Open to opportunities

MJ Yaqubi

@mjyaqubi

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Fractional CTO and Staff Engineer delivering resilient distributed systems and compliance.

Ireland

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What I'm looking for

I’m looking to architect and lead complex, high-concurrency distributed systems—especially in regulated, cloud-native domains—bringing executive technical strategy, SRE reliability, and rapid MVP execution to your engineering roadmap.

I bring a consistent record of architectural ownership and 15+ years designing, scaling, and protecting resilient distributed systems—bridging elite infrastructure architecture (AWS L7) with executive business execution. I’m at my best navigating strict regulatory landscapes (FinCEN, SEC, GDPR) and turning high-stakes product needs into production-ready architectures.

Currently, I leverage this across two specialised concurrent roles: serving as a Fractional CTO and Technical Advisor for a UK-based startup ecosystem, and acting as a Staff Engineer designing the MVP and ledger abstraction for a US-based, B2B crypto-centric KYC platform operating under SEC guidelines. I deliver executive-level technical direction, from asynchronous, event-driven microservices and compliance automation to cloud and reliability targets for B2B API consumers.

My foundational expertise is rooted in enterprise-class cloud platforms and Site Reliability Engineering. From scaling payment platforms 20x at Setel, to event-driven analytics using Kafka and Redis, to reliability and observability with ELK Stack, Prometheus, and Grafana across Kubernetes clusters, I’ve repeatedly led engineering through mission-critical migrations and rapid MVP rollouts—supported by a mature toolkit across Java, Go, Python, NodeJS, AWS/Azure, Kubernetes, Terraform, and modern observability.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Fractional CTO & Technical

Current

Self-Employed / Freelance

Sep 2025 - Present (10 months)

Provide executive-level technical direction, rapid product architecture, and strategic advisory for early-stage and high-growth startups across distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and regulated domains.

Fractional CTO Technical Advisory Distributed Systems Cloud Architecture Risk Management Microservices FinCEN GDPR AWS Kubernetes Terraform Kafka gRPC

Software Development Engineer

Amazon Web Services

Aug 2024 - Sep 2025 (1 year 1 month)

Engineered AWS core L7 load balancing routing infrastructure and led migrations of mission-critical services from legacy hardware to AWS software-based load balancing.

Java Python Ruby VPC DNS Microservices Docker Predictive Capacity Monitoring Routing

Senior 2 Engineer

Toca Boca AB

Aug 2023 - Jul 2024 (11 months)

Led the end-to-end design of a centralised backend analytics ecosystem, implementing event-driven microservices for high-scale ingestion and processing.

NodeJS C PostgreSQL Redis Kafka AWS GCP BigQuery Serverless Microservices Terraform Datadog Event Driven Architecture

Senior Site Reliability Engineer

Volvo Cars AB

Oct 2022 - Aug 2023 (10 months)

Established observability and monitoring frameworks using ELK, Prometheus, and Grafana, and implemented performance, contract testing, and CI/CD quality gates for Kubernetes-based services.

C# .NET React Next.js GraphQL PostgreSQL Redis Azure Microservices Kubernetes ELK Stack Terraform ELK Prometheus Grafana Contract Testing CI CD Performance Testing

Senior Engineer

Klarna Bank AB

Aug 2021 - Oct 2022 (1 year 2 months)

Evolved Klarna’s card authorisation platform into a multi-tenant global engine and delivered backend feature engineering and market localisation for UK and US launches.

Java React React Native PostgreSQL Redis GraphQL AWS Kafka Microservices Kubernetes Datadog Terraform Caching

Solution/Software Architect

Setel

May 2019 - May 2021 (2 years)

Led a major redesign to scale a payment platform 20x to over 2 million active users, building low-latency microservices and event-streaming architectures for real-time nationwide payments.

NodeJS Go Java Python React gRPC MongoDB PostgreSQL Redis Redshift Kafka AWS Microservices Kubernetes Terraform Event Streaming

Head of Platform

Hyperlab Solutions

Jun 2017 - Apr 2019 (1 year 10 months)

Executive technical leadership overseeing the architectural direction, core infrastructure, and engineering teams for a multi-cloud conversational AI platform processing millions of concurrent NLP/ML chat payloads.

NodeJS Go Python React NLP AI ML PostgreSQL Redis ELK Stack AWS GCP Azure IBM Cloud Serverless Microservices Multi Cloud Architecture Technical Due Diligence

Mentor

Recode Organisation

Jan 2016 - Dec 2018 (2 years 11 months)

Mentored learners as part of recode’s coding education program for marginalised groups, including refugees in Malaysia.

Sr. Full Stack Developer

Hyperlab Solutions

Jun 2016 - May 2017 (11 months)

Built the foundational engineering layer for a conversational AI product, developing responsive UIs and low-latency microservices and NLP/ML pipelines for intent processing.

React NodeJS Go Python Natural Language Processing (NLP)Machine Learning (ML)PostgreSQL DynamoDB Redis Docker Microservices

Sr. Software Developer

Photobook Worldwide

Jul 2015 - May 2016 (10 months)

Delivered core e-commerce and media processing features, including a high-performance image enhancement engine and scalable microservices for concurrent rendering and uploads.

PHP C Magento PostgreSQL DynamoDB Microservices Docker

Competition Judge

M-Government and M-Technology Award Competition

Jan 2014 - Dec 2015 (1 year 11 months)

Served as a judge for the M-Government and M-Technology Award Competition, a program under Afghanistan’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT).

Partnership Consultant

Afghanistan Information Management Services (AIMS)

Jan 2013 - Dec 2015 (2 years 11 months)

Provided consultation and support with project analysis, exhibitions, and championship events focused on ICT solutions and information management.

Staff Engineer (MVP Arch)

US-Based B2B Crypto-Centric KYC Platform

Retained to drive the technical vision, architecture, and MVP execution for an institutional, SEC-compliant B2B platform combining crypto-native KYC with equity/stock tokenisation.

Event Driven Architecture Identity Verification Ledger Abstraction Compliance Automation FinCEN SEC AWS CI CD

Fractional CTO & Technical

Linefront Ltd

Engage on a fractional basis to provide technical strategy, architecture audits, and risk management for a cross-functional startup group, focusing on security, infrastructure reliability, and data governance.

Data Governance Risk Management