Halil Köklü

After two decades building and scaling technology teams, I pursued a dream I'd carried since my first flight as a child in 1995—becoming an airline pilot. Today I serve as First Officer on the Airbus A320 family at a major airline. The discipline, systems thinking, and crew coordination that define aviation aren't so different from what made my technology career fulfilling: building resilient systems, leading teams under pressure, and maintaining operational excellence when it matters most. In my previous life as a CTO, I spent 15+ years in e-commerce, most recently leading product development at LoveCrafts through a major digital transformation. I built and scaled remote teams across Ukraine, Turkey, and the UK. I led migrations from legacy platforms to cloud-native, headless architectures—delivering a 30% lift in conversion rates and an 83% reduction in cloud costs. I supported M&A transactions and helped grow the business into new geographies. Perhaps what I'm most proud of: improving our team's Employee Net Promoter Score from -21 to 91. Before LoveCrafts, I was founding CTO at Namshi, where I built the engineering team from zero and launched the first multi-language, multi-currency Rocket Internet venture on AWS. I still care deeply about technology, leadership, and building teams where people do their best work. I'm selectively open to advisory roles, board positions, or consulting engagements that align with my schedule and interests.