
Ali Aftab
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
Toptal member since April 2, 2026
Ali is a full-stack software engineer with 6+ years of experience building high-performance, scalable web applications and AI-powered systems. He specializes in React, Node.js, Ruby on Rails, Python, and cloud-native architectures on AWS, delivering production-grade solutions used by thousands of users. Ali has hands-on experience designing microservices, building secure APIs, and optimizing front-end performance for complex applications.
Portfolio
Experience
- Node.js - 6 years
- React - 6 years
- JavaScript - 6 years
- Express.js - 6 years
- TypeScript - 5 years
- Next.js - 5 years
- Ruby on Rails (RoR) - 5 years
- NestJS - 4 years
Preferred Environment
Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Slack, Amazon Web Services (AWS), MacOS, Linux, GitHub, REST APIs, Agile, Scrum, Web Development
The most amazing...
...platform I've built is a production-grade AI with RAG. I moved the back end from Rails to Node.js and built a complex UI with Google Maps polygons and routes.
Work Experience
Senior Full-stack Software Engineer
AI Company
- Developed and deployed scalable full-stack applications using React and Node.js, improving system performance by 35% and reducing API response time significantly.
- Led a team of 6–10 engineers, streamlining development workflows and increasing sprint delivery efficiency by over 40% through improved code reviews and task planning.
- Designed and implemented RESTful APIs and microservices, handling high-volume traffic with enhanced reliability and 99.9% uptime.
- Integrated LLM-based features into production systems, improving automation workflows and reducing manual effort by 30% across key processes.
- Optimized front-end performance using Redux and modern React patterns, resulting in faster load times and improved user engagement metrics.
- Integrated LLM-powered features into full-stack applications, automating workflows and increasing operational efficiency by over 30%.
- Collaborated with cross-functional teams to deliver enterprise-grade solutions, ensuring alignment with business requirements and scalability goals.
- Trained and fine-tuned large language models in collaboration with Anthropic, improving response accuracy and alignment across real-world use cases.
- Conducted adversarial testing and model breaking on LLM systems, identifying critical failure modes and improving robustness, safety, and edge-case handling.
- Designed evaluation frameworks for LLM outputs, enhancing model reliability and reducing hallucination rates in production environments.
Software Engineer
Tkxel
- Optimized server-side rendering in Next.js applications by implementing code-splitting and dynamic imports, cutting bundle size and improving initial load performance, which enhanced user engagement and reduced bounce rates across high-traffic pages.
- Led Agile sprint planning and coordinated cross-functional teams to deliver production-ready features, improving sprint velocity and ensuring consistent on-time releases while maintaining high code quality and development efficiency.
- Designed and implemented retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines using Python and FastAPI, improving large language model (LLM) response accuracy and contextual relevance, enabling more reliable AI-driven features within the application.
- Conducted comprehensive code reviews and enforced React and JavaScript best practices, improving code maintainability and reducing technical debt, which resulted in fewer production issues and more stable releases.
- Refactored front-end and back-end components to improve scalability and performance, optimizing rendering strategies and data handling, which enhanced system stability and supported increased user load effectively.
- Experienced with Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC), working on eCommerce solutions using SFRA and legacy pipelines.
- Built and extended storefront functionality, including cartridge development, ISML templating, and server-side JavaScript controllers.
- Customized checkout flows, product catalog structures, and promotion logic to meet complex retail business requirements.
- Integrated SFCC with external systems like payment gateways, ERP, and CMS platforms using OCAPI and custom APIs.
- Used Business Manager for site configuration, including managing catalogs, promotions, and job scheduling.
Software Engineer
Devsinc
- Architected and deployed Node.js-based microservices to support applications serving over 50,000 monthly active users, improving system scalability and modularity while enabling faster feature development and independent service deployments.
- Developed and secured RESTful APIs for 3rd-party integrations, improving system interoperability and reducing response times, which enabled faster feature rollouts and improved overall application reliability.
- Built dynamic and responsive user interfaces using React and Vue.js, enhancing user experience and interface performance, which increased usability and engagement across multiple client-facing applications.
- Automated deployment workflows using AWS CodePipeline and CodeBuild, reducing manual intervention and significantly shortening release cycles, resulting in faster and more reliable production deployments.
- Monitored and optimized AWS cloud infrastructure, improving system uptime and performance through resource tuning and proactive issue resolution, ensuring stable application behavior under varying workloads.
- Collaborated with cross-functional teams to gather requirements and deliver scalable back-end solutions, improving development efficiency and ensuring alignment between business goals and technical implementation.
Software Engineer
Letsremotify
- Developed a full-stack recruitment platform using Ruby on Rails and Tailwind CSS, enabling streamlined candidate management and hiring workflows, which improved efficiency and reduced manual coordination efforts for recruiters.
- Integrated Calendly API to automate interview scheduling, reducing back-and-forth communication and significantly improving the coordination process between recruiters and candidates.
- Improved application maintainability by refactoring legacy code and enforcing DRY principles, resulting in cleaner architecture, reduced redundancy, and easier scalability for future feature development.
- Built responsive and user-friendly UI components using Tailwind CSS, enhancing user experience across devices and improving usability for both recruiters and applicants interacting with the platform.
- Collaborated with stakeholders to gather requirements and translate them into functional features, ensuring alignment with business needs and delivering solutions that improved overall platform usability and performance.
Full-stack Developer
Freelance Clients
- Delivered 80+ full-stack web applications using React, Node.js, Firebase, and Ruby on Rails, consistently meeting client requirements and maintaining a high satisfaction rating, demonstrating strong reliability and end-to-end development expertise.
- Managed the complete software development lifecycle, from requirement gathering to deployment, ensuring efficient delivery of scalable and maintainable solutions tailored to diverse client needs across multiple industries.
- Designed and developed responsive and user-friendly interfaces, improving usability and engagement while ensuring cross-browser compatibility and optimized performance across desktop and mobile devices.
- Built and integrated RESTful APIs and third-party services, enabling seamless data flow and enhanced functionality, which improved overall system performance and feature capabilities.
- Deployed and maintained applications on cloud platforms, ensuring reliability, scalability, and performance optimization while reducing downtime and improving user experience.
- Collaborated directly with international clients to refine requirements and deliver custom solutions, improving communication efficiency and ensuring alignment between technical implementation and business goals.
- Performed performance tuning and code optimization to improve page load times and caching strategies.
- Delivered end-to-end commerce implementations, covering both front-end development and back-end integrations.
- Focused on building scalable, maintainable solutions aligned with enterprise-level eCommerce needs.
Junior React Developer
Codility Solutions
- Developed reusable and modular UI components using React and Redux, improving code maintainability and enabling faster feature development across multiple parts of the application.
- Integrated Firebase Authentication and Firestore to enable secure user login and real-time data synchronization, enhancing application functionality and improving user experience.
- Collaborated with senior developers to implement front-end features based on project requirements, ensuring timely delivery and adherence to coding standards and best practices.
- Deployed web applications using Heroku and Netlify, enabling faster release cycles and improving accessibility of applications for testing and production environments.
- Participated in Agile development processes, contributing to sprint planning and task execution, which improved team coordination and ensured consistent progress toward project goals.
Experience
Security Management SaaS Platform
ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES
• Led end-to-end full-stack development using React for the front end and Node.js and FastAPI for back-end services, ensuring seamless integration across the system.
• Designed and implemented a robust role-based access control (RBAC) system to manage permissions across multiple user roles and ensure secure workflows.
• Built core modules including shift scheduling, job assignment, digital contract management, and automated report generation to streamline operations.
• Optimized back-end performance by improving API response times, reducing latency, and implementing efficient data handling strategies.
• Architected the system using a modular, microservices-based approach to support scalability and long-term maintainability.
• Developed responsive and user-friendly interfaces with real-time updates, improving usability for on-ground operational teams.
AI-powered RAG System for Intelligent Applications
ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES
• Designed and developed back-end services using Python and FastAPI to handle data ingestion, preprocessing, and retrieval workflows.
• Built efficient data pipelines to process structured and unstructured data sources for contextual retrieval.
• Implemented optimized retrieval mechanisms to ensure only highly relevant context is passed to the language model, improving response accuracy.
• Reduced latency and improved system performance for real-time AI interactions.
• Ensured scalability of the system to handle increasing data volumes and concurrent user requests.
• Integrated the RAG system into existing applications to enable features like intelligent search, contextual recommendations, and automated responses.
360-degree Virtual Tours Interactive Platform
ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES
• Worked as a full-stack engineer using React, Node.js, and Django to build a highly interactive and scalable application.
• Developed dynamic front-end components to support smooth navigation, clickable hotspots, and multi-image transitions.
• Designed back-end services to handle content management, dynamic data loading, and user interaction.s
• Implemented AWS cloud infrastructure (Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, CloudFront, Lambda) to ensure high availability and efficient global content delivery.
• Improved performance using Redis for caching frequently accessed data and InfluxDB for handling analytics and time-series data.
• Ensured cross-platform responsiveness and optimized user experience across different devices and screen sizes.
AI-powered Interactive Communication Platform
ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES
• Contributed as a front-end engineer, building scalable React-based interfaces for real-time AI avatar interactions.
• Designed and implemented front-end workflows for text and voice input, event triggering, and live communication with back-end AI services using PubNub.
• Integrated AI-generated responses with the LiveAvatar SDK to render realistic speech, behavior, and avatar-driven video interactions.
• Developed an interruption-handling mechanism that allowed users to speak while the AI was responding, enabling more natural conversation flow.
• Structured reusable React components and state management patterns to handle asynchronous events, streaming updates, and smooth UI transitions.
• Optimized interaction responsiveness and front-end performance to reduce latency and improve realism across text and video-based communication.
Real-time Communication & Messaging Platform
ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES
• Developed responsive front-end interfaces using Vue and implemented efficient state management with Pinia.
• Built back-end services using Ruby on Rails to handle message processing and system logic.
• Designed and implemented a custom messaging framework to support real-time, low-latency communication.
• Optimized UI rendering and state updates to efficiently handle high-frequency data exchange without performance degradation.
• Ensured scalability of the messaging system to support increasing user activity and concurrent connections.
• Improved overall system reliability and user experience by minimizing delays and ensuring consistent message delivery.
letsremotify – Talent Acquisition & HRMS Platform
https://letsremotify.com/ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES
• Worked as a full-stack software engineer, developing both back-end and front-end components using Ruby on Rails and modern UI practices.
• Designed and implemented core recruitment modules, including job management, candidate tracking, and pipeline management.
• Integrated third-party tools like Calendly to automate interview scheduling, reducing manual coordination efforts.
• Improved system maintainability by refactoring the existing codebase using DRY principles and applying best coding practices.
• Optimized database queries and back-end workflows to enhance application performance and responsiveness.
• Built responsive and user-friendly interfaces to improve recruiter experience and streamline daily operations.
Automated Coding Assessment & Evaluation System
ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES
• Developed back-end services using Ruby on Rails to manage test execution, evaluation logic, and result processing.
• Designed and implemented automated scoring mechanisms to evaluate candidate submissions accurately and consistently.
• Built reporting modules to generate detailed performance insights for recruiters and hiring managers.
• Ensured the system could handle multiple concurrent assessments without performance issues.
• Improved recruitment efficiency by eliminating manual screening and reducing evaluation time.
• Focused on building a scalable and maintainable architecture to support future enhancements.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System for Manufacturing
ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES
• Contributed to system architecture design for integrating multiple business modules into a unified platform.
• Developed core modules for inventory management, production workflows, and quality control processes.
• Implemented real-time data processing to ensure up-to-date information across all departments.
• Designed workflows to enable seamless data exchange between accounts, production, and quality assurance modules.
• Ensured system scalability and maintainability to accommodate evolving business requirements.
• Improved operational efficiency by reducing manual processes and centralizing enterprise data management.
Financial Operations SaaS Platform
I built and maintained reusable front-end modules, implemented design system components to ensure consistent UI patterns, and integrated user-facing workflows with GraphQL APIs and Java-based back-end services. I also collaborated closely with engineering teams to improve product reliability, resolve defects, and support ongoing product delivery.
ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES
• Developed and maintained React and Angular modules in a micro-frontend-based SaaS application.
• Implemented reusable design system components to improve UI consistency and user experience.
• Integrated front-end workflows with GraphQL APIs and Java back-end services.
• Fixed front-end bugs, improved interface behavior, and enhanced application reliability.
• Collaborated with cross-functional engineering teams to support feature delivery and production stability.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Software Engineering
Punjab University College of Information Technology - Lahore, Pakistan
Certifications
Learning NGINX
Python Course
GeeksforGeeks
Back End Development and APIs
freeCodeCamp
ReactJS Certification
HackerRank
React + Redux
Sololearn
Web Development Fundamentals
Sololearn
JavaScript Certification
Sololearn
Machine Learning Certification
National Center of Artificial Intelligence (NCAI)
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Node.js, React, REST APIs, React Redux, Google Maps, Twilio API, API Development, Vue, Vuex, Calendly API, Vue 3, Stripe, Three.js, WebGL, Socket.IO, HubSpot API, RxJS, Playwright, Claude API, QuickBooks API, PubNub
Tools
Slack, Zoom, Google Meet, GitHub, AWS CodeBuild, Git, Bitbucket, Postman, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS IAM, Sequelize, Figma, Claude Code, NPM, Auth0, Jira, Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), NGINX, Expo, Claude, Amazon Textract, Prisma, Shadcn, Azure App Service, Webpack, GitLab, Tableau, Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC), Amazon QuickSight, You Only Look Once (YOLO), LaunchDarkly
Languages
JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML5, CSS3, Python, ECMAScript (ES6), CSS, HTML, SQL, Python 3, Ruby, GraphQL, Java
Frameworks
Next.js, Redux, Material UI, Express.js, Tailwind CSS, Yarn, Ruby on Rails (RoR), NestJS, Ant Design, React Native, OAuth 2, Angular, Jest, Cypress, LangGraph, Django
Paradigms
Functional Programming, Event-driven Architecture, Microservices, Web Performance Optimization (WPO), Real-time Systems, Role-based Access Control (RBAC), Code Refactoring, Refactoring, Automation, Test-driven Development (TDD), Agile, Scrum, Testing, Hosting, Business Intelligence (BI), DevOps, Mobile Development, Microfrontends
Platforms
Visual Studio Code (VS Code), AWS Lambda, Mapbox, Algolia, Amazon Web Services (AWS), MacOS, Linux, Amazon EC2, Firebase, Netlify, Vercel, Twilio, Sage Intacct, Azure, DigitalOcean, Databricks, Docker, Kubernetes, Apache Kafka, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Heroku
Storage
Databases, PostgreSQL, Redis, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), NoSQL, Data Validation, Relational Databases, MongoDB, InfluxDB, Amazon DynamoDB, Database Management, MySQL, Elasticsearch, SQLite, Salesforce Commerce Cloud
Industry Expertise
Healthcare
Other
Software Development, Object Oriented Programming OOP, Data Structures, Algorithms, System Design, Problem Solving, Analytical Thinking, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC), Debugging, Code Review, Technical Documentation, Tailwind UI, AWS CodePipeline, CSS5, API Integration, Back-end Development, BullMQ, Web MVC, Web Applications, Deployment, Client Communication, Front-end Development, Component-based Architecture, WebSockets, ERP Systems, API Design, Application State Management, Front-end, Dom Manipulation, Web Development, Programming, Performance Optimization, Back-end, User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), Cursor AI, APIs, Full-stack, Full-stack Development, Authentication, Magic Link, SaaS, Third-party Integration, CRM, Security, Event-driven Systems, JWT Authentication, Software Architecture, Data Mapping, Forms, Vite, User Roles, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Architecture, Technical Leadership, Backups, Multilingual Websites, Webhooks, Secure Coding, DOM, Code Deployment, Authorization, Workforce Management (WFM), HRIS, Payroll & Benefits, Dashboards, Single Sign-on (SSO), Feature Analysis, DocuSign, Finance, Agentic RAG Systems, Product Owner, Agentic AI, Documentation, Reporting, Data Security, Product Management, Startups, FastAPI, CI/CD Pipelines, Pinia, ClickUp, Large Language Models (LLMs), Amazon Route 53, Web Servers, Data Processing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), AI Tools, Payment APIs, Legacy Code, Infrastructure, Cloud Infrastructure, Airtable, Supabase, Geometric Modeling, Workflow Automation & System Integration, Workflow Automation, Third-party APIs, Automations, Figma to React, Payments, Analytics, Product Engineering, AI Integration, Open-source LLMs, Concurrency, Streaming Data, TypeORM, Azure Blob Storage, Payment Gateways, LangChain, Audits, Scraping, Web Scraping, AI Agents, AI Automation, Fintech, Auditing, Cloud Architecture, Microsoft Azure, Operating Systems, RAG Architecture, Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG), AI Systems, Machine Learning, Sandbox to Production, Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS), AI Voice Agents, Data Engineering, Mobile Apps, Model Evaluation, Fine-tuning, Strapi, Progressive Web Applications (PWAs), Figma Make, Real-time Communication (RTC), Web Dashboards, Video Streaming, Audio Streaming, LiveAvatar, Design Systems, PNPM, Private NPM Modules, CSS Modules
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring