A seasoned software professional with over 22 years of proven track record in technology development and leadership for startups, unicorns and multinational businesses
Expert at building and leading globally distributed, high-performing engineering teams
Adept at initiating and leading software research and development initiatives for large-scale, mission-critical software systems
Experienced in shaping, driving and implementing technical vision, strategy and tactics, and optimizing engineering practices to achieve it
Extensive hands-on exposure to a plethora of languages, technologies and software development methodologies
Remote work veteran with over fifteen years of remote team management experience
Creative problem solver with strong analytical, communication, technical and management skills
Comfortable with wearing multiple hats
Inventor and co-author of numerous technology patents
Open to a challenging and remote-friendly technical leadership consulting engagements
Professional Experience
Founder – Confidential
2021 – Continued
Anywhere
Stay tuned for details.
Vice President of Engineering – Afiniti
2016 – 2021
Islamabad / Washington D.C. / Remote
Afiniti is the world’s leading applied artificial intelligence and advanced analytics provider with a $2.6 billion valuation and a team of 2500+ operating throughout the world. Afiniti has measurably driven billions of dollars in incremental value to its clients, including 70% of the major global telcos.
Led departments, teams and guilds; managed managers, and individual contributors; assisted teams to successfully develop, deliver and support numerous products
Defined, directed and owned team-building and enablement, hiring, onboarding, training, assignment, mentoring, assessment and career growth
Built and led three high-performing cross-functional departments from the ground up, each with ~20 geographically distributed members
Led the Oversight guild – managed architects and engineering managers in the design, deployment and support of robust and scalable multi-tenant, real-time monitoring systems deployed on private clouds across the world at leading telcos, for 24/7 operations monitoring
Headed the Insights department – coached teams in developing data analysis, data science and data engineering, log monitoring, 2D/AR/VR data and time-series visualization software to extract actionable insights and BI from real-time data
Headed the Automation and Chatbots team – directed the technical vision for process automation, bot creation and deployment systems for upcoming Afiniti products
Led cross-departmental teams to bootstrap MVPs for the next-gen disruptive Afiniti contact center products in partnership with Avaya
Led multiple teams in reengineering the core Afiniti products from a monolithic to an SOA and microservices architecture
Collaborated with HR to enhance the Afiniti hiring processes by using open-source software tools
Set appraisal rubrics, conducted performance review and managed the career trajectory for engineering teams
Improved and streamlined engineering standards, best practices and Agile methodology
Enabled engineering teams to establish a self-managed learning and growth-focused culture
Facilitated cross-departmental collaboration between engineering, product and client teams
Provided technology vision for numerous software products and oversaw their development lifecycle from conception and beyond
Initiated multiple software R&D initiatives, resulting in technological paradigm shifts across Afiniti
External Business Partner – Roche
2011 – 2013
Basel / Remote
Roche is the world’s largest biotech company with $50 billion+ in annual revenue, and is a global pioneer in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics focused on advancing science to improve people’s lives.
Conducted R&D for mission-critical projects with a global user-base, involving Big Data in large-scale graph and columnar databases, as part of a globally distributed engineering team
Developed data engineering solutions in Java, C#, Oracle, SQL Server and early incarnations of SAP HANA
Collaborated with the Oracle SAP HANA product development team to identify bugs and issues in HANA and recommended fixes
Founder – Coffity
2009 – Present
Abbottabad
Coffity is a successful cafe that has grown into a local culinary landmark since its inception.
Started the cafe after noticing the vacant niche during a sabbatical
Defined and optimized SOPs, automated operations and reporting through software, enabling the business to run on auto-pilot by a staff of twenty
Consultant – Blue Brain Project
2007 – 2008
EPFL, Laussane / Remote
The Blue Brain Project is a Swiss brain research initiative in collaboration with IBM, that aims to create a digital reconstruction of the mammalian brain and use supercomputers for biologically-detailed digital reconstructions and simulations to identify the fundamental principles of brain structure and function.
Developed a custom cross-platform 3D graphics software system to semi-automatically model neurons in 3D from 2D hi-resolution microscopic imagery stacks, as part of the primary workflow for the research project
Led the product development in C++, WxWidgets, Qt, OpenGL and OpenSceneGraph for Windows and Linux, and also contributed to the opensource project OpenSceneGraph
Vice President of Technology R&D – OrthoClear
2005 – 2007
San Francisco / Lahore
OrthoClear was a SF based biotech startup that grew in two years to a multinational and multi-million dollar business with over 1000 employees, before acquisition by Invisalign.
Wore multiple hats as a founding member of OrthoClear
Authored technology patents; conducted R&D; selected and created software and hardware technology; defined workflows for 3D data digitization, data acquisition and CNC machining software that formed the backbone of the business
Trained and led large 3D software development and software user teams of ~50 members
Represented OrthoClear in international technology and orthodontics conferences
Senior Partner – Algotrek Technology Consulting
2002 – 2009
Lahore
Algotrek is a software consulting and solutions provider, operating in the US and European software markets, in the 3D, web and mobile development domains. It was established as an off-shoot of the Align Technology Pakistan operations, to continue work with them after their operations moved from Pakistan to Costa Rica.
Established the software consulting business as a partner
Continued consulting for Align Technology 3D graphics based software products
Designed and developed desktop, ecommerce, web and 3D graphics applications, databases for complex systems, optimized legacy software and conceived and implemented business automation solutions for Invisalign as well as other clients
Software Engineer – Align Technology
2000 – 2002
San Jose / Lahore
Align Technology is the inventor of Invisalign clear aligners used in orthodontics, traded on NASDAQ with a $2 billion+ valuation and 15,000+ employees.
Collaborated on the development of the custom 3D graphics software, reporting and automation systems critical to Invisalign operations, primarily in Visual C++, Java, ASP and OpenGL
Re-engineered a critical low-latency SQL Server and ASP based automation system to support hundreds of concurrent clients
Optimized and automated manual processes, resulting in significant cost reduction per client
Exploited the chance to experiment with haptic devices, 3D printers and biometric technology, cutting-edge at the time
Developed reporting, file synchronization and pdf generation software using Visual C++ and Java
Web Analyst – Nextbridge
1999 – 2000
Lahore
Nextbridge is one of the top-ranked software businesses in Pakistan.
Liaised between aspirant eCommerce businesses and web development teams to gather requirements, recommend features and synchronize designers and developers to successfully engineer and deliver multiple eCommerce websites, during the dot-com boom
Independent Consultant
1999 – Present
Location Independent
Consulting intermittently since the late 90s to escape the comfort zone and to stay current in emerging technology, helping small and large clients to solve their management and technical problems.
A few noteworthy clients:
Frontiers Media – 2007 – Managed the Frontiers development team to redesign and port their front-end publication software from Java to PHP, for a faster and scalable system with a shorter development cycle. Frontiers is an award-winning online peer-reviewed open-access scientific journal.
Mindbridge – 2005 – Developed a web-based online real-time tutoring system for Mindbridge, one of the largest BPOs in Asia.
Symbionica – 2004 – Implemented a secure online software sale system for FaceSay, a patented system that trains autistic children on emotion recognition
Systems Ltd. – 2001 – Provided complete website development solutions for Systems, as well as an interactive system for realtime image manipulation in Javascript. Systems is the oldest and one of the largest software firms in Pakistan
Skills & Technologies
Intimately or briefly familiar with many languages, frameworks and technologies, including Apache Spark, ASP.NET, C#, C++, Cassandra, COBOL, D3, Digital Ocean, Docker, Drools, Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana, Fortran, Google Cloud Platform, Go, GraphQL, Greenplum, Hololens, Java, Javascript, Kafka, Kubernetes, MLS, MongoDB, MySQL, Neo4J, Node.js, OpenGL, ORMs, Perl, PHP, Postgres, Private Cloud, Python, Qt, R, Rasa, React.js, Redis, SQL Server, Tk, TypeScript, Unity, Visual Basic, Visual C++, VTK and Vue.js
A preference for Linux as the OS of choice
Education
Master’s in Science – Computer Science
University of the Punjab – 2001
Master’s in Business Administration – Marketing
Preston University – 1998
Post Graduate Diploma – Computer Science
University of the Punjab – 1999
Bachelor’s in Science – Mathematics and Physics
Forman Christian College – 1996
GRE General
2260/2400 – 2002
Patents, Conferences, Workshops etc.
Presented a panel on citizen journalism at the Poynter Institute, St. Petersburg, FL in 2012
Delivered a talk on the role of social media in citizen journalism at the Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, FL in 2012
Presented a session on journalism and social media at the University of Texas, Austin, TX in 2012
Led a panel at SXSW Interactive titled “Tweeting Osama’s Death: From Citizen to Journalist” at South by Southwest, Austin, TX in 2012
Co-authored Visualizing and Manipulating Digital Models for Dental Treatment (U.S. Patent 20100009308 A1) and more than ten other patents that were transferred to the employer’s portfolio in 2006
Created and presented an innovative virtual reality orthodontics treatment system with 6 DOF motion control and stereo vision, dubbed Orthotouch, at the American Association of Orthodontics 106th Annual Session, Las Vegas, NV in 2006
Attended a 6 months long course on Orthodontics concepts and methodologies at Align Technology in 2000
Participated in a 6 months long rigorous course on computational geometry, advanced 3D graphics theory and implementation at Align Technology in 2000