About Me
Full-stack engineer // Calgary, Alberta
The Short Version
I'm Zil. I've been writing software professionally for about five years, mostly full-stack. React and TypeScript on the front, Node and GraphQL behind it, AWS underneath. Right now I build the in-house POS and billing software AMA's agents use, and I co-founded findnaseeb on the side.
What I actually like is the building. Take something vague, figure out how it should work, get it in front of real people. I'm the one who reads the big PR carefully, chases the weird production bug, and cares whether the thing is still simple to run six months later.
Outside work I'm usually building something too. Right now that's a project car that's eaten more weekends than I'll admit. When I'm not under it I'm hiking, traveling, taking photos, or volunteering. A few of those are under Photos.
System Configuration
Employment Chronology
- Co-founded an in-person matchmaking platform for the Muslim community, built around real events instead of profiles. Built the app on Next.js, TypeScript, and SQLite with a 3-person team.
- Built the AI-assisted curation flow: member profiles and event context (location, pool strength, new vs. returning members) go through AI to shortlist invites, then a person reviews the list.
- Added member blocking that surfaces to the team, plus clear community rules.
- Grew to about 200+ members in Calgary on organic social alone (no paid ads), with waitlists in Toronto, Vancouver, and Chicago.
- Moved legacy billing/POS terminals onto Micro Frontends (MFE). Wrote the shared packages 5+ teams build on and cut setup time ~60%.
- Reworked key flows and rollouts, raising agent transaction capacity ~40% and membership sales ~50%.
- Added Playwright regression tests, dropping production bugs ~30% and steadying CI.
- Parallelized tests and pipelines for 65% faster deploys, without losing coverage.
- Built web and mobile apps for 10+ businesses, which improved their conversions and engagement.
- Cut hosting costs ~60% by splitting monolithic APIs into containerized cloud services.
- Cut maintenance ~70% by moving legacy systems onto React.
Background & Credentials
- Self-taught software engineer — shipping production systems across full-stack web, cloud, and AI since 2020.
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (Issued 2024)