Asjad Asif Jah

About Me

My story began when I completed my undergraduate degree at the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) Islamabad in 2016. In 2020, I received the Fulbright Scholarship for my Master's in Spatial Data Science at the University of Southern California. During my graduate degree, I focused on integrating Spatial Data with Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to solve geospatial problems.

After graduating in 2016, I started working as a back-end software engineer for the first couple of years of my career, then gradually moved towards fullstack software engineering roles. During my career, I have architected and built scalable software systems from scratch, writing front-end and back-end code, leading a team of developers, performing DevOps, and ensuring customer satisfaction. I paused my career in 2020 at the level of Senior Software Engineer after receiving the Fulbright Scholarship.

After completing my graduate degree in May 2022, I returned to Pakistan and joined Airlift Technologies as an Associate Engineering Manager. Since Airlift Technologies shut down operations in July, I joined another product start-up in August called Byte as an Engineering Manager. Byte was also not spared from the financial hit that a lot of companies have been taking in the recent past. Now I have joined a UAE-based startup, Aura, working in the FinTech space. I am very enthusiastic about working at product start-ups, and I look forward to the next phase of my professional career.

I read business and tech-related books. I am an avid PC gamer, and my favorite genre is FPS. I also like watching sci-fi, horror, and thriller movies and series.

  • February 27
  • Pakistan
  • asjadjah@gmail.com
  • +92 342 507 4909

Summary

A fullstack senior software engineer with experience working at both start-ups and enterprises, possessing technical leadership experience and additional skill set in spatial application development. Proven expertise in multiple frameworks for developing state-of-the-art software and exceptional analytical and problem-solving capabilities. A team player and an enthusiastic individual with an initiative-driven approach to work in particular and life in general.

Interesting Fact

As a kid, I collected coins of various denominations belonging to different countries. My coin book had coins of various denominations from over 30 countries, including those from pre-partition India. I used to restore the coins as much as possible before safely storing them in my coin book.

What I Do

Fullstack Development

During the course of my career, I have architected and built scalable software systems from scratch, writing front-end and back-end code and deploying them to cloud providers. I have curated applications that work on various platforms, including but not limited to Windows Desktop, Windows/Linux Server, Raspberry Pi, and Android. I have experience working in React and Angular for web development and Flutter for cross-platform development. I have built back-end systems in Java, Node.js, C++, and Python.

Data Science

I got the chance to dive deep into data science workflows and pipelines during my graduate degree at USC. I worked on MapReduce, Locality Sensitive Hashing, Recommendation Systems, Analyzing Massive Graphs, Mining Data Streams, Linear/Logistic Regression, Classification/Clustering, Bayesian Theory, Parametric/Non-Parametric Models, Neural Networks, Random Forests, Generative Models, HDFS, Apache Spark, GeoAI, Spatial Data Wrangling, Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis, Spatially Explicit Supervised/Unsupervised Learning, Spatially Explicit Neural Networks, Spatial Optimization, and Prescriptive Spatial Machine Learning to name a few.

Spatial Application Development

Since I was young, I have been passionate about spatial data, how a computer can represent the real world, and its applications. I remember how excited I was when Google Earth got released in the early 2000s. I used to be fascinated playing around with it. I also remember playing Flight Simulator X when it was released, being interested in seeing how the real world is modeled inside the game. My passion has continued till today, and I am always very interested in solving problems that require spatial data manipulation and thinking about solving problems with a spatial context. The choice of my graduate degree was also heavily influenced by this passion. During my career, I have built a number of spatial applications, including but not limited to; a Python server application to generate secure, encoded, and small-sized vector map tiles, implementation of a graph-based routing algorithm in Java, development of multiple data QA Java applications to detect GIS data anomalies, automated language translation of map data, development of a mechanism to convert satellite images to raster map tiles for loading them offline inside an android application, and implementation of new features in a native C++ library for map rendering on Android/iOS. I have worked on various libraries and frameworks for spatial data manipulation and handling that run on different platforms; Web, Desktop, and Mobile.

Mobile Development

Earlier on, I worked on native Android application development. I built a number of Android applications during the final year of my undergraduate degree as well as in the first couple of years of my career. During my graduate degree at USC, I took a course on Web Technologies that used Flutter as the primary framework. I enjoyed working in Dart and building cross-platform applications in Flutter. Although I haven't got a chance to work on Flutter in a professional environment, I am keen to take this opportunity when it arrives.

Cloud Deployment

I have deployed applications to bare metal servers when containers were not widely used and understood. I got into containerization when I learned about Docker. I used it a lot as I realized how cool this technology is and gave a company-wide 2-hour overview of Docker, so I could explain how useful it is and should be widely adopted. The first platform I got my hands on for cloud deployment was AWS, which was a game changer for me. Moving from bare metal to containerization to the cloud has been quite a journey, and it has been a fascinating one for me. I have considerable experience using many AWS services, e.g., EC2, Lambda, DynamoDB, SQS, SES, S3, ApiGateway, and ElasticBeanStalk, to name a few.

People Management

I got a chance to lead a small team of developers at Afiniti, which I enjoyed, and I learned I have a good sense of people management. I joined Airlift in a people management role, and it was a fantastic experience while it lasted. Later, I joined Byte as an Engineering Manager, again involving technical and people management responsibilities, and I enjoyed every part of it.

Career Overview

Years of Experience

Organizations

6

Universities

2

Publications

1

Certifications

1

Resume

Experience

2024 - Present
Aura Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Technical Lead

Working as a technical lead to build Aura from ground-up, architecting the core product using NestJS + React + AWS. Major responsibilities include:
Leading a team of 3 engineers; actively conducting code reviews to maintain quality of the product and conducting regular 1:1s to ensure career growth and progression
Setting up the complete infrastructure of the product; built pipelines for automated testing and deployment
Setting up the core engineering processes and principles from scratch and continuously looking for ways to improve them
Vetting all technical solutions and ensuring there's neither over-engineering nor under-engineering and deep diving before taking technology decisions

2022 - 2024
Byte (YC S20) Islamabad, Pakistan

Engineering Manager

Worked as an engineering manager in the Engineering team to deliver both internally and externally used web and mobile products. Also filled in as the fullstack team lead actively involved in designing and developing critical features and applications using Angular + Node.js. Led a team of 10 engineers (Fullstack + Mobile + DevOps + QA) ensuring high-quality design, development, and deployment of new business functionalities through active code review and feedback. Also ensured the career growth of the engineers by actively working to improve the skills of the engineering talent.

2022 - 2022
Airlift Technologies Islamabad, Pakistan

Associate Engineering Manager

Worked as an associate engineering manager in the Warehouse Operations team to deliver web and mobile products used in the Airlift warehouses. Worked as a fullstack developer with hands-on development on Angular + Node.js. Managed a team of 6 engineers (Fullstack + Android + Automated QA)

2020 - 2022
The Fulbright Program Los Angeles, CA, United States

Fulbright Scholar

The Fulbright Scholarship award is a competitive program that selects academically and professionally high-achieving individuals for a fully-funded Master's program in the United States. The individuals selected have a track record of accomplishment and are highly motivated in their future goals and aspirations.

2019 – 2020
Afiniti Islamabad, Pakistan

Senior Software Engineer

Software Engineer

Worked as a fullstack software engineer in the Engineering team on the following projects:
Afiniti Core - Configuration Server
Role: Project Lead and Backend Developer (Node.js + C++) Managed a team of 4 engineers (Node.js + React.js + C++)
Config Server – Transformation App
Role: Project Lead and Backend Developer (Python)
Afiniti MegaACD
Role: Fullstack Developer (Node.js + GraphQL + React.js)
Afiniti IME/AiRo
Role: Backend Developer (Node.js + GraphQL)
Afiniti Core - Lookup Service
Role: Backend Developer (C++)

2017 – 2019
LMKR Islamabad, Pakistan

Application Engineer

Worked as a Java software engineer for Halliburton on developing data integration, federation, and interoperability between multiple Oil & Gas Exploration & Production software. Key responsibilities included the development of Teiid connectors and translators to expose data using data virtualization, patching various modules of the application for smooth flow of data to/from multiple connectors, extending Apache Thrift server and client implementation in Java, C#, and C++ for various connectors, moving Teiid connectors to Docker, development of unit and integration tests for multiple connectors, and automation of tests after integration with Docker.

2016 – 2017
TPL Maps Islamabad, Pakistan

GIS Developer

Worked on a wide array of projects using Java, Python, and C++ and implemented them on multiple platforms, including Desktop, Server, Web, and Android. A few significant highlights include the development of a Python server application to generate secure, encoded, and small-sized vector map tiles, implementation of a graph-based routing algorithm in Java, development of multiple data QA Java applications to detect GIS data anomalies, automated language translation of map data, development of a mechanism to convert satellite images to raster map tiles for loading them offline inside an android application, and addition of new features in the native C++ library for map rendering.

Education

2020-2022
University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA, United States

Master of Science (M.S.)
Spatial Data Science

CGPA: 4.00/4.00 Fulbright Scholarship

Foundations and Applications of Data Mining
MapReduce, Frequent Itemsets, Shingling, Minhashing, Locality Sensitive Hashing, Recommendation Systems, Analyzing Massive Graphs, Mining Data Streams, Link Analysis, Web Advertising

Machine Learning for Data Science
Linear/Logistic Regression, Bayesian Theory, Classification/ Clustering, Parametric/Non-Parametric Models, Supervised/ Unsupervised Learning, Neural Networks, NLP, Random Forests, Generative Models

Foundations of Data Management
Project:
Satellite Tracker
Storage & File Systems, Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), Data Modeling (ER & Relational), Indexing (B+-Tree), Query Execution, Python Pandas, Apache Spark, Hadoop MapReduce

Web Technologies
HTML, CSS, Javascript, JSON, Dart, Rust, WebAssembly, DOM, HTTP(S), Responsive Web Design, Node, Angular, React, Flutter, Android/iOS, Serverless, Web3

Spatial Data Science
Project:
Spatial Machine Learning Workflow
GeoAI, Spatial Data Representation/Wrangling, Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis, Spatially Explicit Supervised/Unsupervised Learning, Spatially Explicit Neural Networks, Spatial Optimization, Prescriptive Spatial Machine Learning

Spatial Databases
Database Architecture, Data Modeling, SQL, ESRI Databases, Spatial Querying, Spatial Indexing, Object-Oriented Databases, NoSQL Databases, Time-Enabled Spatial Databases, Spatial Big Data, Geospatial Infrastructure

GIS Programming and Customization
Python for Vector/Raster Data Manipulation, Python in ArcGIS, Interactive Computational Geospatial Programming, Notebooks for Web GIS, Real-Time Spatial Data Processing, Spatial Data in an IoT Era

Concepts for Spatial Thinking
Spatial Autocorrelation, Spatial Heterogeneity, Raster and Terrain Analysis, Spatial Estimation & Interpolation, Spatial Modeling, Modeling with Machine Learning, Geospatial Intelligence

2012-2016
National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST) Islamabad, Pakistan

Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.)

CGPA: 3.71/4.00 PEC Registered Engineer

Skills

Programming Languages

  • Java
  • C
  • C++
  • Python
  • Scala
  • TypeScript
  • JavaScript

Databases

  • PostgreSQL
  • MySQL
  • Oracle
  • SQL Server
  • MongoDB
  • Firebase

Data Science

  • Pandas
  • DataFrames
  • Hadoop DFS
  • Hadoop MapReduce
  • Apache Spark

Frameworks

  • Spring
  • Jersey
  • Nest.js
  • Teiid
  • Thrift
  • Hibernate
  • PySpark

Build Tools

  • Maven
  • Gradle
  • Webpack

APIs/Libraries/Middleware

  • Kong
  • Keycloak
  • GraphQL
  • Apollo
  • RabbitMQ
  • Auth0
  • HashiCorp Vault
  • Google Maps

Deployment

  • Apache Tomcat
  • Glassfish
  • Wildfly
  • Heroku
  • AWS
  • Serverless
  • Google Cloud

Versioning/Issue Tracking

  • Git
  • Jira
  • TFS
  • Taiga

DevOps

  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • Jenkins
  • Bamboo

Web Development

  • Django
  • Angular
  • Node.js
  • React.js
  • HTML
  • CSS
  • MaterialUI
  • Bootstrap

AWS

  • EC2
  • Lambda
  • DynamoDB
  • SQS
  • SES
  • S3
  • ApiGateway
  • ElasticBeanStalk

Geospatial Solutions

  • ArcGIS Pro
  • QGIS
  • PostGIS
  • ArcMap
  • JTS
  • GeoTools

Operating Systems/Devices

  • Windows
  • Linux (multiple flavors)
  • Raspberry Pi
  • Arduino

Research Publications

Cloud vector mapping using MODIS 09 Climate Modeling Grid (CMG) for the year 2010 and 2011

Asjad Asif Jah, Yousaf Bin Farrukh, Rao Muhammad Saeed Ali

Citation: Asjad Asif Jah et al. 2013 IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng. 51 012029

DOI: doi.org/10.1088/1757-899X/51/1/012029
Abstract also available at The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System: https://ui.adsabs.harvard
2013
IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering

Certifications

Agile Software Development Using SCRUM

Cert# PRUDSOL-SCRUM-0610216
2016
Prudential Solutions

Portfolio

spatial ml

Spatial Machine Learning Workflow

Detailed
ckids

Microtelcos and Digital Divide in CA

Detailed
satellite_tracker

Satellite Tracker

Detailed
no_image

Cellular Network Signal Strength Mapping on Android

Detailed
solar

Mapping energy consumption through consumer participation and solar budgeting

Detailed
GoogleMapsRoutingAddIn

GoogleMapsRoutingAddIn - An AddIn for ArcGIS Pro

YouTube Videos