I build the systems that have to stay up.

Ten years leading engineering across on-demand delivery, health tech, fintech, and SaaS. Dispatch platforms moving live fleets across a city, payment systems moving money reliably, health platforms handling regulated data, and the infrastructure underneath all of it.

Most recently CTO at 1Pass. Before that, engineering lead on the customer and driver apps at HungerStation while it scaled across Saudi Arabia.

10+ yrsEngineering leadership
99.9%Uptime held through 10x growth
30%Infrastructure cost reduction
4Sectors: delivery, health, fintech, SaaS

Selected work

2013–present
2019–2026Jeddah

1Pass

Chief Technology Officer · Health and wellness platform

I owned technology for the whole company. The work that mattered most was not a feature launch, it was making the platform something a regulated partner could safely do business with.

  • Led a full security and privacy compliance overhaul after a partner's due diligence review flagged gaps. Built breach notification and incident response procedures, ROPA and DSAR processes, privileged access hardening, and an in-region backup strategy against PDPL, Saudi NCA, and GDPR requirements.
  • Designed a four layer defence in depth architecture across perimeter, authentication and RBAC, application validation, and tenant-scoped data access, closing unauthenticated public API endpoints.
  • Scaled infrastructure on GCP me-central2 (Dammam) to support ten times the user load without dropping the uptime SLA.
  • Rebuilt the native Android and iOS apps from scratch, and the company website in Vue.js.
  • Ran a formal technology evaluation process, assessing more than twenty tools a year and approving only what cleared a 150 percent ROI bar.
10xUser growth absorbed
99.9%Uptime SLA held
−30%Infrastructure cost
−40%Security incidents
−30%Mobile crash rate
+18%Active users

GCP · Kubernetes · Docker · Vue.js · Kotlin · Swift · PostgreSQL · Redis · PDPL / GDPR / NCA

2016–2019Jeddah

HungerStation

Software Engineer Lead · On-demand food delivery

I led engineering across both sides of the marketplace during the years the platform was growing fast across Saudi Arabia. The customer app people ordered from, the driver system that actually got the food there, and the payments running underneath both.

  • Built the delivery zone admin on PostgreSQL and PostGIS, defining how zones were drawn on the map and the rules for matching incoming orders to available drivers inside each zone.
  • Built the driver application (PACE) from the ground up, covering order assignment, live location updates, and delivery status for the whole rider fleet.
  • Built the rider operations dashboard that gave the ops team live visibility into driver position, assignment, and delivery progress during peak demand.
  • Led the customer app rebuild in React and Redux, including the full checkout and payment gateway flow through to real-time order tracking.
  • Worked on the payments team, building backend services for the wallet and checkout system: integrating Checkout.com as the primary PSP alongside Tabby and Tamara for buy-now-pay-later, with idempotent transaction processing to prevent double-charging, provider webhook handling, and reconciliation against a high volume of daily transactions.
  • Built and evolved the customer API powering restaurant discovery, ordering, and order status, containerised and deployed on Kubernetes with Jenkins.
3 appsCustomer, driver, restaurant
City-wideLive fleet dispatch
Real timeGeospatial order matching
PSP + BNPLCheckout.com, Tabby, Tamara

Ruby on Rails · PostgreSQL · PostGIS · Redis · GraphQL · Sidekiq · React · Redux · Vue.js · Socket.IO · Firebase · Kubernetes · Jenkins · Checkout.com · Tabby · Tamara

2026–nowSide venture

MailsGuard

Founder · Email verification SaaS

I wanted to know whether I could take something from an idea to paying users on my own, so I built one. It competes with ZeroBounce and NeverBounce at a considerably lower price.

  • Architected and built the whole platform solo: a Turborepo monorepo, a Fastify API on Railway, and a Next.js dashboard on Vercel.
  • Built the data enrichment integration layer covering domain search, person enrichment, and bulk enrichment, with rate limit protection and graceful retry handling.
  • Built a background queue for CSV enrichment, an admin panel, billing and refunds, product analytics, and a referral system.
  • Took it through a public launch, then automated operations to the point where it now runs with very little ongoing attention.
SoloProduct, engineering, launch
AutomatedRuns without daily input

Fastify · Next.js · TypeScript · BullMQ · Turborepo · Railway · Vercel · PostHog

Earlier

2013–2016

IntelliSC

Senior Software Engineer · Cairo · 2016

A banking application on IBM Worklight, and CarGate, which integrated vehicle records with a government traffic department and added a parts marketplace on top.

302Labs

Senior Full Stack Engineer · Cairo · 2015–2016

A health and accident alert platform that read live heart rate data from wearable devices and a Samsung Watch app, with a Rails backend and Android integration.

Kacib Solutions

Team Lead Software Engineer · Cairo · 2014–2015

My first time leading a team. Delivered a charity SMS platform and a school portal on Laravel, and learned that coaching people is a different skill from writing code.

Out of Z Box

Web Developer · Cairo · 2013–2014

Front-end and back-end web work for clients, building custom applications and the company's own site.

What I do

Platform and infrastructure

Cloud architecture on GCP, containerised deployment with Docker and Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, cost optimisation, and holding uptime commitments through real growth.

Security and compliance

PDPL, GDPR, and Saudi NCA cloud controls. Layered security architecture, RBAC, data residency, breach notification and incident response, ROPA and DSAR processes.

Payments and fintech

Backend integration with PSPs and BNPL providers including Checkout.com, Tabby, and Tamara. Idempotent transaction processing, webhook handling, and reconciliation at high transaction volume.

Real-time and geospatial systems

PostGIS zone modelling, order-to-driver matching, live dispatch, and the operational tooling teams need to run a fleet while it is moving.

Backend engineering

Ruby on Rails, Node and Fastify, PostgreSQL, Redis, GraphQL. API design, background job processing, and database work that holds up under load.

Frontend and mobile

React, Redux, Vue.js, Next.js, and native Android and iOS. Leading rebuilds of live products without breaking the people already using them.

Leading engineers

Hiring, mentoring, and coaching engineers on architecture and design. Running delivery across cross-functional teams and translating technical trade-offs for people who are not engineers.

Get in touch

I'm looking for my next role in Saudi Arabia or the wider Gulf. Happy to talk if something here lines up with what you're building.

Email
aborham83@gmail.com
Phone
+966 56 720 2382
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/ahmedborham
Based in
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia