waqas - software engineer, backend and hospitality systems across several runtimes

waqas [--go | --elixir | --php | --typescript] [--remote] [--full-time | --contract] [--timezone UTC+3]

Software engineer, 6 years on backend systems and the last two-plus in hospitality technology. Booking engines, channel-manager integrations and Google distribution for properties that have to stay in sync across every channel they sell on. A live booking marketplace built in Elixir and Phoenix, a product in progress in Go, booking platforms serving 110+ hotel properties; real-time APIs handling 100K+ users; payment flows across three regions. I pick the language a system actually calls for rather than the one I know best: Go where startup time and concurrency decide the design, Elixir and Phoenix where the work is concurrent and has to stay up, PHP and Laravel where a team has to maintain it for years, TypeScript across the API boundary.

I write code other developers can pick up and work with. Simple, organised, and still manageable once the codebase has grown past the point where anyone remembers writing it.

Which language that happens in depends on the system. A booking engine a team will own for years is not the same problem as a service that has to hold thousands of open connections, and pretending otherwise is how you end up fighting your own stack. I have built the same shape of system twice (availability, reservations, payment) on Laravel for hotels and on Elixir for a pool marketplace, with a third in progress in Go. Building it twice in two runtimes is mostly how I learned the choice is worth making deliberately.

Most of the last two years has been hospitality: booking engines, channel managers and Google distribution. It is a domain where being wrong is expensive and visible: a rate that drifts out of parity or inventory that fails to sync becomes an overbooked room and a real person at a front desk.

Right tool for the right problem

1. ●
   2025 - Presentfull-time

   Senior Software Developer

   Ewaa Hotels (Al Muhaideb Investment Group), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

   Building the backend for a hotel booking engine. Search, reservations, payments, distribution, and multi-tenant APIs serving multiple hotel brands.

   • -Built a pluggable search system supporting Elasticsearch and multiple provider backends
   • -Integrated regional and international payment gateways (Mada, KNET, Stripe) with hold-and-capture flow
   • -Designed APIs serving both JSON and Protocol Buffers for web and mobile clients via gRPC
   • -Implemented role-based access control with escalation prevention across multi-tenant properties
   • -Integrated channel managers with two-way ARI sync, holding rates and inventory consistent across OTAs
   • -Connected properties to Google distribution (Hotel Ads and free booking links) against live availability

   PHP Laravel MySQL Redis Elasticsearch gRPC Protocol Buffers Livewire Tailwind CSS Next.js Docker AWS

2. ○
   2024 - Presentcontract

   Backend Engineer

   Swimmer (swimmersa.com), Saudi Arabia (Remote)

   Backend for a two-sided marketplace booking swimming pools across Saudi Arabia. Live availability, instant confirmation, online payment, and a dashboard for the venues listing their pools.

   • -Built the booking and availability core in Elixir and Phoenix, so concurrent reservations resolve without the same slot being sold twice
   • -Wired online payment to instant confirmation against live availability rather than to a request a host approves later
   • -Shipped a host dashboard for hotels, resorts, compounds, gyms and clubs to run their own inventory, pricing and daily bookings
   • -Modelled hourly and full-day rental alongside verified hosts, ratings and women-only availability, which the market requires rather than merely prefers
   • -Arabic-first throughout, serving Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam

   Elixir Phoenix OTP PostgreSQL Tailwind CSS

3. ○
   2022 - 2024full-time

   Senior Software Developer

   DT Modern Technology, Hybrid

   Built backend APIs for booking platforms, ride scheduling, service reservations, and delivery tracking with real-time location updates.

   • -Developed real-time GPS tracking with live map updates for delivery and ride services
   • -Built booking systems with live availability checks and conflict prevention
   • -Integrated WebSocket-based notifications using Pusher for instant user updates

   PHP Laravel 8 React Redux Toolkit Pusher MySQL

4. ○
   2018 - 2022freelance

   Full Stack Developer

   Freelance, Pakistan

   Delivered client projects including legacy system integrations, web applications, and real-time platforms across PHP and Python.

   • -Connected legacy systems to modern platforms via SOAP and REST API integrations
   • -Built full-stack web applications with Laravel, CakePHP and Flask
   • -Designed database schemas across MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB for varied use cases
   • -Implemented real-time chat and push notifications using Firebase

   PHP CakePHP Laravel Python Flask Jinja JavaScript Ajax Bootstrap Firebase MySQL PostgreSQL MongoDB

• 2018 - 2022BS Computer Science

  The Islamia University Bahawalpur

  Pakistan

Going deeper on what happens under the hood, not to switch stacks, but to write better PHP by understanding the runtime it lands on.

• -Language runtimes: the Zend Engine, the BEAM scheduler, and the Go runtime, because knowing how code actually executes changes how you write it
• -Compilers and interpreters: why a JIT or an OPcache setting moves a number, rather than guessing at it
• -The OTP model: supervision trees and process isolation as a design tool, not just an Elixir feature
• -Assembly and CPU cache behaviour: why one shape of loop beats another regardless of the language on top
• -Memory layout and data structures: the part that transfers between every language I work in

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