My name is Charbel Wakim, Lebanese, based in Frankfurt.
The story started the first time I saw Doom on a PC. I begged my parents to get me one, then immediately dismantled it to see how it worked. I have not stopped taking things apart since.
Today, Staff DevX at Emma The Sleep Company — building the platform that around 100 engineers ship on. Before Germany, ten-plus years building e-commerce for the largest retailers across the Middle East.
I write and speak about platform engineering, observability, and the way AI is reshaping how engineers work.
Outside of work, the geek runs deep: gaming, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and whatever rabbit hole I have fallen into this week. When I step away from the keyboard, I write at Life in Production — family, travel, and the occasional systems metaphor for everything else.
Emma The Sleep Company May 2020 - Current
Architecting and maintaining the IaC setup using Pulumi, GitHub Actions, Kubernetes, and AWS for a global e-commerce platform serving millions of customers across 35+ countries.
Driving developer experience for ~100 engineers across 15 product teams through automation, AI-powered tooling, and self-service internal platforms — reducing deployment friction and increasing engineering velocity. Same stack delivered zero downtime through 20× peak traffic on Black Friday.
The Volunteer Circle March 2017 - February 2024
Founding engineer and tech lead for Lebanon's largest volunteering platform, building it from the ground up alongside primary employment.
Owned platform performance, scalability, and infrastructure across 7 years of growth.
Addbloom January 2020 - February 2021
Tech Lead and DevEx owner across client engagements at a MENA web development agency.
Set technical standards, code review practices, and CI/CD baselines used by all teams.
Grand Stores Online September 2018 - December 2019
Led the full technical overhaul of GS Online's e-commerce platform, managing the complete migration from Magento 1.9 CE to Magento 2 Enterprise Edition on Cloud.
Cut average page load from ~800ms to ~200ms and shifted releases from weekly batches to feature-based deploys.
Keeward February 2014 - August 2018
Led multiple e-commerce development teams within a 40-person engineering org, owning all major marketplace integrations including Amazon, FNAC, Walmart, and Abebooks — enabling clients to expand their reach across global platforms.
Triangle December 2010 - December 2015
Co-founded Triangle SARL, a full-service web development agency. Served as technical lead and de facto CTO, owning architecture and database decisions, delivery management, and team mentorship.
Public Talk • Berlin, Germany
How Grafana Cloud turned Black Friday into a dream sales day for Emma The Sleep Company — observability, real-time monitoring, and performance at scale. Zero downtime through 20× peak traffic.
Watch Talk →Language Certification • telc Verified
German language certification at B1 level (CEFR). Working proficiency for everyday professional and social life in Germany.
Verify Certificate →Certification • Credly Verified
Security across the full development lifecycle — code review, dependency scanning, infrastructure hardening, and deployment pipelines.
View Badge →Certification • Bootcamp
Leading without formal authority — alignment across competing priorities, trust-building with senior stakeholders, and constructive handling of pushback.
View Certificate →