Tech Reality Check
I find what the real problem is — in architecture, delivery, leadership, or decision-making.
Antonín Král
I help uncover what's truly broken ... and fix it
I help investors, founders, and technical teams see the real problem, stay on course, and find solutions that hold up in practice.
- when something is off, but it’s not clear what
- when delivery is grinding and the team keeps going in circles
- when you need a reality check before an important decision
- when the problem is complex and costly
What I can help with
I most often work with CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and CEOs at scale-ups who are dealing with growth, architecture redesigns, slowing delivery, and investor pressure for predictable outcomes.
Accountability & Decision Support
I keep leadership or the CTO/founder on track on an ongoing basis, so the hard things actually get followed through and don’t get lost in the noise.
Creative Problem-Solving Sprint
I help the team break down a complex technical or organizational problem and arrive at a solution the team genuinely owns.
For CEOs / CTOs / founders
Aligning product, business, and engineering
When sales, product, and engineering are each pulling in slightly different directions.
- A shared leadership workshop to define what winning looks like in 12-24 months
- A clear agreement on who decides what, when, and based on which inputs
- Help shaping an engineering strategy
For investors
An independent view on engineering & delivery
Before an investment, or during board oversight of strategic changes.
- High-level technical due diligence (architecture, team, processes)
- Assessing roadmap realism vs. team capacity and seniority
- Recommendations on where to strengthen leadership / processes / architecture
For CTO / VP Engineering
Stabilizing and scaling engineering
When teams grow faster than processes, the roadmap, and architecture can keep up.
- Mapping the current structure, bottlenecks, and risks
- Designing a target structure for teams and roles (people & architecture)
- Rolling out changes together in a way that minimizes impact on team morale
For CTO / Head of Platform
Pragmatic adoption of AI tooling
When you need real value from AI, not just a PoC deck.
- Identifying use cases with real impact
- Guardrails for quality, security, and compliance
- Bringing the team along, not AI imposed from above
Technologies & domains:
Elixir · Python · Go · Ruby · Rust
PostgreSQL · Redis · MQTT · RabbitMQ · Kafka
Varnish · HAProxy · nginx
Containerization (Docker/Podman/OCI) · Kubernetes
Prometheus · Grafana · ELK
GDPR · ISO27001 · secure development practices
How I think and work
I combine a deep technical background in computer science and IT, hands-on experience with electronics, and many years of working with teams. That lets me talk with engineers in the details, while also working with company leadership on strategy, culture, and decision-making. I’ve published my take on these principles on my website .
Computers and distributed systems
More than 30 years in IT and computer science, from academic research through designing and running large streaming and telco platforms to B2B SaaS. I can go deep on architecture, performance, and data models.
Electrical engineering and the physical world
From ZX Spectra and hacking together peripherals, through an electrical-engineering technical high school and FEL CTU. Electronics stayed my hobby; I enjoy projects that connect the virtual and the real world (e.g., IoT/monitoring platforms).
Leadership and working with people
The largest team I built and led was 150+ people across different roles (including non-technical ones). I build on a strong culture, clear principles, and shared decision-making. I help leaders grow so the company can handle the next phase of scaling.
Values
There is no real need for anything special, values which I try to uphold in my teams are very similar to the ones a healthy democratic society is built on.
Inner trust
Trust that others act in good faith, and that institutions (company processes, compensation decisions, etc.) work fairly. The cornerstone of delegation and collaboration.
Critical thinking
The ability to challenge assumptions and think problems through systematically. A culture where the question “why?” is valued, not treated as an attack on authority.
Lifting others up
An environment where helping each other is expected. Sharing information instead of hoarding it. Constructive feedback instead of “I told you so.”
Courage
The willingness to act according to your values, even when it’s hard. Corporations are not (yet) a life-threatening environment, after all.
Values are aspirational. Each morning we should wake up determined to act by them. Values that get relativized are not values, just preferences and marketing.
Considering a change in engineering?
Let’s do a 30-minute intro call. We’ll quickly map the situation and expectations, and see whether working together makes sense for you, your team, and your investors.
Selected consulting projects
I provide long-term consulting and interim leadership through nibbler.AI / Trusted Solutions s.r.o. Below are a few projects where I helped with architecture, scaling engineering, and product strategy.
MayaData
VP of Engineering
Transforming a global engineering team across India, Europe, Canada, and the US. Establishing team structure, ownership, and delivery.
MoistureGuard / SENZOMATIC
CTO & solution architect
Designing a scalable IoT platform for monitoring moisture in timber buildings, including data collection, processing, and visualization from installations.
DTOne
Data platform design
Data platform architecture for processing telco operators’ transactional data in Africa, with a focus on scalability and reliability.
Artinii / TIW
Technical and product advisor
Consulting on the development of a global platform for delivering film content to cinemas, with a focus on reliability and B2B integrations.
SignageOS
Technical advisor
Consulting on implementing embedded Linux on a new SoC (built on
yocto) to meet the requirements of a major US customer (several million end devices).Where I've worked
since 2004
nibbler.AI / Trusted Solutions s.r.o.
Consultant, co-founder
Advising CEOs and CTOs on global products (MayaData, MoistureGuard/SENZOMATIC, DTOne, Artinii / TIW, etc.).
since 2026
Czech Technical University
Research technical lead on projects
Helping on projects like PoliRural, contributing to Czech AI Strategy and Gigafactory initiatives.
2021-2025
IP Fabric
VP of Engineering
Scaling the engineering team and organization through several growth phases, culminating in a successful funding round led by OnePeak.
- Responsible for the technical part of due diligence
- Introduced ISO27001 and secure software development practices
- Set up processes for predictable roadmap delivery
2015-2019
Showmax
CTO
Building a fully in-house VoD platform for Africa and Europe, growing the team from 8 to 150+ people, and a successful company carve-out as part of an IPO.
- 8 -> 150+ people across product and engineering teams
- 150+ microservices, 4 billion events per day, in-house encoding & CDN
- Leading the unbundling process that resulted in inclusion in MultiChoice Group
2013-2015
ICFLIX
CTO
Designing and leading the implementation of a streaming platform for the Middle East, including payments, CDN, and operations.
- End-to-end architecture of an OTT platform and a DevOps culture
- Private cloud, CDN, and monitoring for critical services
2004-2013
nangu.TV Platform (ITonis Inc., Alnair a.s.)
CTO -> CEO
Designing and leading the development of an IPTV/VoD platform used by operators (e.g., O2TV), including long-term technical strategy.
2000-2005
T-Systems PragoNET
Network architect
Designing an IPv4/IPv6 backbone network, deploying MPLS, and delivering key services for enterprise customers and infrastructure operators.
Education
A strong theoretical foundation in mathematics, physics, electrical engineering, and computer science, paired with hands-on experience building large internet systems.
Ph.D.
Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering, Czech Technical University (CTU)
Department of Mathematics
PhD thesis: Large-Scale Distributed System for Multimedia Retrieval
MSc (Ing.)
Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University (CTU)
Department of Computer Science
Master’s thesis: Scheduling Strategies in Routers
Imprint
Trusted Solutions s.r.o. · Svornosti 18 · Olomouc · 77900 · Czech Republic · Company ID (IČ): 26079771
Antonín Král · Company ID (IČ): 66963320