I'm Moeid — a CTO who still writes the code.

The short version

I'm a hands-on technology leader based in Dubai. I've been a senior engineer at a bank, a cloud specialist inside a government, a CTO at an AI startup that got acquired, a head of engineering for a 32-person cross-regional team, a VP of engineering across a fintech and Web3 portfolio, and most recently Head of Engineering (AI) at Etera AI, a G42-powered travel platform. In 2026 I stepped out to build on my own and shipped six production products under Atrix — in TypeScript, Rust and Go — to prove what one engineer-CTO with AI-era tooling can do.

I'm now open to a full-time CTO or Head of Engineering (AI) role — in Dubai, the wider Middle East, Europe or remote — and to fractional-CTO and advisory engagements alongside that. If you're hiring, the hire-me page has the 90-day plan and engagement models; if you just want the story, keep reading.

Where it started: Rawalpindi, 2013

I joined Margalla Group straight out of university as a software engineer and left as Tech Lead. The product was UBS, a travel-booking platform that pulled real-time pricing from the Sabre GDS and assembled complete Umrah packages — flights, hotels, visas — with a companion mobile app that handled passport retrieval, visa processing, departure and return. It taught me the thing I still believe most: integrations with slow, unreliable third parties are where products live or die, so design for retries, timeouts and partial failure from day one.

In 2015 I co-founded Atrix Digital in Islamabad and led a team of 15 across web, mobile and IoT, delivering for 300+ clients worldwide. One project I still bring up: a government security system using OpenCV for checkpoint threat detection. It was my first real brush with computer vision in production, years before “AI” was on every job post.

Dubai: banking, government, scale

I moved to Dubai in late 2018 to join Mashreq Bank's fintech division as a Senior Software Engineer. I built core features for Mashreq Neo — the branchless bank with 100K+ users that was named the most innovative digital banking app in the GCC — and the Digital Onboarding product used by 10,000+ sellers. I also set up Azure Kubernetes Service with a federated cluster for high availability. Working inside a bank is where I learned that security, compliance and audit trails are features, not paperwork.

In 2020 I joined Dubai Municipality as a Cloud Infrastructure Specialist and spent the COVID-19 period keeping dm.gov.ae running and modernising it: moving workloads from on-prem Kubernetes to VMware PKS, introducing an Istio service mesh and Argo CD GitOps, migrating SVN to Git with GitLab and Jenkins, adding SonarQube scanning and standing up Prometheus and Grafana. Government infrastructure under lockdown pressure is a masterclass in change management.

CTO, then Head of Engineering

Later in 2020 I became CTO of Searchie AI, an AI video-recruitment platform. I built a cross-signalling WebRTC media server on Janus and Kurento with Amazon Rekognition for emotional analysis, ran the Kubernetes infrastructure, and personally owned the DPIA and ISO compliance work that let us sign Saudi Aramco and Jumeirah Group under MENA data regulations. Searchie was later acquired by oceain.ai.

From 2021 I was Head of Engineering (IT) at AllStars Digital in DIFC, leading the core build of a human-indexing exchange that turned sports-player performance into financial products. I managed 32 engineers across Europe, MENA and India, moved the platform from Windows VMs to Azure Kubernetes with Terraform and Azure DevOps, implemented Fireblocks multi-custodial wallets and Kafka as the message broker, and owned the Multibank Group partnership. Then, at Hoppers Network as VP and Head of Engineering, I ran a portfolio spanning an auto-trading AI, p2p payments, NFT marketplaces and DeFi tooling — including ERC-1155 contracts and a Kubernetes redesign that fixed latency on an NFT marketplace on SEI.

Etera AI: agentic systems at scale

From August 2024 to September 2026 I led engineering for AI at Etera AI, a G42-powered travel platform. I architected and shipped 21+ microservices from scratch in Bun and ElysiaJS on a Kafka (MSK) event-driven topology, orchestrated on EKS with Grafana and Loki observability. On top of that sat a multi-agent LLM layer built with LangChain, LangGraph and MCP — hierarchical agent graphs with scoped memory and vector-augmented retrieval for each vertical (Restaurants, Experiences, Hotels, Flights). I built the embedding service (BAAI bge models on pgvector with Redis KNN) behind a unified hybrid-retrieval pipeline, and the integrations with Headout, RateHawk and PKFare with proper retry semantics, rate-limit governance and failover. This is the work behind the “pioneer of agentic AI in the UAE” line.

2026: proving the thesis with Atrix

I believe the job of a CTO changed in 2025–26. With AI-assisted delivery, a small, senior team can ship what used to need forty people — but only if the person at the top can still design systems and write code. So I spent 2026 proving it. Under Atrix I designed, built and launched:

• Atrix — AI workspace SaaS for small teams — CRM, projects, hiring, HR and billing in one place.
• VoDialer AI — AI outbound voice dialer built as a full VICIdial replacement for US Medicare call centres.
• Atrix Analytics — Product analytics platform (a PostHog alternative) written in Rust on ClickHouse.
• Atrix Mail — Multi-tenant email hosting with a developer sending API and AI webmail.
• RentGari — Car-rental marketplace for Pakistan that gives every agency a free branded storefront.
• Switchboard — The shared messaging layer behind all of the above — WhatsApp and SMS with multi-provider failover.

Each one is live. The projects page has the problem, the build and the proof for every product.

Mentorship, speaking, recognition

Since 2019 I've mentored 50+ early-stage founders through the MISK Foundation Fellowship in Saudi Arabia — on MVPs, team process, infrastructure and strategy. I spoke at the Asia Pacific Future Leader Conference in Kuala Lumpur in 2017 and sat on a panel at the United Nations Future Leader Alliance Conference in Egypt in 2024. The full list is on the speaking page.

• Award-winning team member — Mashreq Neo, most innovative digital banking app in the GCC
• Panelist, United Nations Future Leader Alliance Conference 2024
• Pioneer of Agentic AI in the UAE — federated-MCP multi-agent platform at Etera AI (G42-powered)
• Took Searchie AI into the Saudi market under MENA data regulations — Saudi Aramco and Jumeirah Group as clients

Education

Bachelor's in Software Engineering (BSE), COMSATS University, 2014. Leadership programmes: APFLC Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia · UNEC Bangkok, Thailand.

What I'm looking for

A company that wants a technical leader who ships: a CTO or Head of Engineering (AI) seat where I own architecture, hiring and delivery, and where AI — agents, voice, retrieval — is central to the product rather than a feature bolted on. I'm based in Dubai and happy to stay; I'm equally open to the Middle East, Europe or a remote-first team. Fractional and advisory work remains open for founders who need senior judgment a few hours a week.

Download my CV (PDF) · See the hire-me page · What I'm doing now