Faizan Saleem

Principal Software Engineer & Technical Lead

Faizan
Saleem

I help US and UK companies build, modernise and run Java and AWS platforms, as a senior engineer for focused projects or a technical lead for the long term.

Discuss a project See my work
  • Taking on new projects
  • Full UK working day and US East Coast mornings
  • AWS Certified AI Practitioner
Portrait of Faizan Saleem

Career trace, 2017 to today

9+ years across 4 companies

  1. Global RescueAssociate Software Engineer, 2017–2019
  2. Aurora SolutionsFull Stack Engineer, 2019–2021
  3. Systems LimitedSenior Software Engineer, 2021
  4. TEO InternationalPrincipal Software Engineer & Technical Lead, 2021–present

How I can help

Nine years of building and running production platforms, offered as a focused project or an ongoing engagement.

Short-term projects

A defined problem, solved and handed over

  • Java and Spring Boot upgradesMove services to Java 21 or 25 and Spring Boot 3.5 or 4, with tests and a repeatable playbook.
  • AWS migrations and hardeningContainerise and move workloads to ECS, centralise secrets, and tighten security and cost.
  • Data migrationsConsolidate databases, move off DynamoDB, or introduce multi-tenancy without losing data.
  • IntegrationsPayment gateways, partner APIs, notifications and OCR, built with signed and verifiable traffic.
  • Performance and production fixesDiagnose slow queries, failing integrations and unstable releases, then fix the root cause.

Long-term engagements

Senior ownership inside your team

  • Fractional technical leadArchitecture, code review, delivery planning and mentoring for your engineering team.
  • Senior backend engineerA hands-on Java and AWS engineer embedded in your sprints, tools and rituals.
  • Platform ownershipReleases, rollbacks, observability and second-line support for production systems.
  • Delivery practicesCode review, CI/CD and release processes that make shipping predictable and safe.
  • Generative AI featuresAdd Amazon Bedrock-powered features to existing Java services, safely and measurably.

Selected work

Platforms, migrations and integrations I have built and led for teams in the UK, Europe and the US.

TEO International UK certification platform, 2023 to present

Multi-tenant certification platform

I am the technical lead for a UK certification platform used by workers, employers and training providers. The platform runs on more than 25 services, from applications and payments to fraud checks, card printing and digital wallet cards, and serves several industry schemes across a mobile app, web portals and a card-checking app.

Role
Hands-on technical lead
Team
Led teams of 15+ engineers and QA
Since 2023
3,100+ commits across 41 repositories
  • Java 21 and 25
  • Spring Boot 3.5 and 4
  • AWS ECS
  • MySQL
  • DynamoDB
  • Redis
  • Angular
  • React
  • Node.js

  • Mobile card journeys

    Built the backend for new applications, replacement cards and renewals in the mobile app, and took each through launch and post-launch support in 2025.

  • Scheme onboarding

    Brought several certification schemes onto the shared platform with white-label login, virtual cards and NFC smartcard support.

  • Partner API v2

    Delivered the new API for third-party IT partners end to end, from middleware to go-live in April 2026.

  • Notification platform

    Re-architected notifications into one event-driven service for the whole platform on Spring Boot 4 and Java 25, with a feature-flagged cutover.

  • Hosted payments

    Built card payments with pre-authorisation, voiding, payment notifications and HMAC-SHA256 signature verification.

  • Training provider tools

    Redesigned course management for training providers, and extended renewals so workers can renew into a different occupation.

  • Platform modernisation

    Moved the Java services onto a common Java 21 runtime and Spring Boot 3.5, moved secrets into AWS Parameter Store, and moved most core data from DynamoDB to relational storage.

  • Security and performance

    Led remediation of penetration-test findings, and sped up queue, escalation and batch-search workloads.

  • Releases and observability

    Formalised production release governance, automated release steps, sped up CI pipelines and added distributed tracing across the core backend.

How I lead the work

With stakeholders

Shape technical scope, dependencies and release plans with UK client stakeholders, and co-ordinate testing and go-live for major change requests.

With the team

Review every change, pairing AI-assisted review with human review, and mentor engineers through pull-request feedback and hands-on problem-solving.

In production

Own AWS ECS releases and rollbacks with a record of every service revision, diagnose application and integration failures, and provide second-line support.

TEO International European telecommunications programme

Tenant-aware data migration

I built a PostgreSQL migration tool that consolidates multi-million-record, single-tenant databases into one multi-tenant architecture.

  • PostgreSQL
  • Multi-tenancy
  • Migration tooling
How it was built

The problem

Existing single-tenant databases had to be consolidated into a shared architecture, carrying their data into the new tenant model.

What I did

Built the PostgreSQL migration tool for the consolidation, working across a dataset of millions of records.

Related work

Also moved the UK certification platform’s card-finder reference data and application read paths from DynamoDB to relational storage, including tooling and release coordination.

Systems Limited Document automation

Document data extraction

Built an Amazon Textract OCR module that pulls data out of enterprise documents and feeds it into backend workflows.

  • Amazon Textract
  • Java
  • Spring Boot
  • AWS
  • MariaDB

Systems Limited Cloud infrastructure

Docker Swarm to Kubernetes

Led the migration from Docker Swarm to Kubernetes, created and administered the clusters, and managed environments through Rancher.

  • Kubernetes
  • Docker Swarm
  • Rancher
  • Jenkins

Who I have delivered for

  • United KingdomA construction-industry certification platform: mobile, agent and customer journeys, hosted payments and AWS production operations.
  • EuropeA telecommunications programme: consolidating multi-million-record, single-tenant databases into one multi-tenant architecture.
  • United StatesGlobal Rescue, a travel risk and security company: Java ETL pipelines, travel data APIs and traveller tracking.

Client names are withheld for confidentiality.

Also built and delivered: a collaboration-platform application, hosted payments, healthcare SaaS, billing systems, Java ETL pipelines and traveller tracking.

Working together

Clear scope up front, steady progress you can see, and a clean handover.

  1. 1

    Intro call

    A free 30-minute call to understand your system, goals and constraints.

  2. 2

    Proposal

    Scope, milestones and price, as a fixed-scope project or a day or monthly rate.

  3. 3

    Delivery

    Work in your repositories and tools, with weekly updates and demos of working software.

  4. 4

    Handover

    Documentation, tests and knowledge transfer, so your team owns what was built.

Time zones
Based in Islamabad (UTC+5). Full overlap with the UK working day and with US East Coast mornings.
Contracts
NDA and IP assignment to you as standard. Invoicing in USD or GBP.
Ways of working
Slack or Teams, Jira, GitHub or Bitbucket. Used to security-controlled environments under ISO 27001.

Questions clients ask

What kinds of projects do you take on?

Short projects with a clear goal, such as Java and Spring Boot upgrades, AWS migrations, data migrations, integrations and production fixes. And long-term roles as a fractional technical lead or a senior backend engineer inside your team.

How do you price work?

Defined projects are quoted at a fixed price. Ongoing work is billed at a day or monthly rate. Either way, you get a written proposal with scope and milestones before any work starts.

Which time zones do you cover?

I am based in Islamabad (UTC+5) and work across the full UK day and US East Coast mornings. I can move my hours for key meetings and releases.

How do you handle confidentiality, security and IP?

An NDA and IP assignment to you are standard. I work inside your accounts and repositories with the access you grant, and follow your security and AI-usage policies. I am used to environments run under ISO 27001.

Can you work with our existing team and tools?

Yes. I join your repositories, Jira, Slack or Teams, and your ceremonies, and work to your coding standards and review process.

How do we get started?

Send a short note about what you need. We book a free 30-minute call, and I follow up with a proposal.

Experience

Download CV (PDF, 2 pages)

  1. to present Current

    Principal Software Engineer & Technical Lead

    TEO International

    Employee of the Month, March 2025

    Technical lead for a UK certification platform. Have led a team of 15+ engineering and QA professionals from design to production, and own the multi-tenant backend, mobile card journeys, partner API, notifications, hosted payments and AWS production releases.

    • Java 21 and 25
    • Spring Boot
    • AWS
    • MySQL
    • PostgreSQL
    • DynamoDB
    • Angular
    • React
    • Node.js
    More about this role

    Introduced Java code reviews across the delivery team. Built PostgreSQL migration tooling for a European telecommunications programme, delivered an end-to-end collaboration-platform application, and contributed to billing, agent desktop and SIP device provisioning solutions.

  2. to

    Senior Software Engineer

    Systems Limited

    Built enterprise backend services and an Amazon Textract OCR module. Led a Kubernetes migration and worked across DevOps, integrations and engineer mentoring.

    • Java
    • Spring Boot
    • REST and SOAP
    • AWS
    • MariaDB
    • Kubernetes
    • Rancher
    • Jenkins

  3. to

    Full Stack Engineer

    Aurora Solutions

    Built healthcare SaaS workflows for practitioners and patients, including scheduling, billing, reporting and discovery, using Spring Boot and AngularJS.

    • Spring Boot
    • AngularJS
    • MySQL
    • MongoDB
    • Elasticsearch

  4. to

    Associate Software Engineer

    Global Rescue

    Built Java ETL pipelines, travel data APIs, traveller-tracking capabilities and operational tools for account managers.

    • Java
    • ETL pipelines
    • REST APIs
    • XML and CSV processing

2013 to 2017

B.S. Computer Science

FAST–NUCES, Islamabad

Graduated with a 3.72 / 4.00 GPA.

AWS Certified AI Practitioner

Amazon Web Services

Certification AIF-C01, covering generative AI, machine learning and responsible AI on AWS.

Hands-on engineer, whole-picture thinker.

I like getting close to difficult problems: in the code, in the system, and in the way a team works.

I’m a Principal Software Engineer and Technical Lead at TEO International. My work spans construction certification, telecommunications, healthcare and travel, with Java, Spring Boot and AWS at the centre of my stack.

I have led a team of 15+ engineering and QA professionals while staying hands-on. I still write services, work through database problems, review pull requests, and stay involved when a release reaches production.

From Islamabad, I work remotely with clients and stakeholders in the UK, Europe and the US, and bring the same ownership to every engagement, whether it lasts a month or several years.

How I work

Make the trade-offs clear

Ground technical decisions in the requirements, dependencies and production realities the team has to work with.

Lead through the work

Stay hands-on. Make code reviews useful. Give engineers context, feedback and room to take ownership.

Own the follow-through

Keep engineering, QA and stakeholders connected through implementation, release and production support.

Technical range

Backend and architecture
Java 21 and 25, Spring Boot 4 and 3.5, Spring Security, Spring Data JPA, Hibernate, REST APIs, microservices, multi-tenancy
AWS
ECS/Fargate, Lambda, API Gateway, S3, SQS, SNS, Cognito, DynamoDB
Data
PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Flyway, large-scale data migrations
Observability
OpenTelemetry, Micrometer, distributed tracing, Spring Boot Actuator
Testing and code quality
JUnit 5, Mockito, Testcontainers, WireMock, SonarCloud
Delivery and DevOps
Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, Bitbucket Pipelines, Jenkins, Maven, Gradle
Integrations
Payment gateways, JWT authentication, event-driven messaging, push notifications, OCR with Amazon Textract
AI
Amazon Bedrock, generative AI integration, Claude Code, LLM-powered code review, Python
Front end
TypeScript, React, Angular, Node.js and Express, Vite, Tailwind CSS
Leadership
Technical leadership, system design, code reviews, mentoring, Agile/Scrum, stakeholder management
Languages
English (professional), Urdu and Punjabi (native)

Let’s talk about your project.

Tell me what you are building or fixing, your timeline, and whether you need a short project or a long-term partner. I will come back with next steps and a time for a call.

faizansaleem.fastian@gmail.com
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