Hi, I'm Saad.
I love building innovative apps and solving complex problems.
I am currently a software engineer at Climate Donor, where I’m building a crowdfund platform to empower climate change initiatives. My work includes optimizing costs, improving application performance, and leading the development of features such as corporate donation integrations and dynamic user dashboards.
Additionally, I am a junior engineer at Solar B.I., contributing to their proprietary data collection platform. My responsibilities include query optimization, bug fixing through Apache Airflow, and web development using Django, hosted on an AWS EC2 server.
Previously, I co-founded Discearn, a startup leveraging AI to enhance online learning and education. Discearn originated from my collaboration with the Masason Foundation and Minerva University, where I conducted AI research and developed a web extension for summarization, chatbot communication, and quiz generation.
My global experiences span software engineering and data analysis in San Francisco, Seoul, Tokyo, and Buenos Aires. I am passionate about solving complex challenges, creating social impact, and exploring new musical instruments. I also enjoy teaching and mentoring others, having been a teaching assistant and a mentor for multiple teams in the past.
Education
Minerva University
Bachelor of Science in Computational Sciences
September 2020 - May 2024
CGPA: 3.73 | Have taken courses about Data Structures and Algorithms, Machine Learning, Quantum Computing and Information Theory, Software Engineering, etc.
- Traveled to 7 cities around the world immersing myself in the different cultures and the work environments that came as a result.
- Learned the importance of communication within teams with vastly different backgrounds and gained invaluable experience.
YouCademy
Founding Engineer
May 2024 – Present
- Configured project infrastructure on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), utilizing Google Cloud Build and Cloud Run to containerize software for efficient deployment.
- Developed and integrated end-to-end features, including a flashcard system with a React frontend and a Django backend, leveraging an open spaced repetition algorithm.
- Implemented a notion-like writing editor using Blocknote.js, integrating the Blocknote-comments library for inline AI-generated comments on students' writing.
Climate Donor Inc.
Software Engineer
Sep 2024 – Present
- Developed a crowdfund platform enabling technology providers to showcase climate change mitigation projects and attract individual and corporate donors.
- Reduced Firestore costs to the free tier by fixing React useEffect dependency errors affecting read operations throughout the codebase.
- Migrated the codebase from Next.js v10.2 to v14.2, improving compilation speed by 80% and enhancing modularity with Material UI integration.
- Implemented key features such as contextual login, real-time project updates, dynamic receipt generation via Stripe, and an admin dashboard with fuzzy search and detailed user modals.
- Optimized developer experience through documentation, modularized code structure, and process improvements.
Solar B.I.
Junior Engineer
Oct 2024 – Present
- Maintained and enhanced Solar B.I.'s proprietary data collection platform, focusing on query optimization and web development hosted on an Amazon EC2 server.
- Resolved a major bug in a monthly report system by identifying poorly optimized SQL queries and reducing execution time by 90%.
- Streamlined Solcast API usage, reducing unnecessary calls and improving system efficiency through systematic logging and database updates.
- Updated and maintained Apache Airflow DAGs for daily and monthly data collection tasks.
Apps I've Built
Here are some of the projects I've worked on, showcasing a variety of technologies and solutions I've developed. These projects highlight my skills in web development, machine learning, and software engineering.
Pygame, Tensorflow, Python, Figma, hashlib, pickle
Generalized Chess
Developed a user-friendly chess piece and board customization frontend using Pygame, translating Figma mockups into a fully playable interface. Implemented the Alphazero algorithm with Openspiel in Tensorflow to automate bot creation in these variations of chess.
Python, Reflex, Gmail API, CockroachDB, MindsDB, Intel
Bubblify
Developed an email categorization application using the Gmail API for fetching emails. Utilized MindsDB for intelligent email categorization, and stored results and session data in CockroachDB. Tackled frontend development challenges in Reflex, balancing Pythonic code with JavaScript conversions.
Rust, Rocket, Mouse_rs, React
Remote Desktop Controller
Created a RESTful API using the Rocket crate that allows remote control of a desktop's mouse. Coded a mobile-friendly web application with React.
Flask, Firebase, Bootstrap, OpenStreetMap, Leaflet
Food Preferences Web Application
Led the backend development of a Flask-based web application in a 7-person team with a focus on handling the filtering algorithm for displaying user-safe food via the Leaflet JavaScript library. Integrated the backend with a NoSQL database in Firebase's Cloud Firestore using their Python API.
Python, Sklearn, Matplotlib, Tensorflow
Stock Prediction Exploration
Highlighted the differences in sporadic prediction problems between Linear Regression, Moving Average, Linear Parameter, and Long short-term memory network Machine learning models. Used TensorFlow to create the LSTM recurrent Neural Network and sklearn to make the rest of the models.