Ahmed Belhaj
All case studies

Engineering Leadership at Scale

Leading up to 35 people across platform, software, content, and QA — while serving as Technical Manager and CTO in parallel.

Problem

Campusna scaled from startup platform to multi-client EdTech operator with national telecom delivery, Holberton pathways, and university programs — requiring clear team boundaries between platform engineering and content production.

Constraints

  • Peak ~35 collaborators across platform and content streams
  • 7 direct reports at peak
  • Parallel CTO responsibilities at DarDev (8-person engineering org)
  • Client onboarding SLAs across institutional deployments

My role

Technical Manager at Campusna from day one — defined platform team operating model, standardized tech stack, and work streams for maintenance, feature delivery, content integration, and R&D. CTO at DarDev for product and company platform in parallel.

Outcome

  • Platform team model with separated content integration slots
  • Standardized tech stack announced org-wide for Campusna-managed projects
  • National telecom LMS architecture delivered with 11-program stakeholder coordination
  • DarDev 2026 product launches (20, Hesabi) while maintaining Campusna platform leadership

Lessons learned

  • Platform teams own reliability so content teams can ship integration-ready deliverables
  • Concurrent TM + CTO works when scope is explicit — employer platform vs co-founded products
  • Leadership metrics: onboarding SLA and uptime, not lines of code