Antonín Král
Antonín Král, Ph.D.
Antonín Král, Ph.D.

Senior Engineering Leadership Partner

I help CTOs, VPs of Engineering, CEOs, and investors scale teams, architecture, and product delivery, without burning people out or letting the organization slide into chaos.
  • Scaling engineering from 10 -> 150+ people
  • Aligning product, business, and engineering
  • Preparing for a funding round and technical due diligence
  • Sparring on strategy, architecture proposals, and more
Book a call How I work

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.
Technologies & domains: Elixir · Python · Go · Ruby · Rust PostgreSQL · Redis · MQTT · RabbitMQ · Kafka Varnish · HAProxy · nginx Containerization (Docker/Podman/OCI) · Kubernetes Prometheus · Grafana · ELK ISO27001 · secure development practices
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
1-2 intensive workshops + follow-up, sometimes with investors involved
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
A standalone report or an add-on to your due diligence
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
Typically 3-6 months · 1-2 days/week · Remote + on-site as needed
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
Delivered in sprints, or as an add-on to a larger transformation project

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 external link .

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.
Schedule an intro call Send an email
I prefer working with companies of 20+ people · B2B SaaS, infra, data, machine learning, AI

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

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
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.).
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