Open to remote Forward Deployed Engineer roles

Muhammad Zuhair Askari, Forward Deployed Engineer. I embed.
I build. I ship.

I'm a Forward Deployed Engineer with 6+ years shipping production software for clients. I work directly with the people who have the problem, then deploy the fix into their real systems: AI agents, integrations, data pipelines and full-stack products.

See the work ↓ zowhair@gmail.com ↗

6+Years shipping for clients

500+Locations on one MVP

+15%AOV from checkout upsells

3×Faster release cadence

engagement.ts

const engineer = {
  role: "forward deployed engineer",
  worksWith: "customers, not tickets",
  loop: [
    "discover", "scope",
    "integrate", "prove"
  ],
  ships: {
    ai: "agents · RAG · MCP",
    systems: "APIs · data · infra",
    proof: "evals + metrics"
  },
  currentlyShipping: "Akteora"
};

01 / Approach

Software only counts once it works inside the customer's business, on their data, in their stack.

That's the job of a forward deployed engineer: sit close to the user, find the number that matters, and ship until it moves. I've done this for clients for six years. Now I do it with AI in the loop.

How I deploy ↘

02 / Selected work

Built for
real operations.

Each project started with a business problem, not a tech choice: what was slow, risky or costing money, and what had to be true for it to be fixed.

01Founder-led SaaS2026

Akteora

A multi-tenant platform that collects video, audio and written testimonials through one link and turns them into captioned, branded content.

Designed tenant isolation across organizations, brands and submissions from the schema up.
Kept media off the API entirely: browser uploads go straight to Cloudflare R2 through presigned URLs.
Built in-browser recording and an async FFmpeg pipeline with Whisper transcription and word-level timing.
Shipped it to production with TLS, backups, Docker and CI/CD, on a single-VPS budget.

NestJSNext.jsPostgreSQLRedisR2FFmpegWhisper

Visit Akteora ↗

LIVE SYSTEMArchitecture / v1.0

Capture layerBrowser recorderVideo · Audio · Text

ApplicationNestJS APIAuth · Tenancy · Contracts

Object storageCloudflare R2Direct presigned uploads

DataPostgreSQLTenant isolation

Async workersMedia + AI pipelineRedis · FFmpeg · Whisper

Services healthyMedia bypasses API

02 Secure health-tech

Medical Records Platform

Voice-first patient records with consultations and file uploads, where access control and auditability were requirements from the first line of code.

Custom CareLinkGuard authorization with role-based access
Append-only audit trail and rotating refresh tokens
Redis rate limiting and S3-compatible uploads (R2 / MinIO)

NestJSReactRedisR2

03 Shopify app

Unlock your free gift$72 / $100

Gift unlocked at $100

Progress Bar & Gift App

A merchant-configurable Shopify app that raises order value with cart milestones and free-gift thresholds, built to feel native to any theme.

Embedded admin settings merchants run without a developer
Gift eligibility and threshold rules
Cart drawer and cart page integration

RemixGraphQLShopifyPolaris

In the lab

AI deployments for commerce, built in public.

Reference builds for the work I'm taking on now. Each ships with evals, a runbook and a written case study.

BuildingShopify MCP serverLets a store owner ask Claude about orders, stock and customers in plain English. Writes need confirmation.
NextSupport copilot with evalsAnswers from store policies and order data, cites sources, hands off when unsure. Scored on a 100-question test set.
PlannedDeploy into the customer's cloudThe copilot shipped into a fresh AWS account with Terraform and Bedrock, so data never leaves it.

03 / How I deploy

From problem
to production.

The same four steps whether it's an AI agent, an integration or a new product. Each step ends with something the customer can see.

01 · Discover

Sit with the people doing the work.

Map the real workflow, the data it touches, and the one number that proves it got better.

02 · Scope

Agree what done looks like.

A one-page scope: success metric, what's in, what's out, risks, and what I need from the team.

03 · Integrate

Build inside their stack.

Their data, their auth, their cloud. Retries, rate limits and audit trails are part of the build, not a later phase.

04 · Prove

Measure it, then hand it over.

Evals for anything AI, a before-and-after metric, and a runbook the team can own without me.

AI Agents✦RAG & Evals✦MCP✦Integrations✦Customer Discovery✦Secure Auth✦Media Pipelines✦Production Deploys✦

04 / Experience

Six years,
client-side.

Most of my career has been spent close to the business: owning outcomes for clients, not just closing tickets.

2026—Now

Founding Engineer @ Akteora

Own the product end to end: architecture, data model, APIs, frontend, design system, infrastructure and delivery.

2025—2026

Web Operations Lead @ ZulayKitchen

Embedded with the marketing team: automated their workflows with LLM agents, tripled release cadence, improved Core Web Vitals by 20%, and supported 50% year-over-year revenue growth.

2024—2025

Shopify Developer @ EcomExperts.io

Built high-performance themes and checkout extensions for merchant clients, including post-purchase upsells that lifted average order value by 15%.

2022—2024

Full-Stack Developer @ NorthJs Tech

Delivered custom apps and complex migrations for clients, set frontend standards, reviewed PRs, and cut deployment bugs by 25%.

2021—2022

Full-Stack Developer @ Lamstan

Modernized Laravel services, halved response times, built real-time infrastructure, and scaled an MVP across 500+ locations.

05 / Technical range

Wide enough
to own the outcome.

Forward deployed work means meeting the customer's stack where it is. These are the tools I've shipped to production with.

AI & Agents

Anthropic & OpenAI APIs · tool use · agents · RAG · MCP servers · Whisper · Claude Code · AI-assisted delivery

Integrations

REST · GraphQL · webhooks · OAuth / JWT · Shopify Admin & Storefront APIs · Functions · checkout extensions

Backend & APIs

Node.js · NestJS · Express · Laravel · OpenAPI · RBAC · WebSockets · queues & workers

Data & Infrastructure

PostgreSQL · MySQL · MongoDB · Redis · Docker · Linux · Nginx · Caddy · GitHub Actions · R2 / S3 · FFmpeg

Frontend & Product

React · Next.js · Remix · TypeScript · Tailwind · shadcn/ui · TanStack Query · Polaris

Customer Delivery

Discovery calls · scoping docs · demos on real data · status updates · technical writing · runbooks & handoff

06 / Start a conversation

Need AI working
in the real world?

I'm open to remote Forward Deployed Engineer and AI solutions roles, and to hands-on engagements deploying AI agents and integrations for teams that care about outcomes.

zowhair@gmail.com ↗

GitHub ↗LinkedIn ↗X / Twitter ↗Akteora ↗