Backend · Cloud · AI Systems

SaadJawaid

AI Team Lead · Backend & Cloud Architect·Karachi, Pakistan

Backend and cloud engineer with 9+ years building systems that carry real business weight. I lead engineering teams, architect distributed platforms on AWS and GCP, and bridge the gap between technical depth and what the product actually needs.

View my work Get in touch LinkedIn ↗GitHub ↗

Saad Jawaid — AI Team Lead · Backend & Cloud Architect

Years shipping: 9+
Engineering roles: 8
Upload pipelines: 100GB+
Language ecosystems: 4

01About

Nine years in, still curious.

The short version of how I got here and what I care about.

Based in: Karachi, Pakistan
Currently: AI Team Lead, V For Technology
Working since: 2017
Languages: English, Urdu

I started out building client websites in Karachi in 2017. Nine years later I'm leading an AI engineering team for a product company in Riyadh — and the thread running through all of it has been the same: making backend systems carry more weight than they were originally designed for.

Most of my work lives in the unglamorous middle of the stack. Upload pipelines that don't fall over at 100 GB. Services that talk to each other over gRPC instead of chatty REST. Terraform that provisions the same infrastructure the same way every time. It's the layer users never see and notice immediately when it breaks.

These days I split my time between architecture decisions and staying hands-on in the code — because I don't think you can make good calls about a system you've stopped touching. I'm also increasingly interested in the practical side of AI: what actually survives contact with production users, and what was only ever a demo.

See the full history Download resume ↓

02Skills

The toolkit, honestly labelled.

Nine years across four language ecosystems. These are the things I reach for without looking them up — grouped by how I actually use them, not by what looks impressive on a list.

Backend

Where I spend most of my time

Node.js
Express.js
NestJS
TypeScript
Golang (Gin, Iris)
Python
FastAPI
Django
Laravel
Core PHP

Databases

Relational, document, search & vector

PostgreSQL
MySQL
MongoDB
Redis
ArangoDB
Elasticsearch
OpenSearch
pgvector
Pinecone
Weaviate

DevOps & Cloud

Infrastructure I own end to end

Docker
Kubernetes
Terraform
AWS (EC2, S3, Lambda, IAM, Cognito)
GCP
DigitalOcean
GitHub Actions
Sentry
PM2

Messaging & Queues

Keeping services talking

Apache Kafka
RabbitMQ
BullMQ
gRPC
Socket.IO

AI & Automation

Practical AI, shipped into products

LoRA fine-tuning
AWS Lex
AWS Kendra
Conversational AI
Intelligent search
N8N
Zapier
Cloud Functions

Frontend

Enough to ship the whole product

React
Next.js
Angular
TypeScript
Tailwind CSS
HTML/CSS

Leadership

The part that isn't code

Team leadership
Mentoring & coaching
Code review
Project scoping
Agile / Scrum
Technical roadmap planning

Tooling

Daily drivers

Git & GitHub
Linux
Jira
Trello
VS Code
Claude Code
Gemini CLI
OpenAI Codex

03Work Experience

Nine years, eight roles, one throughline.

From building client sites in Karachi to leading an AI team for a Riyadh product company — every step has been about making backend systems carry more weight than they were designed for.

AI Team Lead
Current
V For Technology
Jul 2026 — Present
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia · Remote
Full-time
Leading the AI engineering effort — taking machine learning and LLM capabilities from prototype into production systems that real customers depend on.
- Lead the AI team across model integration, evaluation and deployment into live product surfaces.
- Apply LoRA fine-tuning to adapt large language models to domain-specific behaviour without a research budget.
- Design the Python and AWS infrastructure that serves AI features at production scale.
- Set technical direction and mentor engineers through architecture review and pairing.
- Python
- AWS
- LLMs
- LoRA
- Vector DBs
- Docker
Technical Lead
Syncjourney
Oct 2024 — Jul 2026
Karachi, Pakistan · On-site
Full-time
Technical Lead and C-level executive. Architected backend platforms powering critical business operations, splitting time between high-level technical strategy and hands-on system design.
- Architected scalable, high-performance backend platforms in Golang and Node.js on AWS and GCP.
- Owned technical strategy and decision-making at executive level while staying hands-on in system design and code review.
- Designed microservices architectures and optimised distributed systems for throughput and reliability.
- Led cross-functional engineering teams to deliver production-grade software, mentoring engineers throughout.
- Bridged technical depth and business goals — making sure the architecture scaled with the product vision, not against it.
- Golang
- Node.js
- AWS
- GCP
- AWS CodePipeline
- Kubernetes
- Microservices
Development Team Lead
V 4 Technology
Mar 2023 — Sep 2025
Dammam, Saudi Arabia · Remote
Full-time
Led the backend team on ERP integration and Elasticsearch-backed product transactions for major Saudi e-commerce platforms.
- Oversaw the backend team delivering ERP integration and Elasticsearch product transaction pipelines.
- Shipped and scaled multi-brand e-commerce platforms including Ahmed Abdulwahed, Almanea and Voucherek.
- Built Infrastructure as Code with Terraform — load balancers, auto-scaling groups and cloud networking on AWS and GCP.
- Established GitHub Actions CI/CD: Docker builds, ECR pushes and zero-downtime deploys to EC2 and Kubernetes.
- Drove the team toward innovative solutions for seamless integration across legacy and modern systems.
Products shipped
- Ahmed Abdulwahed
  Saudi Arabia's largest multi-brand smart-electronics distributor and retailer, 40+ brands.
- Almanea
  The largest store for discounted services and products sold in KSA.
- Voucherek
  Online store for discounted services and products sold through vouchers in KSA.
- Node.js
- Elasticsearch
- ERP integration
- Terraform
- AWS
- GitHub Actions
N8N Engineer
Rocket Digital
Apr 2025 — Jun 2025
USA · Remote
Contract
Built workflow automation connecting internal tooling, third-party APIs and serverless functions.
- Designed and deployed N8N automation workflows replacing manual internal processes.
- Integrated serverless handlers on AWS Lambda and Google Cloud Functions as workflow steps.
- Wired third-party APIs and webhooks into reliable, retry-safe pipelines.
- N8N
- Node.js
- AWS Lambda
- Google Cloud Functions
- Zapier
Lead Back End Developer
Musketeers Tech
Aug 2022 — Mar 2023
Remote
Full-time
Led a backend team on data-intensive products, with a focus on throughput, large-file handling and system efficiency.
- Led a team of backend developers, focusing on innovative projects and growing the engineers on it.
- Introduced new backend technologies to improve system efficiency and performance.
- Engineered S3 multipart upload pipelines handling files above 100 GB with fault-tolerant, resumable transfer.
- Implemented Redis caching and gRPC inter-service communication, cutting API response times across queue-backed systems.
- Collaborated with cross-functional teams to deliver high-quality solutions on time.
Products shipped
- Stickball
  EdTech platform delivering financial literacy, life skills and analytical certification programmes.
- Node.js
- gRPC
- Redis
- AWS S3
- Heroku
- Kafka
Senior Backend Engineer
Objectual Systems Ltd
Jan 2021 — Sep 2022
Pakistan · On-site
Full-time
Built and maintained production backend services supporting real-time, data-heavy applications.
- Developed scalable Node.js services on MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB and Redis.
- Introduced message queues and background workers for long-running jobs.
- Reviewed code and supported junior engineers as the team grew.
- Node.js
- Express.js
- MySQL
- PostgreSQL
- MongoDB
- Redis
Backend Developer · Node.js Executive
Objectual Systems Ltd
Aug 2020 — Jul 2021
Karachi, Pakistan · On-site
Full-time
Senior Node.js developer building services and REST APIs across multiple applications.
- Developed services and REST APIs powering several production applications.
- Implemented security measures including JWT-based authentication.
- Integrated third-party authentication providers such as Auth0 and AWS Cognito.
- Node.js
- Express.js
- JWT
- Auth0
- AWS Cognito
- Redis
- AWS
Associate Software Engineer
Tameer Ghar
Aug 2019 — Dec 2020
Pakistan · On-site
Full-time
Worked across the stack on web products, from database to interface.
- Developed and maintained web application features end to end.
- Supported deployments and production issue resolution.
- PHP
- Laravel
- MySQL
- JavaScript
- jQuery
Web Developer
CrudTech Enterprise
Apr 2017 — Jun 2019
Pakistan
Full-time
First professional role — built and shipped websites and web applications for clients.
- Built client websites and custom WordPress solutions.
- Developed PHP/MySQL backends and jQuery-driven interfaces.
- Core PHP
- WordPress
- MySQL
- JavaScript
- jQuery
- HTML/CSS

04Achievements

Things I'm quietly proud of.

Not awards — outcomes. The problems that were genuinely hard, and the systems that are still running because of how they were solved.

100 GB+

Resumable upload pipelines

Engineered S3 multipart upload infrastructure that moves files above 100 GB with fault tolerance and resume-on-failure.

Downtime deployments

Built GitHub Actions CI/CD that ships Docker images to ECR and rolls out zero-downtime releases on EC2 and Kubernetes.

Teams led

Led cross-functional engineering teams across four companies — AI, backend and full-stack — owning code quality, mentoring and delivery cadence.

40+

Brands at retail scale

Backend and ERP integration behind Ahmed Abdulwahed — Saudi Arabia's largest multi-brand smart-electronics distributor — plus Almanea and Voucherek.

C-Level

Executive technical ownership

Served as Technical Lead and C-level executive at Syncjourney, owning technical strategy alongside hands-on architecture and code review.

IaC

Infrastructure as code

Provisioned load balancers, auto-scaling groups and cloud networking on AWS and GCP entirely through Terraform.

LoRA

LLM fine-tuning in production

Applied Low-Rank Adaptation to fine-tune large language models, bringing domain-specific AI into shipped product features.

BSCS

Computer Science degree

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Lincoln University Malaysia — completed alongside full-time engineering work.

05Blogs

Writing about the hard parts.

Notes from production — the failure modes, the trade-offs, and the things I wish someone had told me before I found out the expensive way.

InfrastructureDraft

Uploading 100 GB to S3 without losing your mind

Multipart uploads, resumable transfers, and the failure modes nobody warns you about until production.

Coming soon12 min

PerformanceDraft

gRPC and Redis: cutting API latency in half

What actually moved the needle when I replaced chatty REST calls between services with gRPC and a proper cache layer.

Coming soon9 min

AIDraft

LoRA fine-tuning for teams who aren't an AI lab

A practical path to domain-specific LLM behaviour without a research budget or a GPU cluster.

Coming soon15 min

These are in progress — the first one lands soon.

06Talks

Coming soon.

A YouTube channel on backend engineering, in plain language.

Launching soon

I'm putting together deep-dives on the things I actually deal with day to day — scaling backends, cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, and shipping AI features that survive real users. No hype, no whiteboard theatre.

Channel launching soonPing me when it’s live

01Backend architecture walkthroughs
02AWS & Terraform, end to end
03System design, unpacked slowly
04Career notes from 9 years in

07Resume

The one-page version.

If you'd rather skim a PDF than scroll a site — entirely fair. Here it is.

Curriculum vitae

Saad Jawaid

AI Team Lead · Backend & Cloud Architect

9+ years of backend, cloud and AI engineering across Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the US — condensed into a single ATS-friendly page.

Download PDF Open in browser ↗

Backend
Databases
DevOps & Cloud
Messaging & Queues

Education

BSc, Computer Science
Lincoln University, Malaysia
2020 — 2024
Diploma, Software Engineering
Aptech, Karachi
2017 — 2020
Intermediate, Computer Science
Bahria College, Karachi
2019
Matriculation, Computer Science
Bahria College, Karachi
2017

08Contact

Let's talk.

Consulting, architecture reviews, a tricky scaling problem, or just comparing notes on backend work — my inbox is open.

Open to consulting & advisory work

Got a system that needs to scale — or one that already broke?

Send me an email

Based in Karachi, Pakistan · Working remotely across time zones