Abu Dhabi, UAE · Taking 1–2 side engagements per quarter

Forward deployed AI engineer · Fintech & finance ops

I ship AI systems that survive production.

I build LLM and agent systems with the evals, guardrails and audit trail that regulated businesses need, so they hold up with real customers and real money. 10+ years of production backend and fintech engineering behind every build.

Proof

  • 10+ yrsProduction backend & platform engineering
  • 2,000 TPSMessaging middleware built at Decathlon
  • 30 to 2 minStore checkout wait after self-checkout launch
  • 30 to 10 minDeploy time after Kubernetes migration
  • UAEFintech integrations with central-bank & government systems

/ 01 — Forward deployed

Most AI pilots stall between the demo and production. That gap is where I work.

Pilots stall on the parts a demo never touches: messy real data, edge cases nobody wrote down, compliance questions, and no one owning the system after launch. Working forward deployed, inside your team rather than from a slide deck, is how those surface early instead of in production.

/ 02 — Engagements

Three ways to work together.

012 weeks · fixed scope

AI Production Readiness Review

Find out exactly what stands between your AI pilot and production.

What you get

  • Architecture & data-flow review of your LLM / agent system
  • Eval plan: what to measure, golden datasets, pass/fail thresholds
  • Risk review mapped to the OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications
  • Cost, latency and observability assessment
  • Prioritised roadmap your team can execute — walked through live

Ideal if You have a working demo or pilot and leadership is asking "can we put this in front of customers?"

Fixed fee

Quoted after a free 30-min scoping call

Book a free scoping call about the AI Production Readiness Review or send the details in writing about the AI Production Readiness Review

024–6 weeks

Agent Pilot Sprint

One real workflow, automated and running in production — not a demo.

What you get

  • Workflow discovery with the people who do the work today
  • Production agent or RAG service integrated with 1–3 of your systems
  • Eval harness + regression suite wired into CI
  • Human-in-the-loop review step and an append-only decision log
  • Runbook, monitoring dashboards and a handover session

Ideal if You know which process is eating hours (reconciliation, document intake, ops triage) and want it handled properly.

Fixed scope, fixed fee

Quoted after a free 30-min scoping call

Book a free scoping call about the Agent Pilot Sprint or send the details in writing about the Agent Pilot Sprint

03Monthly · ~16 hours · 3-month minimum

Fractional AI Architect

Senior AI architecture judgement on call, without a full-time hire.

What you get

  • Architecture and design reviews for AI features
  • Model, vendor and build-vs-buy decisions
  • Eval and guardrail standards for your team
  • Async reviews plus a fortnightly working session

Ideal if Your team is shipping AI features and needs someone who has run systems where mistakes cost money.

Monthly retainer

Scoped on a free 30-min call

Book a free scoping call about the Fractional AI Architect or send the details in writing about the Fractional AI Architect

Every engagement starts with a free 30-minute scoping call. You get a written, fixed quote before any work begins.

/ 03 — Selected work

Proof, not promises.

A selection of products and systems, presented with only the details that are public or appropriate to share.

/ 01 · Startup (own product) · In validation

LLM as adjudicator, not decision-maker: an auditable AI architecture for financial reconciliation

How I architect AI for workflows where a wrong answer costs money: deterministic engines generate candidates, the model only chooses among them under a strict schema, and every decision is traceable.

  • 0Model calls in the deterministic-only baseline
  • ≥85%Auto-match target by volume before MVP (exit gate, not a result)
  • 100%Decisions with source provenance — by design

Finance operations · Reconciliation · GCC

/ 02 · Employer · Shipped

2,000 TPS messaging middleware for a global retailer

A high-availability messaging layer in Go and Java that filtered, processed and logged customer messages at scale — plus the Kubernetes migration that cut deploy time by two-thirds.

  • 2,000 TPSSustained messaging throughput
  • 30 to 10 minDeploy time after moving from VM-based Docker to Kubernetes

Retail · Customer messaging · Platform

Other things I’ve built

/ 04 — How I work

Good systems feel simpler on the other side.

My approach is deliberately practical: understand the constraints, make the hard decisions visible, and build for the operating reality—not just the happy path.

  1. 01

    Start with the operating model

    Clarify the customer, workflow, constraints, and failure modes before selecting tools.

  2. 02

    Design clear boundaries

    Use focused domains, explicit contracts, and simple interfaces so teams can move independently.

  3. 03

    Make it measurable

    Evals, traces and a decision log from day one — so you can prove the system works, not just believe it.

  4. 04

    Ship a path forward

    Leave teams with an architecture and implementation plan they can confidently extend.

/ 05 — Core stack

Tools in service of the problem.

AI systems

LLM applicationsAI agents & orchestrationRAGEvals & guardrails (custom eval harness)OpenAIAnthropicAzure OpenAIAzure AI FoundryDocument Intelligence

Backend

GoPython (FastAPI)Java (Spring)TypeScript / Node

Data

PostgreSQL (RLS)MySQLRedisMongoDB

Platform

AWSAzureKubernetesDockerCI/CD

/ 06 — Start a conversation

Have a workflow that should run itself?

Tell me the process, the systems it touches and what “done” looks like. I reply within two working days, and I’ll tell you honestly if I’m not the right fit.

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