Babagana Zannah

Head of Engineering / AI, Mobile & Digital Platforms

BabaganaZannah

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

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
AI Platforms Mobile Reliability

Operating mode

  • 01Clarity
  • 02Momentum
  • 03Evidence

Sector range

  • Retail
  • Logistics
  • E-commerce
  • SaaS
+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 with experience scaling AI, mobile and digital platform capabilities. My work spans conversion, revenue, reliability and engineering velocity, from AI-powered personalisation at Sainsbury's to logistics visibility, ML pricing and high-availability digital commerce platforms.

Operating System

How I turn engineering capability into measurable impact

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

Practice Areas

What I build inside organisations

01

AI and 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 and reliability

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

Field Notes

Frameworks for leaders making AI real

AI Experimentation The 48-Hour Laboratory Why hackathons can become the missing operating system for AI learning. Adoption Respecting the Craft How to introduce AI without insulting experienced engineers. Scale Scaling AI Engineering Teams Culture, ownership, and the courage to explore without losing production grip. Distributed Teams Async Trust and Outcome-First Culture Remote-first operating patterns for AI delivery across time zones.
Explore all writing and frameworks

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 and succession planning Production AI systems Personalisation Experimentation and A/B testing LLMs, RAG and vector search Safety and privacy guardrails Distributed systems Mobile apps Cloud architecture SLOs and observability

For AI, Mobile and Platform Teams

Need engineering leadership with measurable impact?

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

Email Babagana