ANAS AHMAD / systems log open for contract engagements

Backend systems for people who need them to actually work.

I'm Anas Ahmad, a software engineer — 8 years across USAA, Capital One, and Grubhub, now also building and running production data platforms independently. Go, Java, AWS, React. I take on contract and fractional engineering work for teams who need senior-level systems built or fixed without a full-time hire.

Track record, last 24 shipped systems 96% in production

One square, one shipped service or report — not a metaphor, this is roughly how the work actually breaks down.

Systems

in production active build
Internal API Platform Capital One · 2023–2024

Architected and led the build of a Go API platform other teams built services on top of — hexagonal design with every component abstracted and swappable, Gin for routing and security, Viper for environment config. Deployed cloud-native on AWS (Fargate, S3, DynamoDB). Mentored engineers and ran internal presentations on the platform and on Go.

6,000 requests/sec
GoGinViperAWS Fargate / S3 / DynamoDBHexagonal architecture
Dynamic Ad Injection Engine Grubhub · 2024–Present

Architected and led the move from static ad placement to a real-time injection engine — Java 17 logic evaluating and injecting sponsored content into live search results by user intent and restaurant relevance. Built custom Elasticsearch 8 Query DSL filters and Function Score / Script Scoring to blend organic relevance with sponsored ranking, tuned against live CTR and proximity signals.

Live CTR-tuned ranking
Java 17Elasticsearch 8Query DSLFunction Score Queries
Field Operations Data Platform Independent · Ongoing

Backend platform for a field-operations company, unifying records collected across a large fleet of mobile data-collection deployments. A Go service on AWS bridges an on-prem SQL Server to the cloud, while a separate sync engine reconciles two independent operational systems in near real time, running unattended on a schedule.

27 → 3,000+ deployments synced
GoAWS Fargate / Lambda / SQS / S3TerraformSQL Server
Kafka-Driven Legacy Re-platform USAA · 2019–2022

Designed APIs and Kafka producers/consumers (Go, Kotlin, Java) as part of moving a major product application off a legacy on-prem stack onto modern cloud infrastructure. Shipped a React SPA that triggered and tracked a long-running batch job end to end, a Spring Batch service backed by SQL Server, and a reactive Akka pipeline for file-based integrations — plus a pre-build static analysis gate added to the deploy pipeline. Promoted to tech lead of a 10-application legacy team at the earliest eligible level.

Tech lead, 10 legacy apps
GoKotlinJavaKafkaReactSpring BatchAkka
Workforce & Reporting Automation Independent · Ongoing

Rewrote a legacy Windows reporting tool as a concurrent Go service that generates and distributes productivity, headcount, and payroll reports automatically by email and file share. The underlying SQL layer handles multi-level organizational rollups and shift/timezone edge cases.

Daily reports, zero manual runs
GoSQL ServerReporting ServicesSMTP
Baat (بات) — Bilingual Chat App baat

Independent product: a Pakistan-first Urdu/English chat app architected to scale from a 100K-user launch toward 100M+. Go backend on AWS, with native SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose clients rather than a cross-platform framework — full RTL and bilingual support built in from the schema up.

Designed for 100M+ users
GoSwift / SwiftUIKotlin / ComposePostgreSQLRedisAWS
Namaz — Prayer Times & Qibla namaz

Native iOS prayer-time and Qibla-compass app with home-screen widgets and multiple calculation methods (Karachi, MWL, ISNA, and more). Entirely client-side — no backend, no network dependency, works offline by design.

Fully offline
SwiftWidgetKit

Stack

Backend & languages

  • Go primary
  • Java / Kotlin
  • Python Lambda / data
  • Node.js
  • C# / .NET

Cloud & infrastructure

  • AWS Fargate, ECS, Lambda
  • AWS S3, SQS, API Gateway, DynamoDB
  • Kubernetes / Docker / OpenShift
  • Terraform

Data, messaging & reporting

  • SQL Server / SSRS
  • PostgreSQL
  • Kafka
  • Elasticsearch

Frontend & mobile

  • React
  • Swift / SwiftUI
  • Kotlin / Jetpack Compose

Currently taking on contract work

Fractional or project-based backend and data-platform engineering — reach out with what you're building and I'll tell you plainly if it's a fit.

Email anasahmaddev@gmail.com