Hasitha Liyanage

CTO/co-founder, Liquid Labs

Colombo, Western Province, Sri Lanka

About

Tech executive / software architect with nearly 25 years of experience in developing, designing and managing a wide range of production systems and teams, from high frequency trading systems for financial markets in the US, Europe and Hong Kong, to regulatory compliance systems for the Philippines government/ILO, mission critical e-commerce platforms for Fortune-100 corporations and prop-tech in Australia. - Lead developer of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange Central Gateway (2012 - 2013) - Led the team that developed Sysco's new e-commerce experience (Sysco Shop), through which a significant fraction of their $60B/yr revenue runs (2019) - Designed and developed the London Stock Exchange Group's first post trade risk management system from the ground up (2009) - Led :Different Technologies' engineering team globally through series A and B funding rounds (2020 - 2021) - Led the team that developed the Labor Law Compliance System of the Philippines (manages labor compliance for a labor force of approx. 40 million) (2014 - 2015) - Member of LSEG Technologies' core Matching Engine developer team (circa 2007 - 2009) - Rewrote LSEG's Smart Order Router core to achieve 10µs latency (2011) - Over 10 years of hands-on software engineering experience in 6 different languages/technology stacks: C/C++, Java, JavaScript, PHP and Python. - 10 years of engineering management experience, managing teams of 50-100 software engineers, QAs, PMs, BAs and DevOps - 8 years of experience in senior leadership - Training over 300 engineers and conducting nearly 1000 interviews throughout career - Onsite experience: New York, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Austin, Houston, Sydney

Experience

  • Co-Founder and CTO at Liquid Labs
    Nov 2023 - Present · 2 yrs 9 mos

  • Consulting CTO at EIGHT25MEDIA
    Jan 2024 - Dec 2024 · 1 yr

  • Consulting CTO at Cashless Technologies
    Oct 2023 - Jul 2024 · 10 mos

  • :Different (Full-time · 3 yrs 10 mos)
    • Chief Technology Officer
      Feb 2023 - Nov 2023 · 10 mos

    • Vice President of Engineering
      Feb 2020 - Feb 2023 · 3 yrs 1 mo

      - Leading all :Different engineering staff globally. - Grew the team from 12 to 60+ engineers, from seed stage to series B funding. - Developed an evidence-based agile process, a collaborative engineering playbook, and an effective engineering culture, increasing average team delivery speed by over 50%. - Managing all product engineering teams globally (Sydney, Colombo). - Direct involvement in code and architecture, in collaboration with the CTO. - Member of the company executive leadership team, contributing to strategic direction

  • Sysco LABS Sri Lanka (4 yrs)
    • Vice President - Engineering
      Aug 2018 - Feb 2020 · 1 yr 7 mos

      Leading engineering for Sysco LABS' Customer Experience (CX) organization, tasked with delivering customer facing software, leading a team of 60+ engineers. Responsible for product architecture, technology strategy, engineering standards, R&D, training & skills development. Oversaw go-live of Sysco's new web-based e-commerce experience (Sysco Shop) and version 2 of Sysco's delivery fleet tracker (Sysco Delivery).

    • Senior Director, Technology and Architecture
      Aug 2017 - Aug 2018 · 1 yr 1 mo

      Leading engineering for SyscoLABS' CAKE POS product, leading a team of 80+ engineers, QA and BA. Responsible for: product architecture, technology strategy, training & skills development, project management, R&D and engineering standards & processes. Oversaw the scaling and stabilization of the product for 2500+ customers, including the adoption of microservices.

    • Director, Technology and Architecture
      Aug 2016 - Aug 2017 · 1 yr 1 mo

      Head of engineering & delivery for CAKE's flagship product (CAKE POS), leading a team of 80+ engineers, QA, BA and PMs. Responsible for: product architecture, technology strategy, training & skills development, project management, R&D and engineering standards & processes.