Salman

Mushtaq

Software Development Manager

Mar 2025 - Present

Early-stage company building social, digital-identity, palm-biometric and payment products. Joined as the first backend engineer; promoted to Software Development Manager in under two years.

• Remain the hands-on backend owner: write core microservices, review and approve all backend pull requests, and continuously evolve system architecture with the CTO.
• Link Identity: Architected a centralized, multi-tenant identity platform with OAuth2, deployable on cloud or on-premise, serving as the shared backbone for Link Wallet and Link Palm.
• Link Wallet: Led backend for a digital wallet that links payment cards to a user's palm; integrated Moyasar with card tokenization so stored tokens authorize palm-based payments.
• Link Palm: Led SDK development for palm registration and payment hardware, coordinating internal engineers and an external hardware partner.
• Lead a 16-member cross-functional team across Backend, iOS, Android, QA and UI/UX, including two mobile team leads; personally hired 10 of the 16.
• Own delivery of the Link Social app (200K users, ~20K DAU) on the Apple App Store and Google Play; translate CEO and VP goals into PRDs and a prioritized Jira backlog, and run Scrum ceremonies.
• Partner with Cybersecurity, DevOps and SRE on security, infrastructure and releases; supported a palm-payment PoC with Saudi Awwal Bank (SAB).

Senior Software Engineer — Backend Lead

Apr 2023 - Mar 2025

• Joined as the first backend engineer and grew the backend team to 8 (4 full-time engineers and 4 freelance contractors); led architecture, code reviews, standards and technical decisions from Dec 2023.
• Designed the initial cloud-based microservices architecture; built core services for posts, reactions, comments and notifications using Python, FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, Alembic and PostgreSQL.
• Shipped the first production release on the App Store and Google Play in Sep 2023 and scaled the platform to 200K users.
• Reduced API response times from ~800 ms to ~400 ms (50%) and SLA-critical APIs from ~500 ms to ~200 ms (60%) through PostgreSQL execution-plan analysis, indexing and application-logic optimization.
• Cut the end-to-end CI/CD pipeline from ~2 hours to ~20 minutes (83%) while keeping build, QA, security-scan, test and deployment stages.
• Moved the team from multi-branch GitHub Flow to trunk-based development with feature flags across three deployment environments.
• Moved synchronous workloads to event-driven processing using AWS SQS, SNS, Lambda and EventBridge; consolidated selected microservices into a modular monolith where independent deployment did not justify the operational cost.
• Integrated FCM push notifications, Unifonic SMS and WhatsApp messaging via Infobip; introduced Agile/Scrum and helped establish a dedicated QA function.

Senior Software Developer / Software Developer

Nov 2016 - Apr 2023

Senior Software Developer (Nov 2021 - Apr 2023) | Software Developer (Nov 2016 - Nov 2021)

• Lead developer for smart-metering software on a ~SAR 15M Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) project, enabling remote reading of 15,000 electricity meters across the Kingdom via DLMS and Modbus.
• Developed the SMARTEX multi-utility platform covering electricity, gas, water and building-management systems.
• Delivered technical implementation for Saudi Aramco SAOO and NAOO industrial-cybersecurity Proofs of Concept using Xage Security Zero Trust technology.
• Built billing-system capabilities for ACWA Power's Sakaka Solar PV project with partner Enexsa.
• Built internal HR, Finance and approval-workflow applications in C# and PHP, replacing paper-based processes company-wide.

C# Developer

Dec 2015 - Jul 2016

• Built and maintained client business applications using C# and ASP.NET MVC.