Hi, I'm
Abderra
El Haitout
CTO & Product Leader · Barcelona
Most companies split who decides what to build from who decides how to build it. For 15 years I've owned both — as founding partner, CTO, and product owner at Mubawab.
Hi, I'm
CTO & Product Leader · Barcelona
Most companies split who decides what to build from who decides how to build it. For 15 years I've owned both — as founding partner, CTO, and product owner at Mubawab.
I decide what to build and why — grounded in user behaviour, sector analysis, and cross-functional input from Sales, Marketing, and Finance. Conversion is always the final judge.
I know how to build it right. From architecture decisions to engineering standards, I translate business constraints into technical direction — without losing sight of either.
I connect technology and product to revenue. I've managed paid acquisition, designed monetisation products, and made trade-offs with P&L implications — as a founding partner, not just an executor.
I built an engineering team from zero, conducted every hire personally, and maintained near-zero attrition since 2017. I know how to grow people, not just headcount.
I'm a technology and product leader who has spent 15 years at the intersection of engineering, product, and business. I joined Mubawab as a backend engineer, grew into CTO, became a founding partner — and along the way took full ownership of the product as well. Not because it was in my job description, but because the two roles are inseparable when you're building something that actually works.
After four years, I was offered a stake in the company as a founding partner. That shift changed everything: from executing someone else's vision to having real skin in the game. It's the reason behind my 15-year tenure — and behind the long-term, business-first lens I apply to every technical decision.
What defines my approach is a simple conviction: technology serves the business, not the other way around. I'm equally comfortable deep in a backend codebase, defining a product roadmap with stakeholders, analysing CPL across acquisition channels, or navigating the ambiguity that comes with fast-moving environments. I don't do tech for the sake of tech.
Outside work I apply the same discipline to running — 5 marathons completed and training for the 6th — and to basketball, a sport I've played for 20+ years and that shaped how I think about teamwork.
Grew from Backend Engineer to CTO — and eventually founding partner — at Mubawab, the leading real-estate portal in Morocco and Tunisia. Joined when the company had 6 people and 10K monthly visits; scaled it to 200 employees and over 1M stable monthly visits before a focused restructuring brought it to its current 70-person setup. Built and led the entire technical organisation from zero across Barcelona, Tunis, and Casablanca.
Sales needed a new premium format to increase ARPA on existing accounts — something differentiated, not just another visibility boost. I designed an Instagram-style short video attached to a listing, displayed at the top of search results. It gave agencies a genuinely new tool to pitch, and 40% of paying clients adopted it.
Finance flagged that 30% of our content came from private sellers who paid nothing. I designed a monetisation product around our buyer intent data: dynamic pricing based on how many active buyers match a seller's property profile, with an instant notification sent to those buyers on publish. It turned a free segment into a new revenue stream.
AI pipeline that validates listing quality automatically. Reduced average validation time from 30–40 minutes to seconds.
Auto-generated descriptions and amenity detection from photos. Cut average posting time from 5:30 to 3:15 minutes.
Data-connected conversational assistant deployed on WhatsApp. Advises agencies on which visibility products fit their portfolio and analyses individual listing performance, while guiding private sellers through the platform with context pulled in real time from their own listings.
Natural language search interface that lets users describe what they're looking for and iteratively refine filters through conversation, replacing traditional form-based search.
Designed, developed, and maintained core backend systems and RESTful APIs from the platform's earliest stage.
Translating business needs into product decisions. Cross-functional discovery with Sales, Marketing, Finance, and HR — grounded in user behaviour (Hotjar), worldwide sector analysis, and A/B testing with conversion as the deciding metric.
Defining architecture, setting engineering standards, and growing technical teams. Turning complex technical decisions into clear direction for the whole organisation.
Directly involved in paid traffic strategy: managed acquisition across multiple platforms, optimised CPL and CPC per channel, and balanced budget allocation to maximise lead quality. Lead conversion rate taken from 1% to 8.6% through data-driven UX iteration.
Applying LLMs and AI pipelines to real product challenges — from content validation and enrichment to conversational interfaces — with measurable business impact.
Scaled platform infrastructure from a single server to a 15+ instance AWS architecture. Page load time brought from 5s+ to 2.4s — prioritised for MENA markets where connectivity constraints make performance a direct business lever.
5 marathons completed and training for the 6th. Running is where I reset — there's something about covering 42 km on foot that puts everything else in perspective.
Playing for 20+ years. Coached from 2008 to 2021, now just enjoy the game. The team-first mindset it builds sticks with you long after you leave the court.
Since age 12. One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, FMA, Fairy Tail — the classics shape you. Currently always mid-arc in something new.
Have a project in mind, want to chat tech, or just say hello? My inbox is open.
contact@abderra.com