Amr Alassal
I help companies ship production AI. Agentic systems, the architecture underneath them, and the strategy that decides what's worth building at all.
Book a free intro15–20 min · No obligation · Online
What I do
Most AI projects don't fail on the model. They fail on everything around it: the retry that never happens, the prompt nobody can change without a redeploy, the evaluation that only ever ran on the demo set, the €40,000 monthly bill nobody predicted. My work sits in that gap — between a prototype that impressed the board and a system that survives Monday morning traffic.
I work in three areas, and most engagements touch two of them. Agentic AI: multi-step LLM systems with reflection, parallel execution, guardrails, and quality scoring you can actually measure. Architecture: the services, queues, deployment and observability underneath, so the AI part isn't the fragile part. AI strategy: deciding what's worth building at all, what to buy instead, and what a realistic first six months looks like.
I stay hands-on. I write code in the codebase, not slides about it. When an engagement ends, your team owns something they can maintain without me.
Agentic AI
Multi-step LLM systems that hold up in production: self-reflection loops, async parallel execution, ML guardrails, automated quality scoring. At Booking.com that meant a ~11x latency reduction and >2.6x cost saving at 90%+ quality.
System architecture
The layer under the model: FastAPI microservices, async batch processing, circuit breakers, Kubernetes and Istio across three regions at 99.9% availability.
AI strategy
What to build, what to buy, and what it costs. An executive MBA on top of the engineering — I can hold both halves of that conversation.
Track record
2025 – now
Booking.com · AI Staff Software Engineer (contractor)
- Production agentic workflow on LangGraph with reasoning models — iterative self-reflection, async parallel processing, automated quality scoring at a 95%+ accuracy threshold
- Agentic Context Engineering applied to the summarisation system: ~11x latency reduction and >2.6x cost saving at 90%+ quality
- Real-time PII masking pipeline with ML guardrails; Kubernetes across EU-NL/DE/UK at 99.9% availability
2024
Elevaide · Technical co-founder
- Secured €100K seed investment
- LLM meeting-analysis pipeline processing 100+ meeting hours
- React and Django product deployed on GCP with auto-scaling and fault tolerance
2022 – 2023
Bitvavo · Hands-on Engineering Manager
- Transaction system onboarding 57+ cryptocurrencies; Fireblocks custody securing €500M+ in ETH-based assets
- Scaled the engineering team 3x and cut incident rates 5x with a new incident framework
- Chainalysis integration for DNB compliance and AML tracking
2016 – 2022
Booking.com · Engineering Manager & Software Developer
- Cross-sell recommendations microservice serving the platform, with inventory across flights, cars, taxis and attractions
- Transport marketplace launch team — a CMS that cut transport launch time from days to minutes, scaled to 15 European cities
- Personalisation experiment on resort features worth >+10M in daily booking revenue; led the refugee internship programme
2015 – 2016
Amazon Web Services · Software Development Intern, Cape Town
- Personal health dashboard letting AWS customers monitor their deployed services, integrated with AWS internal monitoring
Who I work with
I work with three kinds of teams.
The first is a startup putting AI into the product for the first time. There's a demo that works, a founder who has promised something to customers, and no clear path between the two. What's needed there isn't a strategy deck — it's someone who has shipped this before and can tell you which corners are safe to cut.
The second is a scale-up whose system has outgrown its first design. The AI feature works, but it's slow, or expensive, or nobody can change the prompts without breaking evaluation. That's usually an architecture problem wearing an AI costume.
The third is a larger organisation that has run its pilots and now wants an agentic strategy that survives contact with a real roadmap, a real budget and a real compliance team.
If you're looking for someone to write a report and hand it over, I'm the wrong person. If you want someone in the codebase next to your engineers, book the intro call.
Amr Alassal
AI Staff Software Engineer & consultant
About me
I grew up in Alexandria and studied computer engineering there. My first real engineering job took me to Cape Town, where I spent six months at Amazon Web Services building a health dashboard that let customers see the state of their own deployed services. Then Amsterdam, and I stayed.
The pattern in my work has been consistent since: I like the systems other people find intimidating. Cross-sell recommendations serving an entire travel platform. A crypto exchange holding more than €500M in customer assets. Agentic AI running in production for customer service, where a wrong answer costs a real person a real evening.
The part I'm proudest of isn't technical. In 2019 I led Booking.com's refugee internship programme — a four-month intensive front-end course for skilled people who had lost their footing through no fault of their own. Watching someone rebuild a career from that starting point permanently changed how I think about talent.
I did an executive MBA at Rotterdam School of Management while working, because I kept ending up in rooms where the engineering was fine and the business case wasn't. Then I co-founded Elevaide, raised €100K, and learned what building without a safety net actually feels like.
Now I work independently: a small number of clients, deep involvement, no hand-off to a junior team.
How an engagement works
Free intro call
15–20 minutes, online. You describe the problem; I tell you honestly whether I'm the right person for it and what I'd do first. No preparation needed, nothing to sign.
A scoped proposal
If it's a fit, you get a written scope within a few days: what I'd deliver, in what order, over what period, and what I'd need from your team. One page, no surprises.
We build
I work inside your codebase and your rituals. Weekly demos of something running, not status updates. Your engineers stay owners of the result.
Book a free intro
Choose a service and book your appointment
Training & Qualifications
Executive MBA
Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University · 2021
Part-time executive programme completed alongside full-time engineering work. Managerial accounting, organisational behaviour, economics, business analysis, marketing, financial management, corporate strategy and operations.
Executive leadership communication
RSM, Erasmus University · 2024
Executive education in leadership communication.
Blockchain and Crypto applications
MIT · 2023
Applied blockchain and crypto-asset programme, taken during the Bitvavo years.
BSc Computer Engineering
Alexandria University · 2012
Four-year engineering degree (2007–2012).
FAQ
Are you available for freelance or consultancy work?
Do you work remotely or on site?
What language do you work in?
What happens on the free intro call?
How long is a typical engagement?
Can you sign an NDA, and who owns the code?
Contact
The fastest way to reach me is the booking form above — pick a slot for a free intro call, or send an enquiry if what you have in mind is bigger than a twenty-minute conversation. Both land directly with me, not with an assistant or an inbox nobody reads.
I don't publish a phone number or an email address here, for a reason that has nothing to do with being hard to reach: a form gives me the context I need to answer usefully the first time, and it keeps this page out of the scraping that a published address attracts. You'll get a reply from a real address as soon as I answer.
I'm based in Amsterdam and work with teams across the Netherlands and Europe. If you're local and would rather meet in person, say so in the form and we'll arrange it.
Location
Amsterdam, Netherlands