Muhammad Waseem Riaz Awan — Principal Software Engineer | Backend, Full-Stack & AI Systems

Waseem is the engineer you call when “impossible” is blocking revenue. He joined AI Like Me (AILM) in December 2024 as Principal Software Engineer and immediately took ownership of our gnarliest, highest-leverage problems.

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The incident everyone remembers

We hit a thorny geo-localized failure: users in one area broke while others were fine. Waseem went first-principles—instrumented per-region/ASN telemetry, traced the path (mobile SDK → API gateway → CDN/edge → DNS), and isolated an interaction between edge caching, cache-key variance, and a downstream config drift. He shipped a pragmatic mitigation (cache-key normalization + resilient fallback + SDK hotfix), ran a clean RCA, and codified a repeatable playbook so the next “only-some-people-break” mystery is routine, not roulette.

Systems & ops lift that lasts

Observability & SLOs: Standardized RED/USE metrics, burn-rate-based paging, and golden dashboards aligned to product outcomes.

Release hygiene: Feature flags, progressive rollouts, blast-radius control, and disciplined rollback.

On-call calm: Clear runbooks, crisp comms; incidents now feel managed, not chaotic.

Revenue & cost intelligence

Implemented a lightweight events pipeline + cost tags so finance/product/infra see real margin by feature and region.

Tuned GPU autoscaling and inference routing off real unit economics; eliminated over-provisioning while keeping P95/P99 latency steady.

Why he’s rare

Judgment: Makes the right trade-offs under pressure; ships the simplest thing that actually works.

Execution: Owns outcomes end-to-end; moves fast without breaking the important parts.

Communication: Turns complex systems into clear, actionable narratives; keeps stakeholders aligned.

Ownership: Leaves behind durable systems, docs, and habits—not heroics.

Verdict: Strong yes. I would rehire Waseem for any role demanding senior-level systems thinking, operational excellence, and bias-to-action. He raises the bar for the team and the product.

Waseem is dependable, detail-oriented, and always delivers quality work on schedule. What I really value is the way he brings new ideas to the table and looks for ways to make each project stronger. He’s collaborative, thoughtful, and someone I’d be happy to partner with again.

I have had the pleasure of working with Waseem Raiz for over 8 years, and throughout this time, I have found him to be a highly professional, dependable, and talented software engineer.

Waseem has strong technical expertise, excellent problem-solving skills, and a genuine commitment to delivering quality work. He is hardworking, cooperative, and always willing to take on challenging tasks and find effective solutions.

Having worked alongside him for so many years, I have seen his continuous growth and dedication to his profession. He is not only a strong technical resource but also a great colleague and team player.

I highly recommend Waseem Raiz to any organization looking for an experienced, reliable, and skilled software professional.