Open Banking in MENA: Lessons from Production
What it actually takes to ship open-banking integrations across MENA regulators — consent, security, and reliability in practice.
Professional Summary
I’m a chief technology officer with 18+ years building and scaling technology
organizations across regulated FinTech, payments, e-commerce, and enterprise
platforms. Today I’m CTO at Tarmeez Capital, a Saudi FinTech financing and
investing through Islamic Sukuk, where I took the platform from a four-person
pre-launch team to 40+ people and a CMA/SAMA-licensed launch. I write about
backend engineering, databases, security, microservices, and FinTech
infrastructure — the problems I actually hit in production.
Interests
Regulated FinTech & payments infrastructure
Backend engineering & distributed systems
Databases & data platforms
Event-driven & microservice architecture
Application & infrastructure security
Cloud, Kubernetes & cost-efficient platform operations
Career highlights
- 18+ years building and scaling technology organizations across regulated FinTech, payments, and enterprise platforms.
- Scaled engineering orgs from 4 to 40+ at Tarmeez Capital and 8 to 160 at EgyProTech.
- Took a Saudi FinTech from pre-launch to a CMA/SAMA-licensed, live Islamic Sukuk platform.
- Built an e-commerce platform (Dakakyn) later acquired into Talabat Egypt (via Otlob → Delivery Hero).
What I write about
I lead engineering at the intersection of money and software. I write deep, practical pieces on backend engineering, databases, security, microservices, and FinTech infrastructure — the problems I actually run into building and scaling regulated production systems.
This site is the canonical home for that writing; anything you find republished elsewhere points back here.
Experience
Chief Technology Officer
Tarmeez Capital
I lead the full technology organization — architecture, engineering,
product, QA, cybersecurity, and platform operations — and took the
platform from a four-person pre-launch team to 40+ people through CMA and
SAMA licensing and the launch of a live Islamic Sukuk financing and
investment platform.
Software Architecture Consultant
Independent — Multiple Engagements (MENA)
I advised on architecture modernization, security posture, and delivery
governance across government healthcare procurement, Islamic finance, and
marketplace platforms — including engagements with Link Development,
NUPCO, ISDB, and Tamata.
Chief Technology Officer (Contract)
PTM — London, UK
I set the technology strategy and cloud-native architecture roadmap for a
European travel-technology platform, covering API integrations, payments,
and delivery governance.
Chief Technology Officer
EgyProTech
I scaled the engineering organization from 8 to 160 people and led
delivery across healthcare, finance, government, logistics, and
e-commerce — establishing the code-review, CI/CD, QA, security, and
architecture practices behind it.
Fractional CTO
EgyQuality
Alongside EgyProTech, I led technology for a B2C e-commerce platform —
multi-warehouse order management, fulfillment automation, and
Redis-backed catalog and inventory performance at peak.
Chief Technology Officer
Dakakyn
Alongside EgyProTech, I led technology for an e-commerce marketplace —
replacing a legacy monolith with an ERP-integrated platform — that was
later acquired (Otlob → Delivery Hero → Talabat Egypt).
Senior Developer → Software Architect
EgyProTech
I grew from backend developer to software architect, delivering enterprise
web applications and technical leadership across healthcare, finance,
government, and e-commerce.
Speaking
Scaling Payments Without Losing a Cent
Idempotency, ledgers, and exactly-once semantics — the patterns that keep money correct as throughput grows.
Money20/20 Riyadh 2025: Fintech’s Global Stage Comes to Saudi Arabia
Money20/20 makes its Middle East debut in Riyadh: 45,000 attendees, 350+ speakers, and Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 fintech ambitions on the world stage. Why it matters and the …
Open Banking in Saudi: A Practical Startup Playbook
Open banking is live in Saudi Arabia — and the winners will be the startups that treat SAMA compliance as a feature. A founder's playbook: the framework, spec-first architecture, …
Latest writing
REST API Design: The Complete Guide to Building APIs That Last
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How I Turned a 100 ms Problem into a Microsecond Query with AI-Assisted Performance Engineering
A real Hungarian-lottery problem, two complete solutions with the actual Go on the table, and the honest story of how AI helped collapse latency from a 100 ms budget to ~1.5 …
Goodbye Random Inserts: UUIDv7 vs ULID vs UUIDv4 — Unique Identifiers, Performance, and Database Impact
Random UUIDv4 primary keys quietly double your table size and wreck insert performance. How time-ordered IDs — ULID and the new UUIDv7 standard — fix fragmentation, cache locality, …
Zero Trust vs. Traditional VPNs: The Future of Perimeterless Secure Access
The castle-and-moat era is over: there is no moat left to defend. Why the VPN's implicit-trust model breaks in a cloud-first world, and how Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) …
A Production-Grade Guide to Golang Database Connection Management with MySQL/MariaDB
Your sql.DB is a pool, not a connection — and treating it wrong leaks connections, hangs services, and triggers Error 1040. A production guide to pool tuning, transactions, …
Projects & mentoring
I’ve built and scaled FinTech, payments, and commerce platforms end to
end — from pre-launch to licensed launch and acquisition. See a
selection of projects, or — if you’re founding or scaling a
regulated fintech — work with me.