Muhammad Umer S.Private profile: Upwork shows its earnings only to signed-in members, so we check it every few weeks, not daily. MRR here is a rough estimate (Upwork's six-month earnings ÷ months active). Last read Nov 5, 2026.

Founders usually bring me in when the product has outgrown its engineering. I help startups and growing companies architect, build, and scale AI platforms, financial infrastructure, trading systems, and enterprise SaaS products where reliability, scalability, and execution matter more than simply writing code. My role is rarely just backend development. I own technical architecture, engineering direction, production reliability, code quality, and delivery while remaining deeply hands-on with implementation. Over the past 9+ years I've helped founders build systems that process millions of events, support real-time decision making, integrate AI into production workflows, and move financial data safely and reliably at scale. What I Build AI Platforms & Agentic Systems - AI-native SaaS platforms - LLM integrations (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini) - Multi-agent workflows - AI automation platforms - RAG and knowledge systems - AI infrastructure and backend architecture Financial Infrastructure - Payment platforms - Ledger systems - Stripe, ACH, Plaid and financial integrations - Risk engines - Reconciliation systems - Trading infrastructure - Market intelligence platforms Real-Time Systems - High-volume event processing - WebSocket infrastructure - Streaming architectures - Distributed systems - Low-latency APIs - Event-driven microservices - Kafka, Redis, RabbitMQ and SQS Cloud & Platform Engineering - AWS and GCP - Kubernetes & Docker - Terraform & CI/CD - PostgreSQL, ClickHouse, TimescaleDB, Redis - Observability, monitoring, and production hardening Recent Projects CoinQuant.ai AI-powered quantitative trading platform allowing traders to create trading strategies through natural language, perform tick-level backtesting, and analyze real market data using institutional data providers including Kaiko, Financial Modeling Prep, and CoinGecko. Responsibilities included: - AI architecture - Backend systems - Financial data infrastructure - Strategy engine - Production platform design DeepVue Technical Lead responsible for the migration of a large real-time market intelligence platform from Node.js to Go. Highlights: - SEC financial data ingestion - XBRL and fundamental data processing - High-frequency market data - Formula and screening engine - ClickHouse architecture - Performance optimization - Real-time analytics MoonShot MAGAX Blockchain infrastructure including: - Smart contracts - Token issuance - Vesting - Claims - Backend settlement services - Production AWS infrastructure SoLo Funds Financial platform supporting: - Stripe payments - Subscription infrastructure - Risk systems - Event-driven financial workflows - Production backend architecture Where I Add the Most Value Companies typically bring me in to: - Design scalable platform architecture - Build AI-native products - Rescue struggling engineering projects - Review AI-generated code and improve engineering quality - Lead engineering teams - Design financial infrastructure - Build real-time trading and market data systems - Scale SaaS platforms from MVP to production - Modernize legacy systems - Reduce technical debt without slowing delivery Selected Results - Scaled backend platforms from 10,000 to over 1 million daily transactions - Reduced AWS infrastructure costs by approximately 40% (~$15,000/month) - Migrated £2.4M in active subscriptions with zero downtime - Built highly concurrent Go services capable of processing thousands of parallel workloads - Designed systems targeting 99.99% availability - Led migration of production systems from Node.js to Go - Built AI-powered engineering agents for automated issue investigation, root-cause analysis, ticket generation, and validated code fixes How I Work I believe great engineering starts with good architecture. Every engagement begins with understanding the business problem, identifying technical risks early, and designing systems that remain maintainable years after the first release. I work closely with founders, product teams, and engineering organizations to balance delivery speed with long-term scalability. Whether I'm joining as a Founding Engineer, Fractional CTO, Technical Lead, or Senior Backend Engineer, my objective is always the same: Build the right foundation so the business can scale without constantly rebuilding its technology.