Babagana Zannah AI & Engineering Leader

Open to select engagements · United Kingdom

AI SYSTEMS · ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP

BabaganaZannah

I turn AI into commercial advantage — and build engineering organisations that learn fast and ship calmly.

10+ years leading organisations of up to 68 across retail, logistics, e-commerce and SaaS, with measurable lifts in conversion, revenue, reliability and delivery velocity.

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Babagana Zannah - Head of Engineering
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+2.7% AI personalisation discovery CTR, with +1.8pp conversion and +£11 session value
52/day Deployment frequency, up from 14/day with lower failure rate and MTTR
+11% Commercial growth from ML pricing lift at DHL / Saloodo
68 Largest engineering organisation led across engineering, delivery and service

What I do

I am an impact-driven Head of Engineering who scales AI, mobile and digital platform capabilities — turning models and teams into conversion, revenue, reliability and velocity. From AI personalisation at Sainsbury's to logistics visibility, ML pricing and high-availability commerce platforms.

Operating System

How I turn engineering capability into measurable impact

  1. 01 Set strategy Align engineering roadmaps to customer value, revenue and reliability.
  2. 02 Scale teams Coach managers and technical leads, strengthen hiring and succession.
  3. 03 Ship AI Use evaluation, observability, safety and privacy guardrails.
  4. 04 Improve delivery Raise deployment frequency while lowering failure rate and MTTR.

Practice Areas

What I build inside organisations

01

AI & data capabilities

Production AI systems, personalisation, recommender systems, experimentation, LLMs, RAG, vector search and model evaluation.

02

Engineering organisations

Organisation design, engineering strategy, hiring, succession planning, OKRs, portfolio planning and investment cases.

03

Platforms & reliability

Distributed systems, mobile apps, APIs, data pipelines, cloud architecture, SLOs, observability and incident response.

Field Notes

Frameworks for leaders making AI real

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Education

  • MBA Quantic School of Business and Technology, Distinction
  • MSc Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, University of York, Distinction
  • BSc Computer Science, Middlesex University, First Class; Best Computer Science Student

Expertise & Skills

Organisation design Engineering strategy Hiring & succession Production AI systems Personalisation Experimentation & A/B testing LLMs, RAG & vector search Safety & privacy guardrails Distributed systems Mobile apps Cloud architecture SLOs & observability

For AI, Mobile & Platform Teams

Need engineering leadership with measurable impact?

Bring me in when the work needs technical depth, organisation design, delivery discipline and commercial judgment.

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