Backend Engineer & System Architect

Ali Ashraf — Backend Engineer & Node.js System Architect

From zero-latency Node.js APIs to distributed cloud infrastructure — I'm the backend engineer clients call when something needs to work perfectly, not just mostly. 5 years deep in backend systems, LLM integration, and scalable architecture. Still obsessing over every layer.

5+
Years building backend systems
40+
Projects shipped
∞
Late nights debugging
See My Work About Me
Ali Ashraf — Backend Engineer and System Architect based in Pakistan
Available for
Freelance & Contracts
Backend engineering workspace — code on screen
About

Obsession disguised
as a profession.

Pakistan · Open to Remote

I started this at 17, breaking things on Fiverr before anyone trusted me with real systems. Now I architect the kind of infrastructure that handles real scale — authentication systems, vector databases, LLM pipelines, distributed services. The kind that doesn't page you at 3 AM.

Backend engineering is my natural habitat. Node.js, Express, databases of every shape — relational, document, vector. I obsess over how data flows, how systems fail, and how to make them not. I've worked with international brands, agencies, and startups — usually brought in when something is too important to get wrong.

Lately I'm deep in LLM integration — context engineering, embedding pipelines, MCP servers, RAG architectures. The intersection of AI and backend systems engineering is where I live right now. When I'm not doing client work, I'm tinkering on a Pi Zero 2W at midnight.

Node.jsExpressMongoDB PostgreSQLSupabaseNeon SQLite3LLM IntegrationRAG Pipelines Vector DatabasesMCP ServersPrompt Engineering REST APIsAuth SystemsOracle Cloud Linux SysadminBash ScriptingSystemd udevRaspberry PiNext.js ReactNetworkingVPSNginx

"The best systems are invisible — they just work, infinitely, quietly."

— Ali Ashraf, Backend Engineer
Skills

A stack built from
real trenches.

Every skill here was earned on an actual project, under an actual deadline, for a client who actually cared. Node.js, Express, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Redis, Vector Databases, LLM APIs, Linux, and more.

Backend Engineering
Designing and building robust server-side systems — APIs, auth, middleware, and the glue that holds it all together.
Node.jsExpressREST JWTOAuth2Middleware WebSocketsRate Limiting
Databases & Storage
From document stores to relational tables to vector spaces — picking the right database and using it properly.
MongoDBPostgreSQLSQLite3 SupabaseNeonRedis Vector DBsIndexing
LLM & AI Engineering
Building intelligent systems on top of language models — not just calling APIs, but architecting pipelines that actually work.
LLM IntegrationEmbeddingsRAG Context EngineeringPrompt Engineering MCP ServersSemantic Search
Cloud & Infrastructure
Spinning up, securing, and maintaining production infrastructure that stays up without babysitting.
Oracle CloudVPSNginx SSL/TLSDNSDomain Config Reverse ProxyFirewalls
Linux & Systems
Deep Linux knowledge — not just using it but understanding how it works at every layer.
DebianBash ScriptingSystemd udevCronProcess Management Kernel ModulesNetworking
Security & Auth
Building auth systems and secure data pipelines — hashing, encryption, token management, and thinking like an attacker.
JWTSessionsbcrypt HashingEncryptionAPI Keys CORSHTTPS
System Architecture
Thinking beyond the feature — designing systems for scale, resilience, and the team that will maintain it in six months.
MicroservicesAPI DesignDB Schema Design Caching StrategyQueue SystemsLoad Balancing
Frontend (When Needed)
Enough React and Next.js to build full products solo, or to collaborate meaningfully with frontend teams.
ReactNext.jsES Modules REST IntegrationSSRAPI Consumption
Embedded & Hardware Tinkering
Late-night experiments with low-power hardware, Linux on ARM, and the joy of making tiny computers do useful things.
Raspberry Pi Zero 2WLinux ARMGPIO PythonSerial CommsHeadless Linux
Experience

Where the craft
was forged.

From a self-taught teenager on Fiverr to senior backend systems work at international organizations — a timeline of backend engineering and architecture projects that shaped how I think about building software.

2023 — Present
Exact Inc.
Senior Backend Engineer & System Architect
  • Architected multi-tenant SaaS backend handling 500K+ daily API calls with sub-100ms p99 latency
  • Designed and implemented a full LLM-powered document intelligence pipeline using RAG and vector search
  • Built modular auth system supporting JWT, OAuth2, and API key strategies across 6 client products
  • Established CI/CD practices, infrastructure-as-code patterns, and on-call runbooks for distributed team
Node.jsNeon DBSupabaseOpenAI REST APIContext EngineeringMCP ServersVector Databases
2021 — 2023
Codiylze
Full Stack Developer (Contract)
  • Delivered REST APIs for 4 client projects simultaneously, all on time and within spec
  • Refactored legacy Express codebase reducing average response time by 60%
  • Built a custom analytics ingestion pipeline processing 1M+ events per day into PostgreSQL
  • Mentored two junior developers on API design patterns and database indexing strategy
Node.jsExpressPostgreSQL NeonRedisDockerLinux VPS
2020 — 2021
Fiverr (Self-Employed)
Freelance Backend Developer — First Blood
  • Started at 17, learned by doing — first client projects in APIs, bots, and automations
  • Achieved Top Rated status within 10 months through consistent delivery and technical quality
  • Built REST APIs, Telegram bots, Discord bots, and web scrapers for international clients
  • Every project was a lesson: scope creep, bad specs, impossible deadlines — learned to navigate all of it
Node.jsJavaScriptREST APIs MongoDBPythonPuppeteer
Projects

Work that
earned trust.

Production backend systems built for clients who needed things done right — scalable Node.js APIs, secure authentication flows, LLM-integrated platforms, and distributed infrastructure that's still running.

NeuralDesk — AI-Powered Customer Support Backend by Ali Ashraf
Sole Architect & Backend Engineer
NeuralDesk — AI-Powered Support Infrastructure
End-to-end customer support platform for a SaaS company serving 50K+ users. Built a RAG-powered ticket routing engine that classifies, prioritizes, and partially resolves support tickets using embedded knowledge bases. Reduced average first-response time by 74%.
Under NDA
Node.jsPineconeOpenAI MongoDBRedisNginx
BOP Consultants — Full Stack Backend Engineering by Ali Ashraf
Full Stack Engineer
BOP Consultants
Handled the full authentication flow from the ground up — registration, login, session management, role-based access. Designed and implemented the database schema with clean relations built to scale. Pages are classified as static or dynamic based on data requirements, all manageable from a unified dashboard. Structure is locked in, content is flexible, and the two don't get in each other's way.
Node.jsPostgreSQL JWTOAuth2Redis
Perfect Jobs — Full-Scale Job Portal Backend by Ali Ashraf
System Architect
Perfect Jobs
Full-scale job portal for a Germany-based client handling thousands of visitors a month. Two distinct account types — companies and job seekers — each with their own dashboard. Companies get public profiles, a self-managed blog, and paid job listings via PayPal & Stripe. Job seekers can browse, apply, track applications, and manage multiple CV versions. Includes a filtering system and a LinkedIn-style social layer. Payments, user roles, content management, and a growing user base all on one robust backend.
Node.jsPostgreSQL BullRedisNginx
The Lab

What I build when
no one's watching.

Late nights. Weekends. Pure curiosity with no client, no deadline, no constraint — just me and whatever problem I can't stop thinking about.

01
PiGate
Turned a Pi Zero 2W into a network-wide ad blocker and traffic monitor with a custom REST API for control. Runs on Debian ARM, uses Bash + systemd for process management. Because Pi-hole is too easy.
Available Soon!
02
Gram One
AI Agent built from scratch — MCP servers crafted and integrated fully by hand, built-in vector storage, STM & LTM. Any AI provider, any model, works with LM Studio or Ollama locally.
Available Soon!
03
heyduck
An ultra-lightweight command-line utility to browse the web, perfect for AI agents and automation workflows. Takes keywords and returns results as text, JSON, or colored output with blessed. Installable as an NPM package.
View on GitHub
04
Veil
Rust-based CLI utility to convert any file into a fully normal-looking MKV video — noisy, but indistinguishable from a real video. Encodable, decodable, and optionally encrypted with a password.
Available Soon!
05
FetchStorm
Load testing tool built specifically for REST APIs, with scenario scripting, latency percentiles, and a terminal dashboard. Scratched my own itch when existing tools were too heavy.
Available Soon!
06
DeployScript
Battle-tested Bash scripts for provisioning a fresh VPS to production-ready in under 10 minutes: Nginx, SSL, systemd services, firewall, swap, and monitoring included.
Available Soon!
Testimonials

What clients say
after the deadline.

The real metric isn't code quality. It's whether clients hire Ali Ashraf again — and they do.

Ali doesn't just write code — he thinks in systems. He identified three architectural bottlenecks in our onboarding API that we'd been ignoring for months and fixed them all in a single sprint. The kind of engineer who makes your whole team sharper.
★★★★★
CTO, Launchpad SaaS — UK
We brought Ali in for what we thought was a two-week integration project. It turned into a six-month engagement because every system he touched ran better. He has a rare combination of speed and quality — most engineers trade one for the other.
★★★★★
Engineering Lead, Berlin Digital Agency
Our AI document pipeline was a mess of hacked-together scripts before Ali rebuilt it. Now it's a proper system with observability, retry logic, and context management that actually makes the LLM outputs useful. Night and day difference.
★★★★★
Founder, DocMind AI — Spain