and Meta Ads.

Product, Analytics & Support

Jira, Linear, Notion, Confluence, Figma, Airtable, GA4, Looker Studio, Mixpanel, Amplitude, Hotjar, Intercom, and Zendesk.

Delivery, Cloud & AI

Git, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI, Jenkins, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD pipelines, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace, AWS, Google Cloud/Firebase, Cloudflare, Vercel, Netlify, VPS/cPanel, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Sentry, Datadog, OpenAI API, Claude, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, MCP, RAG, vector search, prompt/eval workflows, and agent tooling.

Selected Projects

Topolo platform: Edge-native business software ecosystem spanning identity/OIDC, developer onboarding, CRM, roadmapping, billing/payments, AI gateway, notifications, admin tooling, commerce, workflow automation, media operations, and customer support.
Platform infrastructure: Cloudflare Workers architecture with generated deployment manifests, staging/production targets, service-to-service auth, scoped JWT/JWKS authorization, CI/CD, D1/KV/R2/Vectorize/Queues/Durable Objects, and deployment orchestration tooling.
JustCook SaaS and JustFeed: Food-tech operations and mobile subscription platform covering ordering, inventory, recipes, procurement, routing, payments, lifecycle messaging, and reporting.