Case studies

Seven from a portfolio of 15+ shipped projects, newest first.

Gemini Golf Coach

Google Gemini audio launch · with Handstand · Sep 2026

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Challenge
Guests who’d never held a club needed real, spoken coaching seconds after a swing, live at a launch event.
What I owned
The UI, the guest workflow, the coaching and the tests. Made sure it all worked together, on site through event night.
Result
191 guests coached across two bays in one night, each leaving with a personal recap video.

Shows AI and LLM · voice AI · real-time · live ops Stack MediaPipe, Gemini, TypeScript, Python

Screenshot-to-CRM pipeline

Private client · sole engineer · 2026

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Challenge
Workflow submissions arrived as screenshots that had to be re-keyed into the client’s CRM.
What I owned
Everything, from the vision-LLM pipeline and review interface to multi-model evaluation and a Chrome extension for full-page capture.
Result
Work that took full work days by hand now takes a few hours. Every record is still approved by a person before it reaches production.

Shows AI and LLM · backend · solo delivery Stack TypeScript, Next.js, BullMQ, Postgres, Claude, Gemini

Zircuit

Ethereum L2 · staff engineer · 2022–2026

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Challenge
If proving falls behind, a rollup’s state can’t advance and blocks can’t finalize.
What I owned
The system that schedules and runs proof jobs (NATS, Go, Rust prover), prover upgrades and rollouts, and the public release pipeline.
Result
From the first commits to public launch as one of the first four engineers. Open-source publishing ~2.5× faster.

Shows distributed systems · releases and rollbacks · early-stage Stack Go, NATS, Rust (SP1 prover)

Macro

Workflow product · founding engineer · 2020–2022

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Challenge
A four-person team had to get from an idea to a launched product, quickly.
What I owned
The product backend, plus a Node and TypeScript service template the team reused.
Result
#1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt, under a year from start. The template carried three more prototypes.

Shows founding engineer · 0 to 1 · backend foundations Stack Node.js, Koa, TypeScript

Mattermost

Open-source team messaging · senior software design engineer · 2019–2020

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Challenge
Admins could install any plugin with no proof it was genuine, and a new incident-response product needed an API other teams could build on.
What I owned
Plugin signing end to end, the Marketplace API and cluster plugin sync. Then the Incident Response plugin’s first pull request, REST API design, OpenAPI docs and Go client.
Result
Plugin signing shipped in the Mattermost server. Incident Response, the plugin I started, grew into Mattermost Playbooks, which teams use to handle incidents. 145 merged PRs across 10 repositories.

Shows platform engineering · API design · security Stack Go, React, TypeScript, Redux, OpenAPI

Zenreach (now Adentro)

Merchant marketing · tech lead, mobile · 2016–2019

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Challenge
Merchants wanted their visit insights and campaigns on their phones.
What I owned
Led the React Native app, its CI/CD and over-the-air updates. Built Go and Kafka services for WiFi presence data.
Result
Shipped to the App Store and Google Play, on a pipeline serving 20,000 merchant locations.

Shows mobile tech lead · data pipelines · CI/CD Stack React Native, Go, Kafka, Protobuf

BlackBerry

Notes and Tasks · BlackBerry 10 and Android · 2012–2016

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Challenge
Everyday productivity apps on a new mobile platform had to feel instant on 2013 hardware.
What I owned
Features in the Notes, Tasks, music, video and pictures apps, in C++ and Qt on BlackBerry 10, then Notes and Tasks on Android.
Result
List scrolling held at ~60 fps, earning a Performance Champion award. Both apps now have 1M+ downloads each on Google Play.

Shows UI performance · native mobile · productivity apps Stack C++, Qt, Android

How I work

Decisions in writing

Specs, decision logs and API docs your team can review, and keep after I leave.

Measure, then change

Eval harnesses and tuning runs before a prompt, model or threshold changes.

Safe to ship

Human review before production writes. Staged rollouts with a rollback ready.

Remote, AI-assisted

Remote since 2019. Coding agents for speed; people make the calls and review what ships.

Common questions

Who is Ali Farooq?
A Product Engineer in Canada with 16 years in production and 15+ shipped projects. I build AI products that work outside the demo, and the backend, mobile and release systems underneath them.
Who should hire Ali?
Teams that need an AI product or feature built properly, from the first prototype to the day it goes live. Recent work includes a live AI golf coach for Google DeepMind’s Gemini Audio launch and a vision-LLM pipeline that publishes human-reviewed records to a client’s production CRM.
Is Ali available?
Yes, I’m available for new projects. I work remotely from Canada, on US hours.
How does working together start?
With an intro call about what you’re building. I’ll tell you how I’d approach it, and we agree on scope, timeline and what done looks like.
How do I get in touch?
Book an intro call, or email ali.farooq@gmail.com with what you’re building and when it needs to ship.

Open source: xerrors-ts, and Next.js, Flask and Rails SDKs for an API-monitoring product.

Have a project like this in mind?

Tell me what you’re building, and I’ll tell you how I’d approach it.

Available for new projects

Book an intro callor send me a note