Bernard Swart, Software Architect

Hi, I'm

Bernard Swart

SOFTWARE ARCHITECT & SENIOR ENGINEER

I build scalable distributed systems
and the teams that run them.

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01

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.

02

Experience

Remote Company (Amsterdam)

Sep 2023 - Present

Senior Software Engineer

  • Designing system architecture for new features and services
  • Running code reviews and mentoring developers on the team
  • Working across teams to scope requirements and ship projects

Zulzi

Nov 2021 - Aug 2023

Software 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 2021

Senior 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 2020

Software 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 - 2022

Electronic 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)
03

Skills

Languages

Go Python Rust SQL JavaScript TypeScript

Architecture & DevOps

Distributed Systems Microservices Event-Driven Design gRPC NATS Kubernetes AWS Azure

Data

MySQL MongoDB Elasticsearch Redis Machine Learning Deep Learning Data Analysis PyTorch

Leadership

Team Building Mentoring System Design Code Review Communication
04

Contact

Happy to chat. Reach out any time.

bernardaswart@gmail.com LinkedIn GitHub

Currently based in the Netherlands.