Issa Al-Halabi·Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Senior Software Engineer | Engineering Lead | Architecture & Platform Ownership·7+ years
I make the architecture calls on full‑stack TypeScript platforms, then stay close enough to the code to prove they were the right ones.
Engineering the business can build on.
Engineering leader with 7+ years building and owning platforms across e-commerce, fintech, AI, IoT, EdTech, and Web3.
I lead engineering teams, own code review and merge, and set the testing and release standards teams build against, while still shipping code weekly. I build AI-assisted workflows into how teams work, not around them.
Seven years building systems and leading teams.
- Directed architecture across a team of 9 engineers, setting standards and reviewing hard changes.
- Owned code review and merge, defining testing and pull request standards before work reached main.
- Led design of a 15-service e-commerce platform with 40+ payment and banking integrations.
- Launched the platform to production, running at 1,000 orders per week with peaks of 200 orders per hour.
- Designed a Kafka outbox across 20+ modules for idempotent event delivery with webhooks and retries.
- Ran infrastructure on AWS EKS with Grafana: weekly releases across 3 environments, cost down 50%.
- Cut manual operations 70% and support effort 50%; improved PostgreSQL performance 30%.
- Built the React front end in TypeScript with Redux Toolkit and React Query.
- Integrated Meta Pixel, Google Analytics, and Snapchat tracking, and built an internal analytics dashboard.
- Established an AI-native workflow with AI agents and AI-assisted code review, cutting onboarding from 3 months to 1 week and speeding release cycles 200%.
- Led the backend team, owning technical direction, code review, and merge across all backend services.
- Executed a zero-downtime AWS account migration across 12 live services.
- Delivered 7 event-driven microservices powering an RWA marketplace across 6 blockchain networks.
- Supported ingestion and processing of thousands of digital assets across 6 networks.
- Reduced Docker image sizes by 90% and CI/CD execution times by 50%.
- Lowered developer overhead by 30% through reusable packages and automation.
- Built a real-time SSE system with Lambda and Step Functions for automated background workflows.
- Integrated Alchemy, SimpleHash, and Algolia to power indexing, search, and communication.
- Led a team of 5 engineers and mentored 3 developers across mobile, web, and backend, owning code review and merge.
- Designed a microservices platform on APISIX and Keycloak, unifying auth across 8+ identity providers.
- Delivered the React Native app and React web dashboard for fleet operations with Redux.
- Implemented the end-to-end battery swap flow, covering initiation, doors, and placement.
- Enabled real-time operations for 100+ bikes and 300+ battery stations using RabbitMQ.
- Accelerated deployments 30% via Kubernetes and CI/CD automation.
- Hardened platform security with SSL, security groups, and XSS/brute-force protections.
- Ingested and stored IoT telemetry from bikes and stations, surfaced on an operations dashboard.
- Delivered a React Native banking app with an Egyptian bank, integrating 5+ payment gateways.
- Developed and maintained 10+ Node.js microservices across fintech, e-commerce, and EdTech platforms.
- Improved database performance 40% via schema optimization and SQL-to-NoSQL migration.
- Built an e-learning platform with video uploads, subscriptions, and Socket.io playback tracking.
- Improved reliability through containerized deployments and Teltonika IoT integration.
- Mentored junior engineers, ran technical workshops, and introduced reusable development standards.
- Delivered 10+ web applications for agency clients using PHP, JavaScript, MySQL, and REST APIs.
- Built custom WordPress themes and plugins for client sites.
- Led small project teams and delivered client projects within scope and schedule.
Impact, in numbers.
A few outcomes I'm proud of: real, measured wins from shipping systems at scale.
Smaller Docker images through multi-stage build optimization
Onboarding time cut through AI-assisted workflows
Faster release cycles through AI-assisted review and CI/CD
Database performance gained through schema optimization
Manual operations reduced through platform redesign
Infrastructure cost reduced on a multi-tenant platform
How I make decisions.
The beliefs that survive contact with production.
01Simplicity
Prefer boring technology that scales. Simplicity is a feature.
02Reliability
Systems should fail gracefully. Optimize for uptime and maintainability.
03Observability
Metrics, traces, and logs are first-class concerns. You can't operate what you can't see.
04Business Impact
Technical decisions exist to create leverage. Optimize for outcomes instead of perfection.
Technologies I build with.
Languages & Runtime
The languages I build in, backend first.
Backend & Architecture
Typed, tested services and APIs, the core of what I build.
Frontend
Typed React interfaces that stay fast as they grow.
Integrations
Payment and banking flows that stay correct under retries.
Cloud & DevOps
Provisioning and running platforms reliably on AWS.
Databases & Messaging
Durable state and event flow, fast and consistent.
Testing, Auth & Observability
Shipping safely and seeing what production is doing.
AI & Automation
Putting LLMs to work in real engineering workflows.
Web3
Smart contracts and multi-chain indexing for RWA platforms.
Things I've shipped.
React Web Performance & Media Delivery
Improved front-end performance 30% through code splitting, memoization, and render profiling, with Akamai and ImageKit delivery optimization.
Banking Application
Backend APIs integrated with core banking systems over Kafka; raised test coverage 55% and ran Kubernetes deployments via ArgoCD and Rancher.
AI Video Processing Platform
Distributed video pipelines with queue-based processing, retries, and async workers on Lambda and S3.
AI-Powered Market & Social Media Platform
CrewAI agents orchestrating automated market research and social engagement, with GPT models behind a Streamlit UI.
Chatbot SQL Generator
Natural-language to scoped SQL generation.
Languages: Arabic (Native) · English (Fluent)
Let's talk.
Open to senior engineering roles, architecture leadership and interesting technical challenges across e-commerce, fintech, AI, IoT, EdTech and Web3. Based in Riyadh and open to roles anywhere in the GCC.
I read every one. Typical reply within 24 hours.