Available · remote, global Backend & AI · FinTech

Backend engineer for FinTech & AI products.

  • 3× founding engineer, including for the UAE government's AI lab
  • Cut fraud 85%, saving the flagship product of Pakistan's fastest-growing fintech
  • 4 years at high-bar startups; now building two products from first principles, in agentic engineering and edtech
Murtaza Kazmi
the work
01 / EVIDENCE By the numbers

The receipts behind the claims.

0M+
Users on products I built
SadaPay's user base
4M+/wk
Requests on APIs I owned
transaction history & details
0%+
Fraud-detection accuracy
my ML model · 95%+ on legit txns
5→0
Daily complaints removed
after my card-ordering redesign
An exceptional team player with a strong grasp of Test-Driven Development. I was thoroughly impressed by his expertise in Java Spring Boot.
Abdul Basit — Google Developer Expert · Android & Cloud AI
02 / TRACK RECORD Where I've shipped

Every role founding or core.

Worked in lean teams, learning the craft from backend leaders of the world's unicorns. I've shipped the systems these companies depend on, and stayed accountable for how they perform.

2024 — Presentai71 / LocAI · Abu Dhabi

Founding Engineer

Backed by the UAE government's Advanced Technology Research Council
  • Built the backend of an AI presentation generator ("Gamma for MENA"): generation, export (PDF/PPTX), editing (custom/AI-chat).
  • Built a FinTech AI chat product from the ground up.
  • Ran a full security audit of the application, built security and quality checks into the deploy pipeline, and wrote the backend guide new projects follow.
  • Built at-a-glance dashboards for uptime, traffic, billing, and errors.
  • Youngest backend engineer in the company, working with PMs from Amazon and Google and a senior engineer with 10+ years of experience.
2022 — 2024SadaPay · Remote (Dubai)

Backend & ML Engineer

4M+ users · acceptance rate below 1%
  • Founded and built the Risk & Fraud platform from scratch. SadaPay's invoicing product, which let freelancers receive international payments bypassing 25% platform fees, had been forced offline by fraud. I built the rules engine (with compliance), led the company's first ML fraud model, and built the case management system. Fraud dropped 85%. The product came back. I was the longest-serving, youngest, and most relied-upon engineer in the squad.
  • Built and owned the core card APIs (ordering, details) for personal and business accounts.
  • Owned the company's highest-traffic APIs (txn history & txn details, 4M+ requests/week) and broke a monolith into two focused services.
  • Built the code-review platform every production deploy passed through, and was among the earliest to bring AI-driven reviews to one of Pakistan's most prominent engineering teams.
  • Built extensive product and system metrics, turning usage into decisions.
2021 — 2022upcover · Remote (Sydney)

Full-Stack Engineer

Handpicked from hundreds of candidates
  • Built the partner-onboarding system that helped win the first partnerships, including HelloFresh.
EarlierDeep learning & research

Deep-Learning Engineer

Computer vision · AI research
  • Computer-vision engineer; youngest contributor on a confidential AI code-generation research project.
03 / R&D Currently in stealth

Two products, built from first principles.

The specifics stay confidential. The direction doesn't have to.

Active R&DSTEALTH / 01

Agentic engineering

Developer tooling · AI-native

A first-principles take on how software actually gets built, designed to harness AI and human judgment together rather than bolt one onto the other.

First principlesAI-nativeDev tooling
Active R&DSTEALTH / 02

Education technology

Learning science · knowledge tools

A system that makes deep understanding scalable, grounded in proven learning science rather than another library of content.

Learning scienceKnowledge toolsEd-tech
Murtaza Kazmi building at his desk
Heads down

The work happens here, not on the slides.

04 / REFERENCES In their words

Don't take my word for it.

His best quality is that he is an independent thinker. He isn't afraid to ask challenging questions.

EMEli MydlarzCTO at Fasset · x-SadaPay, x-Gojek, x-ThoughtWorks

An outstanding product engineer. His dedication, problem-solving skills, and collaborative nature made him a valuable asset to our team.

SAShuaib AfegbuaEngineering Manager · managed Murtaza directly

His thorough analysis and understanding of core problems, along with his ability to assess the impact of features on customers, were invaluable. An exceptional team player with a strong grasp of Test-Driven Development. I was thoroughly impressed by his expertise in Java Spring Boot.

ABAbdul BasitGoogle Developer Expert · Android & Cloud AI

No matter how complex or urgent the task, he'd tackle it with impressive speed and precision.

MASheikh Muhammad AdeelSoftware Engineer

He helped us minimize fraud by 87%, one of the most impactful engineers in the group. His ability to question everything and think holistically is amazing. If you're looking for an engineer who cares for the user and the product, Murtaza is your guy.

SPSaad Pastax-SadaPay

As a junior engineer, this guy has insane potential.

UAUsman Arshadx-CTO at Traversaal.aiafter interviewing Murtaza, 2022

More on LinkedIn →

05 / SIGNAL Recognition & education

Competitive edge.

Competitions

ICPC Silver Medalist

Asia regional

Google Hash Code 2020 — 2nd in Pakistan

top 10% globally

CodeSignal — 770

above top CS schools worldwide

HackerRank AI challenge — 16th worldwide

live competition
Education & learning

BS Computer Science — minor in Social Sciences

IBA Karachi · Dean's List · took the most courses of my 2022 graduating class (~1,000 students)

HU TOPS — Top-50 national full-ride scholarship

awarded to ~50 students nationally · declined for IBA

SuperLearner — certified

accelerated learning & self-management
Get in touch

Let's talk.

Open to backend and founding-engineer roles, and select consulting. Remote, global.

Available weekdays, 04:00–15:00 UTC (09:00–20:00 PKT) · or just email murtaza.kazmi.75@gmail.com