About

I build software for a living, but curiosity is probably the more accurate description. For the last five years I have worked as a software engineer here in Baghdad, mostly building web applications that have to survive contact with real users.

Most of that work has been in Iraq, which I have come to treat as an advantage rather than a footnote — government platforms, payment systems, work for democracy organisations, private companies, startups. The constraints are real and the stakes are rarely abstract, and you learn quickly which engineering virtues actually hold up when the thing simply has to work.

The work itself is straightforward to describe: TypeScript, Go, databases, APIs, production systems. But what keeps me interested is less the technology than the long, quiet business of understanding something well enough to make it simple. A page that loads fast. A form that doesn't lose its mind. A backend that doesn't wake anyone at three in the morning. The unglamorous virtues. I do this now at Qi and Vitex.

Away from the screen I spend an unreasonable amount of time reading, watching films, and wandering through the older parts of cities, chasing questions that never seem to stay answered for very long. Meaning, suffering, morality, love, failure, beauty, why people do what they do. Some people collect stamps. I collect questions.

I write occasionally too, mostly because some thoughts become annoying if you leave them alone for too long. I have found that most things become more bearable once they become interesting. Software included. If any of that travels well with yours, let's talk.