ALI ANJUMBook a 20-Min Call

Senior Backend & Applied AI Engineer

I solve complex backend problems and turn AI prototypes into production systems.

Building reliable APIs, optimizing databases, and integrating business-critical systems since 2014.

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TOP 3% TALENT
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Selected through top 3% screening
Upwork · Top Rated PlusView official profile
~15s → 2sPostgreSQL dashboard load5m → 15sNode.js scraper execution~26.6M recordsMongoDB reporting · ~1s chart queries

Project-reported results, supported by case notes and client reviews. Follow each result for its measurement context.

CLIENT EVIDENCE

“Easy to work with and kept in contact with issues and queries.”
Upwork client · PostgreSQL / Prisma dashboard · 4.9/5 · Dec 2022–Jan 2023
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CLIENT EVIDENCE

“He improved on the previous NodeJS code base and made it run nearly 20X faster!”
Upwork client · AWS Lambda scraper · 5/5 · Feb–Mar 2023
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CLIENT EVIDENCE

“Ali picked up our problem very fast and gave us solutions which in the end worked fabolously.”
Upwork client · Time Series with MongoDB · 5/5 · Sep–Oct 2022
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Read the result and evidence

01 / PROBLEMS I SOLVE

Recognize the problem?

Start with what is getting in the way.

01

Backend is slow

Investigate API, query, concurrency and architecture bottlenecks and implement measurable performance improvements.

See relevant evidence02

Data has outgrown the application

PostgreSQL/MongoDB analysis, aggregation, materialized views, reporting architecture and pre-computation.

See relevant evidence03

AI prototype needs to become a product

Model integration, backend APIs, validation, fallbacks, observability, data flows and production architecture.

See relevant evidence04

Integrations keep breaking

Payments, CRM systems, webhooks, queues and third-party APIs.

See relevant evidence05

Difficult production issue has no clear owner

Reproduce → measure → investigate → isolate → implement → verify.

See relevant evidence

02 / SELECTED WORK

The reasoning behind the result.

All case studies

EXPLORE THE ENGINEERING

PostgreSQL performance optimization

Case-study replay

Explore how a reporting dashboard went from about 15 seconds to 2 seconds.

Reported dashboard load time~2 seconds
≈87% less waiting

Materialized views, pre-aggregation and revised queries.

Prepare once, read efficiently

Precompute campaign and lead metrics. Let the API read prepared reporting data instead of repeating the aggregation for each dashboard visit.

The tradeoff: freshness

Faster reads shift work into preparation and refreshes. Agree on data freshness, refresh cost and consistency before choosing this approach.

Illustration of project-reported timings, not a live benchmark. No database queries run here.

What do these numbers prove?

The 15s → 2s dashboard improvement is project-reported, not a live benchmark. The percentage is calculated from those approximate timings.

Separate retained SQL notes show historical queries at 2,204 → 288 ms, active queries at 2,527 → 285 ms, and all-record queries at 1,326 → 384 ms. These are query timings, not dashboard load times.

Query snapshots and result counts differ, so these notes do not establish equivalent-snapshot correctness. Raw query plans are not included in this portfolio. The final refresh cadence and a complete correctness-validation report are not retained in the available case notes.

Read the methodology, constraints and tradeoffs

03 / HOW I WORK

Evidence before assumptions.

  1. 01Understand
  2. 02Measure
  3. 03Reproduce
  4. 04Isolate
  5. 05Fix
  6. 06Verify

Understand the business impact, reproduce the issue, identify the real bottleneck, implement the smallest safe change, measure again and monitor the result.

04 / APPLIED AI & EXPERIMENTS

Keep building. Keep learning.

Explore projects
Private project

FocusFeed

Personalized discovery

Gemini embeddings, ranking and personalization with PostgreSQL/pgvector and Supabase. No public usage or adoption claim.

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Private project

MetaScope

Defensive metadata extraction

Node.js/Express, Axios and Cheerio. Repository documentation describes bounded HTTP fetching, SSRF defenses and HTTP tests; this is not an independent security audit.

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05 / EXPERIENCE & OWNERSHIP

From hands-on developer
to technical team lead.

From May 2023 to September 2026, I worked full-time at a Toptal client, directly with the technical CEO on backend systems, AI lead qualification, payments, HubSpot and difficult production issues.

Software development since 2014, across independent client work and engineering teams—not continuous full-time employment.

Explore my experienceDownload résumé

06 / ASK ALI

A shorter route to the right evidence.

Ask my AI assistant about a case study, my experience, or a technical problem. It can point you to relevant work. The opinions—and occasional stubborn debugging sessions—are mine. The assistant is AI.

Ask Ali a question
Stylized 3D portrait of Ali, the face of his AI portfolio assistant

APPLIED AI & CLOUD

Certifications

Claude Certified Architect – Foundations5 Jun 2026–5 Jun 2027Verify on Credly AWS Certified AI Practitioner9 Jul 2026–9 Jul 2029Verify on Credly AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner21 Jul 2026–21 Jul 2029Verify on Credly

LET’S SOLVE IT

Have a difficult engineering problem?

If you’re dealing with a backend bottleneck, production issue, unreliable integration or an AI prototype that needs production engineering, let’s discuss it.

Discuss the problem
Hiring a senior backend, applied AI or forward-deployed engineer?Explore my experienceDownload résumé