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Asad Jibran Ahmed, Software Developer in Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Asad Jibran Ahmed

Software Developer in Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Member since February 14, 2018
Multiple managers in past roles have described me as a product minded engineer. Over a 10+ year career, I’ve cultivated a skill for identifying and solving customer problems using software development. Having worked at companies of all sizes; from a 4 person startup to a 8K people strong multi-national (Stripe), I also have a unique perspective of seeing what does and does not work at different scales and I try to use these lessons to build teams and systems that scale with the business.
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Portfolio

  • Stripe
    Ruby, Java, React, APIs, REST APIs, Back-end, Microservices
  • Felix
    JavaScript, Python, Django, APIs, REST APIs, Back-end, Microservices, Pytest...
  • Agile Leaf
    Flutter, Facebook Ads, Google AdWords, Swift, Cordova, Ionic, Angular, HTML5...

Experience

Location

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

WebStorm, PyCharm, MacOS

The most amazing...

...project I've worked on is a Windows desktop app calculating the chances of winning a game of Texas Hold'em, given starting conditions.

Employment

  • Software Engineer

    2021 - 2022
    Stripe
    • Was the DRI for the project that launched Stripes core offering to Croatia, Lichtenstein, and Gibraltar.
    • Was the DRI on a project to bring Stripes multi-currency payouts functionality to a new region.
    • Initiated and got leadership buy-in for mid sized projects by writing strategy review documents that included justifying the business needs and revenue projections.
    • Worked as part of multiple cross-functional teams for various projects during my time at Stripe.
    Technologies: Ruby, Java, React, APIs, REST APIs, Back-end, Microservices

  • Head of Technology

    2017 - 2021
    Felix
    • Led the technical team and made technology decisions.
    • Managed the infrastructure as a DevOps engineer on AWS & later Azure.
    • Provided hands-on coding on the main application and related services.
    • Took part in product discussions and the product development lifecycle.
    • Performed code reviews to ensure acceptable code quality standards were maintained.
    • Built and managed a pricing engine that translates rules from Excel sheets to Python and presented them as an API.
    Technologies: JavaScript, Python, Django, APIs, REST APIs, Back-end, Microservices, Pytest, Redis, PostgreSQL

  • Technical Co-founder

    2016 - 2021
    Agile Leaf
    • Created and managed several landing pages and AdWords campaigns for a real estate agency based in the UAE.
    • Helped the team finalizing and shipping to the client an Android application that showcases their product line and helps their customers to select the most appropriate product for their use.
    • Led the overall technology strategy of the company and also mentored the team while trying to solve technical problems.
    • Created an Ionic/Cordova-based mobile app for a printing press. The app allows the sales agents to quickly generate quotes for printing jobs in the field.
    • Developed a Django-based property showcase site for a real estate agency in the UAE with integration to a leading property CRM system.
    • Managed the server infrastructure for the clients' projects. This includes services deployed in a multi-cloud environment and providers like Google Cloud, AWS, DigitalOcean, and WebFaction.
    • Ensured that the technology part of the business was handled according to our company's mindset.
    • Worked as a product development team member to make sure the team was providing products with the most impact on the business.
    • Assured that product requirements were translated to technical specs that led to fast product development.
    Technologies: Flutter, Facebook Ads, Google AdWords, Swift, Cordova, Ionic, Angular, HTML5, Django

  • Software Engineer

    2018 - 2020
    Toptal Client [NDA]
    • Build a Go-based web spider to support the ad-tech safety platform of the organization.
    • Improved existing Python-based scanners for better performance.
    • Added Elasticsearch to parts of the platform that were extremely slow to display data from an SQL database.
    • Improved the infrastructure deployed on AWS to follow industry best practices and to provide load balancing and high availability.
    • Improved the structure and indexing of database tables to reduce query times for popular reporting view from minutes to seconds.
    Technologies: Elasticsearch, Django, Python, Go, APIs, REST APIs, Back-end

  • Portals Technical Team Lead

    2014 - 2017
    JRD Group
    • Worked on the existing PHP codebase for one of the largest property-focused classified portals in the Middle East.
    • Led the project of rewriting the existing PHP codebase to Django/Python as the senior back-end developer.
    • Handled the effort to internationalize and launch the new portal in more than five countries in the Middle East.
    • Stepped up the ladder to become the team leader for the portals' team, focusing on the smooth operation of the technical team.
    • Managed the DevOps activities to ensure the smooth functioning of the infrastructure that the JustProperty portal uses.
    Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), PHP, AWS, Digital, Virtual Private Servers, DevOps, JavaScript, HTML5, Python, Django, APIs, REST APIs, Back-end, Redis, PostgreSQL

  • Junior Web Developer

    2013 - 2014
    Dubizzle
    • Developed the Django back and front ends of the new place-an-ad (PAA) form for the largest classifieds site in the Middle East.
    • Refactored the existing code to improve the performance and clarity of the jobs vertical in the Dubizzle classifieds portal.
    • Helped on the monetization project for the Jobs vertical.
    • Improved the search functionality that was relevant to the jobs vertical.
    • Created the back end for the customer admin panel of the jobs vertical.
    Technologies: Bootstrap, HTML5, Python, Django, Back-end, Redis

  • Contractor

    2010 - 2011
    Read.fm
    • Built a local web page used by teachers to sync up translated text with videos.
    • Used a system built with JavaScript to create the web page.
    • Contributed to help students learn foreign languages by providing a fully local-based solution.
    Technologies: JavaScript, Back-end

  • Contractor

    2010 - 2011
    Advantica Lab System Software
    • Improved a web application related to optical prescription management.
    • Added additional features to this Django-based app.
    • Provided accurate outputs that involved a good deal of mathematical calculations.
    Technologies: JavaScript, Django, Python, Back-end

  • Contractor

    2010 - 2011
    VentureMob
    • Built a scraper to search and extract rankings from a popular restaurant ranking site using Python with BeautifulSoup.
    • Developed a couple of web pages that showed users some entities on a Google Map and allowed them to search and filter information, all processes assured using a Perl codebase.
    • Created an interactive web scraper that would take some input, use that to run a search on a popular ranking site, and extract the output using Perl.
    Technologies: JavaScript, Google Maps, Beautiful Soup, Python, Perl, Back-end

Experience

  • 50mm | A Simple-to-use Image Gallery Web App in Go
    https://github.com/agile-leaf/50mm

    50mm is a photo gallery web application that I made when I couldn't find anything matching my requirements. I wanted something that would work without a database, use an S3 backed image storage, and use the Imgix real-time image processing service to optimize the images displayed.

    Not finding anything that fit the bill, I created 50mm in Golang. It uses the built-in HTTP server and Golang HTML templating. It integrates with S3 for the storage and uses Imgix for on-the-fly image processing.

    In addition to powering my own gallery of photos, it is now used by at least two other people that I know of to showcase their own image collections.

  • Daily Ayah Bot
    https://github.com/agile-leaf/daily-ayah-bot

    I wanted to experiment with the Twitter API and create a bot. I came up with the idea of one that would tweet out random verses from the Quran every day and programmed it in Go.

  • Dropletconn
    https://github.com/theonejb/dropletconn

    A Go-based CLI tool to list and quickly connect to DigitalOcean droplets without needing to configure keys and other SSH options on the host system.

    This utility allows me to quickly place SSH into the Digital Ocean droplets that I manage without explicitly having to configure them in my SSH config file. It is similar to how Google Cloud CLI allows using SSH in Google Cloud Compute instances.

  • Vue.js Medium Editor
    https://github.com/theonejb/vue-medium-editor

    I wanted to use a Medium-like editor on one of my projects that were using the Vue.js framework on the front end. Not finding anything that fit the bill at that time, I created my own by integrating the existing Medium Editor (GitHub.com/yabwe/medium-editor) into a Vue.js component.

  • Watchman | A Go Library to Listen to Changes in a Package and Its Dependencies
    https://github.com/theonejb/watchman

    When using the Go-based Gin web framework for a project, I missed the automatic reloading of Django whenever a dependency of the project changed.

    I created a small library called Watchman and integrated it into Gin to fix that.

  • Django Project Blueprints
    https://www.packtpub.com/web-development/django-project-blueprints

    In 2016, I published a book on Django titled Django Project Blueprints.

    This is a book for beginner Django developers that are looking to take their skills to the next level, and it teaches them advanced skills by showing them how to build seven mid-size projects, including an eCommerce site with a search functionality powered by Elasticsearch.

  • Banky App
    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.banky.banky

    A micro-lending app for Colombia. Built the backend in Django with Django Rest Framework for the APIs. The mobile application is build in Flutter.

  • N.B. Sons
    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.agileleaf.nbsons.app

    I built a Flutter-based mobile application to showcase the products of a veterinary medicine manufacturer. The back end is a WordPress site. I was provided with the APIs by the web developer.

  • Hybrid Power: Flutter Advantages and Benefits (Publication)
    https://www.toptal.com/flutter/hybrid-power-flutter-advantages
    Google's Flutter framework has quickly caught on among developers who want to target Android and iOS from the same codebase—and businesses who know the value of a single project team yielding presence in both markets.

Skills

  • Languages

    JavaScript, Go, Python, CSS, Clojure, Perl, Bash, PHP, HTML5, Ruby, Java

  • Frameworks

    Django, Flutter, Flask, Bootstrap, Vanilla JS

  • Libraries/APIs

    REST APIs, Fabric, Beautiful Soup, Vue, jQuery, React

  • Other

    Software Development, APIs, Back-end, AWS DevOps, Web App Deployment, Teams, Team Management, Virtual Private Servers, Digital, AWS, Facebook Ads, Django-oscar

  • Tools

    Terraform, PyCharm, WebStorm, Ansible, Systemd, Pytest

  • Paradigms

    DevOps, Agile Software Development, Microservices

  • Platforms

    MacOS, Linux, Amazon EC2 (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud), Docker, Amazon Web Services (AWS)

  • Storage

    Elasticsearch, Redis, Cloud Deployment, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MySQL

Education

  • Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering
    2006 - 2010
    NFC Institute of Engineering and Fertilizer Research - Faisalabad, Pakistan

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