A senior architect who still writes the code.
Twelve years of shipping software and more than a hundred projects delivered — thirty-nine of them the portfolio I own as a CTO today. For contract work that means one person who can design the system and build it: web, native mobile, desktop, connected devices and the services behind them. Real-time video and accessibility are the specialisms; the rest is ordinary custom software, done properly.
Building software since
Web, mobile, desktop, devices
Projects delivered
39 under technical ownership today
Live production domains
Across the estate
People in the organisation
12 engineers, plus design and QA
Services
Design the system, then build it.
Nine kinds of work I take on, from an architecture a team can build against to the awkward parts nobody else wants: a call that drops on 4G, a device that has to report in from a basement, a payment flow that must never run twice.
Architecture and system design
Enterprise-scale design: the services, the data model, the integrations and the failure modes, written down before anyone builds.
- Integration with the systems of record: SAP, ERP, billing platforms, APIs
- Event flows, queues and idempotency, so retries never double-charge
- Roles, tenancy and least privilege designed in, not bolted on
Fractional and virtual CTO
Part-time technical leadership for a company that needs CTO judgement before it needs a full-time CTO: the architecture, the hiring, the release process and the decisions the founders should not make alone.
- Technology strategy, architecture review and a written technical roadmap
- Hiring and running a distributed engineering team, and setting how it releases
- A second reader on vendors, quotes and due diligence before money moves
Custom software, end to end
Marketplaces, portals, admin consoles, internal tools and the apps around them, on web, iOS, Android and desktop.
- React and Next.js, React Native and Expo, Electron, SwiftUI and Kotlin
- Node.js and TypeScript services, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Firestore, Redis
- Payments, subscriptions and payouts on Stripe; App Store and Play releases
Early-stage startups, first build to revenue
Founders have wanted the same two things from me: something real in front of customers quickly, and a system that does not have to be thrown away once the customers arrive.
- A first release scoped to what someone will pay for, rather than to the roadmap
- Payments, trials and the admin console needed to actually run the thing
- Advisory on its own: platform choice, build versus buy, cost, and the first technical hires
Real-time video and voice
WebRTC in production since 2015: calls, telehealth consultations, screen sharing and data channels.
- An SFU that fits the load: LiveKit, mediasoup or Janus
- TURN on coturn, sized for the traffic that actually needs relaying
- Recording, chat and presence alongside the call
IoT and connected devices
Hardware that reports in, and the software that makes sense of it. BLE wearables, trackers, gateways and telemetry at fleet scale.
- BLE proximity and indoor positioning; panic alerts and GPS breadcrumbs
- MQTT brokers, publisher/subscriber pipelines, GPS and device protocols on TCP/UDP
- Offline-first field apps that queue and replay when signal returns
Web3 and DeFi platforms
The product layer around a chain: interfaces, wallet flows, data and the infrastructure DeFi platforms actually run on.
- DeFi platform front ends and their hosting, on managed or client infrastructure
- Fan engagement and token-gated products
- Custody-adjacent flows treated as financial code, with change control
Migrations off Agora and Twilio
Keep your interface and move the media onto infrastructure you own, so calls stop being billed by the minute.
- Flutter, React Native and web clients
- Old and new stacks run side by side until the switch-over
- A cost comparison before any code is written
Calls that fail on real networks
Works on office Wi-Fi, drops on 4G or behind a corporate firewall. That is almost always ICE, TURN or bandwidth, and it can be found.
- NAT traversal, ICE and TURN relay diagnosis
- Codec negotiation, congestion control, audio and video quality
- A fixed-scope audit with a written report and the fixes
Live video and camera streaming
IP cameras, vehicle video and live broadcast into browsers and apps, with latency to match the use.
- RTSP and ONVIF camera discovery and ingest
- FFmpeg transcoding, HLS, and MediaMTX
- Low-latency viewing in the browser over WebRTC
AI features and security hardening
Language-model features with the cost and abuse controls they need, and apps made ready for a penetration test.
- OpenAI and Claude integrations with per-user spend limits
- API keys kept out of shipped apps through a relay proxy
- Certificate pinning and pen-test remediation
Accessible by default
Interfaces that work with a screen reader and a keyboard.
Accessibility-aware development is part of how I build, not a pass at the end. WCAG 2.2 AA is the bar, and the test is the assistive technology people actually use: JAWS and NVDA on Windows, VoiceOver on Apple devices, TalkBack on Android.
Every control has a name and a state
A mute button is announced as “Mute, toggle button, pressed”, not as “button”. Icon-only controls are the most common failure in call interfaces.
Changes are spoken, not only shown
Joins, leaves, reconnecting, recording and new chat messages reach screen readers through live regions, batched so a busy call does not drown the user.
Everything works from the keyboard
Visible focus, a sensible order, dialogs that hold and return focus, and shortcuts that do not collide with the screen reader’s own keys.
Tested by ear, not only by scanner
Automated checks catch missing labels and contrast. Whether a flow makes sense spoken aloud needs a person with a screen reader, so every audit includes that pass and a prioritised fix list.
Track record
Work you can check.
A regulated national utility, a multi-vendor marketplace with escrow, fleet telematics, BLE tracking during HAJJ, DeFi platforms, telemedicine over WebRTC. Twenty-seven client and internal products sit behind these eight.
Europe · regulated · under subcontract
National electricity utility apps
Native iOS and Android customer apps over eight backend services, integrated through Azure API Management onto the utility’s billing platform. I coordinated seven external engineering counterparties, introduced the relay proxy that removed every API key from the shipped apps, and drove penetration-test remediation to production acceptance.
Client · multi-vendor marketplace
BookMi
Venues, packages and transport from independent vendors, with escrow and vendor payouts, on web, admin and React Native. Production-freeze governance on the payment flows, and a 233-test Playwright suite against 148 documented use cases.
bookmi.kakushin.io
Client · fleet telematics · live
Autom8
GPS fleet telematics with live vehicle video: device protocol servers on TCP and UDP, HLS transcoding through FFmpeg, and deployment onto the client’s own server.
autom8.kakushin.io
NOVSYS · Saudi Arabia · independent
HAJJ crowd management
BLE wristbands tracking a workforce indoors during HAJJ, with web and Android navigation apps, plus a separate crowd-density estimation system reading CCTV footage through image processing.
Clients · DeFi and Web3
Delta Prime · DegenPrime · Arena 2
Two DeFi platforms, one on a client-managed VPS and one on company-hosted infrastructure, and a Web3 fan-engagement platform on client-managed Firebase.
www.deltaprime.io
CASE University · 2015–2017 · P@SHA ICT Award
CHART and AL-BASR
Telemedicine from the start of my career: AL-BASR won a Pakistan Software Houses Association ICT Award and I built its real-time chat and video over WebRTC; CHART shipped to both app stores for detailed remote examination of patients.
Palo Alto, CA · 2020–2021 · lead developer and architect
RYZA
A real-time co-creation platform where several people remote-control software from the browser. I designed the architecture around WebRTC and a proprietary protocol for streaming application control over a data channel.
Client · healthcare · live
Dementia Buddy
A dementia-support app and care-provider portal with five account types and a twelve-module training curriculum, plus a BLE wearable with proximity, panic alerts and GPS breadcrumbs. Access hygiene and PII handling reviewed on a healthcare dataset.
dementiabuddy.app
How it works
Direct, written down, and yours at the end.
- 01
Tell me what you are building
An email is enough: the platforms, what works, what does not, and when you need it.
- 02
A short call, then a written scope
You get the approach, the milestones and a fixed price, or a day rate where the work is investigative.
- 03
Weekly builds you can run
The code lives in your repository from the first day, and every week ends with something working you can try.
- 04
Handover you can live with
Deployment on your infrastructure, documentation, and a walkthrough for whoever maintains it next.
Questions
Before you write.
- Can you take over an existing codebase?
- Yes. Most rescue work starts in someone else’s code, and the first deliverable is usually a written read of what is there and what it will take.
- Do you work with early-stage startups?
- Often. A good deal of my work has been first builds that had to reach paying customers, and advising the founders on the technology decisions around them. If the budget is small, say so, and we scope to what has to exist first.
- Do you certify WCAG compliance?
- No. I build to WCAG 2.2 AA and test with real screen readers, and I will tell you plainly what is left. A formal conformance report comes from an independent auditor.
- Do you work as a fractional or virtual CTO?
- Yes. Alongside my full-time role I take a small number of part-time CTO engagements: a fixed number of hours a month for architecture, hiring, release process and the decisions around them, without the cost of a full-time hire.
- Will you sign an NDA?
- Yes, before you share anything confidential.
- Where are you based?
- Cyprus and Pakistan, working remotely. I have shipped with teams in the US, Europe and South-East Asia.
- Who owns the code?
- You do. It is written in your repository and deployed on your infrastructure.
Start a project
Tell me what you are building, and where it breaks.
The email opens with a short brief already laid out: platforms, what works today, timeline and budget. Fill in what you know.