Software engineer · Technical lead · Auckland, New Zealand

Louis
Fourie

I design and build software people rely on — from share-trading platforms for South African banks to cloud-native systems for New Zealand organisations. Twenty-eight years in, I'm still hands-on, and still happiest helping a team ship something that matters.

01 — About

The short version

Louis is a senior software engineer and technical lead who has been designing and building solutions for clients since 1998.

He has evolved with the industry — working on waterfall-managed projects, adopting agile software development in 2008, and later embracing DevOps culture to shorten the path from idea to production even further.

In South Africa, Louis specialised in online trading platforms and portfolio management systems for fintechs and major banking institutions, including eight and a half years at IRESS and five at Standard Bank's award-winning Online Share Trading platform, where he grew from engineer to Principal Lead.

Since moving to New Zealand in 2019 he has delivered an innovation-lab product for Lyttelton Port, DevOps consulting for the Tertiary Education Commission and a SaaS test-automation solution for Auckland Transport with Assurity; led engineering at Woolworths NZ; and joined Theta Consulting as a Senior Full Stack Engineer in 2025. Throughout, he has coached and mentored engineers in the craft of software development.

1. i. Continuous learning The pace of this field is what inspires me — there is always something new worth understanding properly.
2. ii. Lifting others Mentoring, sharing knowledge, and seeing the positive impact it has on the people I work with.
3. iii. Creative flair Applying craft and design sense to the applications I build, not just making them work.
4. iv. The journey with clients Defining a solution together with the business, and building something that ultimately adds value.

How these grew over time →

Hands-on engineering

• Full-stack C#/.NET and Angular
• REST APIs and relational databases
• TDD, BDD and SOLID design
• Async, concurrency and parallelism

Technical leadership

• Technical road maps the team buys into
• Custodian of standards and tech choices
• Leading design sessions and guilds
• Voice of the team to stakeholders

Solution architecture

• Cloud-native and serverless designs
• Microservices and domain-driven design
• Technical requirements analysis
• CI/CD and DevOps automation

Consulting & mentoring

• Pre-sales proposals and client demos
• DevOps and cloud consulting
• Lunch & learns for clients and peers
• Coaching junior engineers

• Financial markets & banking 15 yrs
• IT & DevOps consulting 4.3 yrs
• Retail & supermarkets 3.3 yrs
• Credit bureaus, payroll & medical claims 3.1 yrs
• Pharmaceutical 2 yrs
• Web agency — as co-owner 1.3 yrs

06 — Highlights

A few things I'm proud of

2026 · Theta Consulting

“Dinner on us” award

Recognised by Theta’s Digital Practice Lead after our client, Mainfreight, praised the quality and professionalism of my work — and called out my communication skills.

2022–2025 · Woolworths NZ

Leading the Everyday Rewards super squad

Technical lead for the new Everyday Rewards microsite, guiding a 14-strong squad of developers, testers, a product owner and a BA — shipping every two weeks, with automated testing, security scanning and observability built in from day one.

Angular · C# API · Contentful · Kubernetes · Playwright · WireMock · Azure DevOps · Dynatrace · Snyk

2022 · Woolworths NZ

Countdown Champion Award

Recognised under the “We’re always improving” value — for turning alert banners into a reusable component within weeks of joining, and letting the digital trading team schedule bonus products without being up at midnight.

2021 · Assurity Consulting

“We Value Potential” company award

Recognised by Assurity under its “We Value Potential” company value.

2019–2022 · Auckland Transport

From proposal to production, end to end

I proposed how AT’s testing team could cut their effort and release end-of-day changes more often — then designed, built and ran the whole solution, largely on my own, for three years, while helping look after the client relationship.

Angular · C# API · SQL Server · Python · Terraform · Azure DevOps

2019 · Lyttelton Port

Innovation lab, alpha to beta

Led the technical side of the container-portal build — an engagement a principal consultant at Assurity said would have failed without me.