Career Journey: Product Leadership to Applied AI

A chronological spine of the professional path from Tehran to Berlin, with the personal threads (languages, relocation, outside interests) woven in at the point in time they belong.

Chargoon: Tehran product and delivery roots (2009-2016)

Khashayar Pakfar’s professional path starts at Chargoon in Tehran, Iran, a software company offering an enterprise total management information system. He joined in December 2009 as Associate Project Manager, implementing office automation software that drove digital transformation across six companies in a year and cut average paper consumption by up to 60 percent. In December 2010 he moved into Software Implementation Project Manager, completing 35 B2B software implementation projects across sectors including HR, finance, and logistics, among them a digitization initiative for Refah Bank that converted paper HR files into digital formats and reduced overall paperwork, plus a hybrid SaaS office automation rollout across six SMEs. In June 2013 he became Mobile Product Manager, pioneering Iran’s first enterprise mobile software on top of Chargoon’s enterprise MIS platform, shaping the product roadmap and directing API implementations, through November 2016. Persian is his native language, and this first stretch of his career, seven years long, runs entirely in Tehran.

Alibaba Travels / Jabama: scaling accommodation (2016-2020)

In December 2016 he joined Alibaba Travels Co. in Tehran Province, Iran, as Senior Product Manager, Domestic Hotels, at Alibaba.ir, Iran’s top online travel agency, with a 40 percent market share and more than 15 million yearly sales. He switched the hotel booking inventory from offline to online to boost conversions, introduced customer segmentation, and reduced operational expenses. In April 2018 he moved up to Group Product Line Manager, Accommodation, running Jabama, Alibaba Travel’s accommodation sub-brand: launching vacation rentals, improving conversion rates, and increasing gross margins, through February 2020.

Mavara Center: co-founding e-learning (2020-2023)

In March 2020 he co-founded Mavara Center (موسسه ماورا) in Tehran, Iran, an e-learning company in leadership and economics, taking the role of Co-Founder and Product Manager. He developed the product line, addressed retention, and expanded course offerings to grow revenue and retention, running the company through May 2023. This is his first founder role, after ten-plus years inside larger organizations.

The Berlin transition: relocation and 42 Berlin (2022-2025)

In June 2022, while still running Mavara Center, he started the 42 Berlin software-engineering curriculum: programming in C, classic algorithms, the file system and operating systems, UNIX process management, and network architecture and system administration. He wound down the Mavara Center product role in May 2023 and finished 42 Berlin in June 2023, relocating from Tehran to Berlin, Germany, in the process. The stretch from May 2023, when Mavara ended, to February 2025, when he started at ESCRIBA, is a deliberate transition: retooling from managing product delivery to building the technical systems underneath it, not an unexplained gap. By this point he works in three languages: Persian (native), English (full professional proficiency), and German (professional working proficiency).

ESCRIBA: Senior Product Manager (2025)

From February to July 2025 he was Senior Product Manager at ESCRIBA in Berlin, Germany, driving product vision and roadmap for low-code/no-code solutions in B2B HR and document management, supported by AI. He translated market trends and customer needs into scalable products, defined and refined product strategy with a focus on automation and efficiency, oversaw the development lifecycle from ideation to execution, and aligned business, technology, and user experience.

Independent applied AI and Turing College (2026-present)

From April 2026 he is enrolled at Turing College, running through August 2026. From February 2026 he has also been working independently in AI engineering and product, building a multi-agent platform and shipping AI and automation services, alongside the Turing College program. [OPEN: this note’s task-defined spine excludes the Aug 2025-Feb 2026 stretch (Deutschtec GmbH, Lead AI Product Manager, per brand-base.md) that sits between ESCRIBA ending in July 2025 and this independent work starting in February 2026; that role is documented elsewhere and, if this note is meant to stand alone as the complete spine, should be added so the timeline has no unexplained gap.] The throughline across the whole path, from Chargoon in 2009 to this AI-engineering stretch, is one continuous move: from managing what gets built to building it. Outside the roles, philosophy, nature, and mountain climbing run alongside the professional journey throughout.