Does your system need replacing without stopping the business?
CTO of Star Croisières: four years leading the digital transformation
Star Croisières is an online cruise agency based in Monaco. I was its full-time CTO for four years, from 2021 to 2025, with five responsibilities: leading the digital transformation, running the IT department, hiring the technical team, handling problems and advising the company's management.
Full-time CTO
At a glance
- Role
- Full-time CTO, IT department under my responsibility
- Period
- 2021 to 2025, four years
- Company
- Online cruise agency, Monaco
- Stack
- Laravel, AWS, Redis, GitHub Actions, Vue.js
Results over the four years
×3
revenue over the course of the role
99.998%
availability of the information system
6
developers, a team built and operational
#1
world reseller of the Venice Simplon Orient Express with MyLuxuryTrain, within two years
A ten-year-old information system holding the agency back
I had already worked at the company since 2019 as a web development engineer when I became its CTO. The information system was monolithic and about ten years old. There was no structured technical team, no CI/CD, no tests and no delivery process.
Slowdowns and incidents kept coming back, technical debt was heavy, and the agency's growth depended on a system that could no longer evolve.
The full-time CTO role, from strategy to problem handling
This was not a one-off consulting engagement: it was the CTO position, with full responsibility for the IT department. It covered five things.
- Leading the agency's digital transformation.
- Running the IT department, which was under my responsibility.
- Hiring my teams and managing them.
- Handling problems, from production incidents to technical trade-offs.
- Advising the company's management on technical choices.
What the CTO role means today, for other companies: freelance CTO
Migrating the monolith to Laravel on AWS
The monolith was replaced by a Laravel architecture on AWS, split into microservices. It is the first proof behind the IT system migration service.
What the team and I built
- Proprietary CRM and CMS
- A CRM that centralises calls, emails and bookings, connected to the internal CMS, and an in-house CMS for the transactional sites.
- A team of six developers
- Hired and led by me, with CI/CD, code standards and a delivery process put in place.
- Secure payment
- Integration of secure payment on the booking sites.
- MyLuxuryTrain
- A new brand dedicated to luxury trains, launched with its own digital identity, CRM and CMS built in Laravel, on a short schedule and a tight budget.
He became CTO at a crucial moment, hired a new team and ran the department successfully despite his young age. His passion, motivation and autonomy are beyond question.
Skills involved
- Technical leadership
- Laravel and AWS architecture
- IT system migration
- Hiring and team management
- CI/CD
- Custom CRM and CMS
Common questions about this role
Were you a full-time CTO at Star Croisières?
Yes, from 2021 to 2025. I ran the IT department, hired my teams and advised the company's management.
What was the technical stack?
Laravel on AWS, with Redis, GitHub Actions for CI/CD and Vue.js on the front end.
How does this relate to IT system migration?
Replacing the monolith with a Laravel architecture on AWS is one of the two proofs behind the IT system migration service, along with Celeste.
Can you take on this role for my company?
Today I act as a CTO on a freelance basis, within a framework we define together. Describe your situation from the contact page.
Keep reading
Another system, another migration