Skip to main content
Ahmed Salama

About

About

Technical Lead and senior software engineer. I own architecture and delivery end to end, from requirements and system design through release engineering and production ownership, and I stay hands-on in the code throughout.

  • Based in

    Cairo, Egypt

  • Working hours

    EET (UTC+3)

  • Work mode

    Remote-first · Hybrid

  • Currently

    Technical Lead, MENT'ECH

How I got here

I started in 2019 building full-stack applications on Laravel and Node, the kind of work where you own a feature from schema to interface. Over 7+ years and nine engagements that widened: more systems, more databases, and progressively more responsibility for how the whole thing fitted together rather than just my part of it.

The turn came in 2023. Leading a team for a Sweden-based company meant the questions changed: less “how do I build this” and more “what should we build, in what order, and what happens when it breaks at two in the morning”. Architecture decisions, CI/CD, production ownership, release planning, and the unglamorous work of making a team predictable. That relationship has outlasted the role itself. It continues part-time, alongside the full-time work, which is the most honest recommendation I can offer about it.

I have been leading engineering for 3 yrs 1 mo now, currently as Technical Lead at MENT'ECH, on transportation platforms serving daily users across web, mobile, backend and the operational dashboards behind them. The newest part of that work is AI: LLM integrations, retrieval workflows and agents, treated as engineering rather than as a demo, and held to the same review and production standards as everything else.

Along the way the job kept crossing role lines. I gathered requirements directly from clients, planned releases with stakeholders, worked with product and business teams, and held the quality bar for whatever shipped. That is why I describe the work as bridging product, business, engineering and quality rather than as one job title: on most of the platforms I have delivered, the gaps between those roles were where projects went to die.

What has not changed is that I stay close to the code. I do not think you can set an architecture you would not be willing to implement, or hold a quality standard you do not apply to your own pull requests.

Where I work

Based in Egypt. Working across MENA and globally. I work with clients, companies and teams across Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the wider MENA region, and take on international work across Europe, including Sweden and the UK, as well as Australia, the United States and Canada.

Most of that work runs remotely, and has for years: I led the engineering team of a Sweden-based company from Cairo, across time zones and without an office in common. Engagements take the shape the problem needs.

I take on project-based work, contracts, consulting, freelance engagements, remote collaboration and long-term partnerships, with startups, SMEs, enterprises and agencies.

Every engagement, newest first. The full page carries what each one involved and the stack behind it.

  1. Technical Lead

    MENT'ECH · Full-time

  2. Technical Operations Manager

    WardLin · Part-time

  3. Software Engineering Team Lead

    WardLin · Full-time

  4. Senior Software Engineer · Senior Full Stack Developer

    ClavisBS · Full-time

  5. Senior Full Stack Engineer

    AbuDiyab IT Services · Full-time

  6. Senior Software Engineer

    Unifi Solutions · Full-time

  7. Full Stack Developer

    e-RAMO For Digital Solutions · Full-time

  8. Full Stack Developer

    Upwork · Freelance

  9. Full Stack Engineer

    RMS · Full-time

Work I would point you to

All case studies

Enterprise benefits & wellness

PepWell

A mobile benefits application that gives PepsiCo employees a single place to discover and redeem the benefits negotiated for them.

8 elements · 8 connections · Client, Service, External, Data, Edge

  • Laravel 11
  • MySQL
  • React Native
  • Expo
  • React
  • Tailwind CSS

Transportation & mobility

Al-Ouf Transportation System

The in-house platform of one of Egypt’s largest transport operators, carrying 100,000 to 200,000 daily active users across five live surfaces for major corporates and schools.

16 elements · 21 connections · Device, Client, Service, External, Queue, Cache, Data

  • Laravel 12
  • Laravel Octane
  • Laravel Reverb
  • PostgreSQL
  • Redis
  • Firebase

Automotive marketplace · B2B, B2C and C2C trade

Real Deal

An automotive platform that is both the reference and the market: official specifications and prices for every model, and dealer-to-dealer, dealer-to-customer and customer-to-customer trade at fixed prices or under a live auction clock.

12 elements · 12 connections · Client, Service, Data, Cache, External, Edge

  • Laravel
  • Laravel Octane
  • MySQL
  • Flutter
  • Next.js
  • OAuth

Smart buildings & workspace

Edge Innovation Center

A workspace platform where a confirmed booking is the authorisation that opens a physical door.

12 elements · 12 connections · Client, Service, External, Data, Edge, Queue, Device

  • Laravel
  • Laravel Octane
  • PostgreSQL
  • Redis
  • Next.js
  • Flutter

How I think about engineering

Architecture is a delivery decision

A design that the team cannot ship on schedule is not a good design. I set architecture across backend and frontend together, with the people who will build it, and I judge it by whether releases stay predictable rather than by how it looks on a diagram.

Modernise without stopping delivery

Legacy systems are rarely replaced in one move. The work I have found most valuable is incremental: modernise the parts that carry risk, keep releases going while it happens, and leave the system easier to change than it was.

Production is part of the job

Owning a system means owning it in production: reliability, security and the pipeline that gets code there. Automated, repeatable releases are not a DevOps luxury; they are what makes it safe to change software at all.

How I lead

Code quality is a team habit

Standards that live in one person's head do not survive that person going on holiday. I would rather invest in review, shared conventions and mentoring than be the only one who can be trusted with the hard parts.

Predictability over heroics

A team that ships steadily is worth more than one that occasionally rescues a deadline. Most of leading engineering is unglamorous: scoping honestly, planning releases, and removing whatever is quietly blocking people.

Technical decisions need a business reason

Every architectural choice spends someone's money and someone's time. I expect to be able to explain a decision to a product lead in terms of what it makes cheaper, faster or safer. If I cannot, that is usually a sign the decision is wrong.

Education & languages

Education

  • Nile University for Science and Technology / Higher Institute for Management and Information Technology

    Kafr El Sheikh, Egypt · Grade: Very Good

Languages

  • Arabic

    Native

  • English

    Professional

Courses & certifications

  • Docker Mastery (Docker, Kubernetes & Swarm)

    Udemy

  • Software Architecture Patterns (Monoliths, Microservices, Event-Driven Systems)

    Udemy

  • System Design Fundamentals (Scalable Systems & High Availability)

    Udemy / Professional Training

  • Advanced Database Design & Performance Optimization (SQL & NoSQL)

    Udemy

  • Designing RESTful & Distributed APIs

    Udemy

  • DevOps Foundations (CI/CD, Monitoring & Observability)

    Udemy / Cloud Training

  • Agile & Scrum Practices for Engineering Teams

    Scrum Alliance / Udemy

  • Clean Code Principles

    MaharaTech (ITI)

  • The Complete Node.js Course (RESTful APIs)

    Udemy

  • React.js

    MaharaTech (ITI)

  • Web Development using Node.js & Angular

    National Telecommunication Institute (NTI)

  • Web Development using PHP, MySQL & Laravel

    National Telecommunication Institute (NTI)

  • HCIA-AI (Huawei Certified ICT Associate - AI)

    Huawei Talent / Huawei ICT Academy

  • IoT Fundamentals

    Cisco Networking Academy

Let’s talk

Have a product, platform or delivery challenge? Let’s talk about turning it into a structured, scalable solution.

Open to technical leadership, product delivery and senior engineering roles, and available for architecture consulting, technical reviews and mentorship. Engagements run as project-based work, contracts, consulting, freelance engagements, remote collaboration and long-term partnerships.

Based in Cairo, Egypt, working remotely with clients across the MENA region and internationally.

Also on LinkedIn (opens in a new tab)