Hi, I'm
Bernard Swart
SOFTWARE ARCHITECT & SENIOR ENGINEER
I build scalable distributed systems
and the teams that run them.
About
I studied electronic engineering at Stellenbosch University, where I got pulled into the software side, first through data, then machine learning. A research semester with the Computer Vision Group at the University of Bern cemented that direction.
In 2019, I joined Zulzi, a quick commerce company. We built the backend for Checkers Sixty60 in Go, scaling it to 45,000 daily orders for Africa's largest retailer. Separately, we rebuilt Zulzi's own platform from scratch in Rust and gRPC. Over four years we grew it into 20+ event-driven microservices covering payments, search, pharmacy, and more. I went from software engineer to architect and grew the team from 5 to 20.
I'm now based in the Netherlands as a senior engineer. Day-to-day, I work on system design and code reviews, and spend a good part of my time mentoring other developers. I'm most interested in problems where you need to balance performance with simplicity, and the obvious approach won't cut it.
Experience
Zulzi
Sep 2023 - PresentSenior Software Engineer — via Remote BV, Amsterdam
- Acting as senior technical leader for the backend platform, infrastructure, and operations tooling — reporting to the CEO
- Lead architect across 20+ backend microservices (Rust, Python, Go) and the operations portal; principal contributor to the ~159K-line Rust order lifecycle platform
- Operate a 10-server bare-metal Kubernetes data centre, distributed TiDB cluster, Cloudflare edge, Redis/Valkey, and Tile38 — no dedicated SRE function
- Primary incident commander for production: cache stampedes, connection pool exhaustion, ISP failover
- Lead a team of 6 developers and 1 QA; navigated a significant restructuring (16 → 7) while maintaining delivery and team cohesion
- Primary technical contact for enterprise clients (Choppies): SLA definitions, escalation matrices, integration delivery (Mediswitch, Lightspeed/Vend, Uber Direct)
- Facilitated external penetration testing and owned the remediation pipeline
Zulzi
Nov 2021 - Aug 2023Software Architect
- Designed and led re-architecture to event-driven microservices using NATS Streaming
- Grew engineering team from 5 to 20 through recruiting and onboarding
- Built the pharmacy vertical: prescription management and medical aid claims across multiple providers
- Created shared Rust library workspace (36+ crates) and centralised protobuf API contracts across all services
- Built consumer and internal operations frontends in SvelteKit and TypeScript
- Introduced database sharding and caching to stabilise the platform under load
Zulzi
Jan 2021 - Oct 2021Senior Software Engineer & Data Scientist
- Built a Vend/LightSpeed POS sync bridge, improving stock processing by 1,500% (30 min to 2 min)
- Added a caching layer to speed up catalogue browsing
- Built recommender systems and migrated product search from Tantivy to Elasticsearch
- Ran data science projects including delivery polygon optimisation using isochrones and product classification
- Built internal reporting dashboards with 100+ configurable reports
Zulzi
Feb 2019 - Dec 2020Software Engineer
- Built backend microservices in Go for Checkers Sixty60, on-demand grocery for Africa's largest retailer
- Rebuilt the Zulzi platform from scratch using Rust, gRPC, and MySQL
- Built payment processing integrations (OZOW EFT, PayU credit card)
- Built a custom product search engine in Rust using Tantivy
- Migrated infrastructure from self-hosted servers to Microsoft Azure
- Built load testing tools in Go and Python simulating full order lifecycle flows
Stellenbosch University
2013 - 2022Electronic Engineering
- Master's research: deep learning for spatio-temporal crime pattern prediction
- Semester at University of Bern, Switzerland (Computer Vision Group)
- Bachelor of Engineering (2013 - 2016)
Skills
Languages
Architecture & DevOps
Data
Leadership
Contact
Happy to chat. Reach out any time.
Currently based in the Netherlands.