Muhammad Awais

I take software from a business requirement to a running production system — architecture, backend, frontend, database, infrastructure, deployment, and the debugging that happens after launch.

Six years across product engineering — 20+ websites and 5+ full-stack applications running in production — now focused on systems where the backend owns real business rules rather than shuttling database rows: multi-tenancy, billing and subscription lifecycles, queue-backed processing, and audit trails. On the frontend I build data-dense React applications — dashboards, tables, filtering and multi-step forms — against typed API contracts shared with the server. I design for the second year of a codebase — shared contracts and composable feature bundles that make the tenth feature cheaper than the third — and I pair that with AI-assisted development, including production MCP server implementation.

Senior Full-Stack Engineer — Octathorn · NASTP, Rawalpindi

2024 — Present

• Lead engineer across the company's product portfolio, owning work from domain design through to production infrastructure.
• Set the engineering conventions the codebase runs on — contracts-first package boundaries, composable feature bundles, and cross-cutting concerns built as shared infrastructure rather than per-feature code.
• Manage the team's GitHub organisation — repository structure, branching and review workflow, and access — so several products stay consistent and releasable.
• Own the deployment and production layer end to end: Dockerised services on AWS EC2 behind Nginx, staging and production environments, database and file custody, and live incident debugging.
• Build the product frontends in React and TypeScript — admin dashboards, server-side data tables with filtering, sorting and pagination, multi-step forms with schema validation, role-driven navigation, and file upload with live progress.
• Maintain a shared component and form layer on Tailwind and shadcn/ui — design tokens, theming, accessible dialogs and data views — so every product looks and behaves consistently instead of restyling per feature.
• Keep the client fast and correct: server-state caching with TanStack Query, code splitting and lazy routes, optimistic updates, and SSR/static marketing sites in Astro alongside the app.
• Introduced MCP-based agent tooling and AI-assisted development into the team's delivery process, with repo conventions written as agent-readable rules.
• Built the contracts-first platform foundation the products are built on — one monorepo where API and client compile against shared types, with tenancy, RBAC, caching, events, activity logs and file storage as a shared layer, plus a deploy CLI and Nginx/Docker gateway. A new product starts with deployment, environments, auth and access control already solved.
• Delivered 5+ full-stack products on it: multi-tenant SaaS platforms with isolated workspaces and role-based access, and scheduled data-transfer and reporting systems with operations dashboards.

Full-Stack Developer — Digital Street · Dubai-based company · onsite

2020 — 2024

• Delivered 20+ client and in-house websites and web applications across the full stack, from requirements through to deployment and post-launch support.
• Built responsive, cross-browser interfaces from design files — semantic HTML, modern CSS layout, accessible forms and components — in React and Angular as well as server-rendered pages.
• Built the breadth the rest of my work rests on — core web technologies, several frontend frameworks and both relational and document databases — moving from feature work to owning whole systems.
• Worked directly with stakeholders to turn business requirements into technical scope, and maintained delivered systems in production.

Composable feature bundles over copy-paste

Each feature exports pure operation cores, then publishes reusable bundles that pages compose. A billing section — list, filters, row actions, modals, import, backups — is defined once and mounted by three pages, scoped differently each time, with duplicate registrations rejected at compose time.

Type-safe frontends against shared contracts

The client imports the same types and schemas the server validates with, so an API change surfaces as a compile error in the UI rather than a runtime blank screen. Forms, tables and query hooks are generated from those contracts instead of being hand-typed per screen.

Cross-cutting concerns as infrastructure

Tenancy, permissions, caching, activity logging, events, validation, file storage and HTTP error shaping live in one shared layer with pluggable providers — a decorator away from any feature.

Security as default infrastructure

Defence in depth built into the shared layer rather than per feature: AES-256-GCM response encryption and field-level encryption at rest, CSRF double-submit tokens, Helmet CSP and HSTS, a strict CORS allowlist, and layered authentication, permission and tenant-scope guards. Secure is the default; exceptions are explicit per-route opt-outs.

Production debugging across the stack

Tracing symptoms that look like application bugs to their real layer: container networking, live-data migrations, reverse-proxy and DNS misconfiguration, mail routing, and malformed third-party payloads.

MCP servers

Built a production NestJS Model Context Protocol server — HTTP and stdio transports, a tool registry, and typed tools/resources/prompts reaching the Nest API through an authenticated client.

AI-assisted delivery

Daily use of Claude, Claude Code and Cursor for implementation, debugging and prototyping, with repo conventions written as agent-readable rules. n8n for AI-backed automation.

Payback Billing

A multi-tenant billing platform serving multiple businesses from one system, owned from architecture through to live operation.

• Runs the full commercial cycle — clients, subscriptions, invoicing, multi-currency pricing, purchasing, inventory and support.
• Every business's data and permissions kept fully separate.
• React admin interface: data tables with server-side filtering and pagination, invoice and subscription forms, dashboards, and background-job progress reported live over WebSockets.
• Deployed on AWS and migrated between hosting providers with no data loss.

TypeScript · NestJS · PostgreSQL · Redis · React · TanStack Query · Tailwind · Docker · AWS

DragSense Blueprint-driven application platform · Creator

A platform that lets non-developers build working applications — CRMs, dashboards and internal tools — by describing their data and rules instead of writing code. Each organisation gets an isolated workspace with its own roles, branding and permissions. The React frontend renders itself at runtime from those definitions — forms, tables, detail views and permission-aware navigation are generated from the blueprint rather than coded per entity.

NestJS · PostgreSQL · MongoDB · React · Tailwind

Procedural character animation — Unity, cricket simulation

An ongoing side build where the character's body adapts to its actual environment instead of replaying fixed clips: layered inverse kinematics for foot placement and ground adaptation, hand targets, head aim, and driven hip, chest and shoulder adjustment — working directly in quaternion rotation, transform-space conversion and runtime interpolation to keep joint chains stable through movement, jumping and diving. Kept up because the hard problems there are nothing like the ones at work.

Languages

TypeScript · JavaScript · SQL · C#

Backend

NestJS · Node.js · TypeORM · REST · OpenAPI · Socket.IO · Bull queues · JWT & RBAC · Zod

Web

HTML5 · CSS3 · responsive design · accessibility · REST & WebSockets · authentication flows · SSR & static generation · web performance

Frontend

React · React Router v7 · Angular · TanStack Query & Table · Zustand · React Hook Form · Tailwind · shadcn/ui · Vite · Astro

Data

PostgreSQL · Redis · MongoDB · relational modelling · JSONB · migrations · backup & restore

Infrastructure

Docker & Compose · Linux · Nginx · AWS EC2 · DNS · SSL/TLS · Let's Encrypt · SSH · GitHub Actions

AI

MCP server development · Claude · Claude Code · Cursor · prompt engineering · n8n

Practice

monorepo architecture · pnpm workspaces · shared contracts · Git & GitHub org management · code review · release & environment ownership · Vitest

Simulation

Unity · Animation Rigging · procedural IK