Amin Shah Gilani, Developer in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan

Amin Shah Gilani

Software Developer

Location
Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
Toptal Member Since
January 27, 2017

Amin is a developer and entrepreneur who writes clean, test-driven code in Ruby and ES6 wrapped in perfectly-crafted containers for DevOps. As a freelancer and two-time co-founder, he's launched products making $10,000+ in revenue, successfully raised funding in Silicon Valley for his Pakistan-based startup, and won two hackathons—from among 300+ global entries. In his spare time, he authors technical content and contributes to open-source.

Amin is available for hire
Hire Amin

Portfolio

Nazdeeq.com
Amazon Product Advertising API, Kubernetes, Docker, NGINX, Ruby on Rails (RoR)...
Patari
CSS, GitHub, HTML, Google Play API, Node.js, Linux
Toptal, Inc.
LaTeX, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Slack, Trello, HubSpot, kramdown...

Location

Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

MacOS, Ubuntu, Atom, Git

The most amazing...

...thing I've coded is a Bitcoin-to-currency converter bot that I would send bitcoin to and it would convert it to PKR and wire it to my bank account.

Work Experience

2017 - PRESENT

Co-founder | CTO

Nazdeeq.com
  • Built the technology that powers the company.
  • Created complex Nginx configurations that power the core application.
  • Constructed a powerful, very available infrastructure to handle the huge traffic demands.
  • Containerized multiple microservices to make the software infrastructure and platform agnostic.
  • Developed scalable pipelines for support and partner communications.
Technologies: Amazon Product Advertising API, Kubernetes, Docker, NGINX, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby
2020 - 2020

Interim Chief Technology Officer

Patari
  • Managed the technology team which—at the time—consisted of myself and mobile developer, and identified the roles required to grow the team in a manner consistent with company goals.
  • Documented application structure, engineering processes, and built an internal issues management process that lead to the identification of tens of issues—many of which were critical to product performance.
  • Identified key features to work towards, and a potential 40%-60% reduction in technology-related costs. These aided in developing a roadmap for company technology.
  • Was responsible for site reliability and responded outages 3 incidents within a few minutes—even when the outage was out of work hours. Customers were appropriately informed, and the incident was recorded with mitigations strategies recommended.
Technologies: CSS, GitHub, HTML, Google Play API, Node.js, Linux
2017 - 2019

Engineering Blog Editor

Toptal, Inc.
  • Authored original works, liaised with authors regarding their works, and edited works.
  • Conducted, aided in, and applied SEO research to works.
  • Published works to the engineering blog, and released newsletters to the subscriber-base.
  • Documented the implicit team process, allowing quick iterations and reference.
  • Made plenty of mistakes, but was once called "intimidatingly productive" in a review.
  • Used personal influence and connections to reopen previously closed content distribution avenues—directly increasing readership.
Technologies: LaTeX, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Slack, Trello, HubSpot, kramdown, Google Sheets, Google Docs
2017 - 2017

Freelance Senior Ruby on Rails Engineer

ABC Containers (via Toptal)
  • Created a customized ERP for the business.
  • Automated almost all of the manual aspects of the business logic.
  • Developed a database schema that would fit past data and aid in new data.
  • Implemented real-time business reports.
  • Reviewed and translated business logic into code.
Technologies: Digital Signatures, Mailgun, GitLab, Ruby on Rails (RoR)
2014 - 2017

CEO | Developer | Head of Operations

Payload Technologies, Inc.
  • Architected an auditable financial system that allowed users to exchange balance and make payments among each other.
  • Developed a messaging application that allowed users to talk to each other in real time.
  • Implemented an escrow system that would hold and payout the agreed amounts based on user actions.
  • Used third-party APIs to securely store Bitcoin.
  • Created a service that automatically liquidated Bitcoin into currency through third-party exchanges.
Technologies: Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby
2012 - 2014

Technology Consultant

Treebark
  • Created brochureware websites for clients.
  • Set up and maintained WordPress and Joomla websites.
  • Registered and managed domain names on behalf of clients.
  • Implemented Google apps for clients.
Technologies: CSS, Adobe Photoshop, HTML

Experience

Rails-Bank-App-Master.zip

Initially, I wrote this sample app as a follow along to a tutorial on how a bank could use Rails to create a well-functioning back-end. I later discovered ways to improve the code which I used in my live app, but this example is still a good baseline.

Project C.A.R.E. | A Community Effort to Eradicate Forced Child Begging

https://care.gilani.me
A crowd-sourced effort to eradicate forced child begging.

In Pakistan, it is common to see young children, under the age of 15, who are forced to beg on the streets by their parents or a faceless mafia. Only in Pakistan are these future doctors, engineers, and entrepreneurs ignored by every citizen that passes them.

We wanted to help eliminate this terrible practice, but imagine our surprise, when we discovered that a law already exists to curb it. This SDG Hackathon gave us the ability to use our technology for good.

As citizens of Pakistan and as human beings, we asked ourselves why there are children still begging on the streets when there are strict laws protecting them and seemingly well-performing government organizations.

We realized greater civilian reporting and oversight of these organizations is all that remains to be improved upon so we started doing just that with technology.

Please Use Git

https://hackernoon.com/please-use-git-da3bea7d1234
Counterarguments to the most common reasons against using Git.

Despite Git being ubiquitous among organizations and teams, I’ve met a surprising number of people in Pakistan that don’t use version control. It makes it incredibly difficult for me to collaborate with them.

Two Welcome Side Effects of Webpack in Rails | Article

https://web.archive.org/web/20170924211345/https://www.euruko2017.org/2017/09/19/two-welcome-side-effects-of-webpack-in-rails.html
An article that I wrote that discusses how a Rails' Webpack integration lets us tap into the world of JavaScript dependencies and bypass the "use CSS helpers" annoyance in the asset pipeline.
Image of How to Build an Effective Initial Deployment Pipeline publication
Publication

How to Build an Effective Initial Deployment Pipeline

https://www.toptal.com/devops/effective-ci-cd-deployment-pipeline
Image of A Guide to Security Best Practices for Remote Teams publication
Publication

A Guide to Security Best Practices for Remote Teams

https://www.toptal.com/remote/best-security-practices-for-remote-teams
Image of Unlimited Scale and Free Web Hosting with GitHub Pages and Cloudflare publication
Publication

Unlimited Scale and Free Web Hosting with GitHub Pages and Cloudflare

https://www.toptal.com/github/unlimited-scale-web-hosting-github-pages-cloudflare
Image of Rails Service Objects: A Comprehensive Guide publication
Publication

Rails Service Objects: A Comprehensive Guide

https://www.toptal.com/ruby-on-rails/rails-service-objects-tutorial
Image of Scale with Speed: The Bitcoin Lightning Network Explained publication
Publication

Scale with Speed: The Bitcoin Lightning Network Explained

https://www.toptal.com/bitcoin/intro-to-bitcoin-lightning-network
Image of A Software Defined Radio Tutorial: Images From the International Space Station and Listening to Hams With an RTL-SDR publication
Publication

A Software Defined Radio Tutorial: Images From the International Space Station and Listening to Hams With an RTL-SDR

https://www.toptal.com/software/software-defined-radio-tutorial-rtl-sdr

Skills

Languages

C++, Ruby, JavaScript, CSS, ECMAScript (ES6), HTML, Python 3

Frameworks

Ruby on Rails (RoR), ASP.NET MVC, Bootstrap 3+, Express.js

Libraries/APIs

Vue, Node.js, Amazon Product Advertising API, Google Play API, React, jQuery, Coinbase API, Twitter API, Stripe API, Stripe

Tools

Cucumber, RSpec, Git, GitHub Pages, GitHub, Adobe Photoshop, Jekyll, Atom, GitLab, NGINX, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Trello, Slack, LaTeX, Ghost, Docker Compose

Paradigms

Test-driven Development (TDD), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Behavior-driven Development (BDD)

Platforms

iOS, Docker, Ubuntu, MacOS, Linux, Mailgun, Raspberry Pi, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Kubernetes, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Blockchain

Other

APIs, Domains & Hosting, Semantic UI, Bitcoin, Embedded Software, User Experience (UX), Digital Signatures, kramdown, HubSpot, Documentation, Writing & Editing

Storage

MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Amazon S3 (AWS S3)

Education

2010 - 2015

Bachelor of Science Degree with Honors in Economics and Finance

Lahore School of Economics - Lahore, Pakistan

Certifications

JULY 2019 - PRESENT

Ruby Association Certified Ruby Programmer Silver

Ruby Association (https://www.credential.net/vbkdpiax)

JUNE 2019 - PRESENT

Ruby Association Certified Ruby Programmer Gold

Ruby Association (https://www.credential.net/2vxzz0eg)

JANUARY 2017 - PRESENT

Getting Started with Python

University of Michigan | Coursera (https://coursera.org/verify/2GU354Z9X8XT)

JUNE 2016 - PRESENT

Ruby on Rails: An Introduction

Johns Hopkins University | Coursera (https://coursera.org/verify/HSL4KJ7AHJ94)