Karachi, Pakistan · GMT+5
Ahmad A. Khalid.
Senior Software Engineer at PaySys Labs, Product & Team Lead for the PSL Tazama team working on Tazama — an open-source real-time financial-crime and transaction-monitoring platform. Software architect with 12+ years across fintech, e-commerce, and education.
About
Hi, I'm Ahmad.
I've spent 12+ years delivering production systems across fintech, e-commerce, and education. My track record is in leading client-facing technical engagements end-to-end — architecture, POC, implementation, UAT, and handover.
Day job: Senior Software Engineer, Product & Team Lead on the Tazama team at PaySys Labs. Deep experience in system design, event-driven architectures, API design, and security & compliance. Comfortable across engineering, product, and executive stakeholders.
Outside the day job I run Spring Hosting in a low-key way, taking on select architectural and fintech-consultancy work; I also help non-profits when I can; and I'm building a metroidvania platformer with Vicky Tangerine.
What I do
Work I take on
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Solution Architecture
Helping teams think through the shape of a system before they build it — stack choice, event-driven vs request/response, API surface, data flow, deploy story, migration plans. Pragmatic, not academic.
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Client-Facing Delivery
End-to-end delivery leadership: POC scoping, architecture, implementation lead, UAT program ownership under PMO governance, and handover. Bridging engineering, product, and executive stakeholders.
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Spring Hosting (Selective)
Spring Hosting is still around in a low-key form — accepting select architectural and fintech-consultancy engagements. If it's an interesting problem, I'll make room.
Spring Hosting →
Track record
Experience
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Senior Software Engineer · Product & Team Lead, Tazama at PaySys Labs
On the Tazama program — an open-source, real-time financial-crime and transaction-monitoring platform with native ISO 20022 support (opened up to any message family in the 4.0 release). Architecture, backend engineering, and cross-functional delivery leadership.
- Simulation Studio (Rule Studio submodule): architect and delivery lead. Redesigned from the ground up after the client rejected the team's original approach; led end-to-end implementation as direct lead of the Simulation Studio engineering team.
- Tazama UAT Lead: ran the full-platform UAT program under PMO-style governance across engineering, QA, and client stakeholders — sign-off one week ahead of schedule.
- BaseMessage extension of
@tazama-lf/frms-coe-lib: architect and implementation lead. Extended the core library from ISO 20022 Pacs.002/008 and Pain.001/013 to arbitrary message families, preserving backward compatibility. Presented architecture and trade-offs to the client's Technical Steering Committee. - Engineering process: introduced ADRs across the program, modernised QA with structured issue tracking, and introduced QA automation.
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Founder & Software Engineer at Spring Hosting
Consulting and managed-hosting practice serving 20+ clients across e-commerce, education, and small business — architecture, implementation, deployment, and long-term production ownership. Still active in a selective capacity for architectural and fintech-consultancy engagements.
- Flowmancer: built and ran the digital storefront for an artisan handmade-props business.
- Belle & Tangerine: built the digital storefront for a small handmade goods label run by Vicky and Cate.
- Civics Education Trust NZ: pro-bono technical support for a New Zealand NGO working on civics education for at-risk youth.
Toolkit
Skills
Deeper breakdown by area below.
Architecture
- Distributed systems
- Event-driven
- Microservices
- Multi-tenant SaaS
- ADRs
- Observability
Fintech
- ISO 20022
- ISO 8583
- PPA development for TMS-service (Tazama)
- Real-time transaction monitoring
- Financial-crime detection
Delivery & Leadership
- Solution architecture
- POC scoping
- TSC presentation
- PMO / governance
- Stakeholder management
- Team leadership
Languages
- TypeScript
- JavaScript
- Java
- Python
- PHP
- SQL
Backend & Frameworks
- NestJS
- Node.js / Express
- Django / DRF
- FastAPI
- Spring (Java)
- WooCommerce
- Chamilo LMS
Frontend
- React 19
- Vite
- MUI
- Redux Toolkit
- React Router
- React Hook Form
- React Flow
- Monaco
Data
- PostgreSQL
- MariaDB / MySQL
- MongoDB
- ArangoDB
- SQLite
- Prisma
Security, Identity & Compliance
- OAuth 2.0
- Keycloak
- JWT
- RBAC
- GDPR
- Session management
- Security remediation
Caching & Brokers
- Redis
- Valkey
Cloud & DevOps
- Linux (Fedora / Ubuntu)
- Docker
- AWS (EC2, S3)
- DigitalOcean
- GitHub Actions
- Caddy
Testing & QA
- PyTest
- Playwright
- JUnit
- Jest
- JMeter
- UAT leadership
- QA automation
Get in touch
Say hello.
Reach out about architecture or fintech-consultancy engagements through Spring Hosting, the game project, or anything else you'd like to talk through. Email is the fastest way.