CTO · FirstGlance / Top 3% on Toptal
I take products from idea to paying users.
A decade building software that can't go down — real-time systems behind T-Mobile and Verizon contact centers — now shipping production AI. Architecture, backend, web, and the AI inside it. You talk to the person who writes the code, so decisions happen in hours, not sprint cycles.
Independently vetted ·
Toptal Top 3% network
Need something built?
AI products, full-stack SaaS, or systems work — designed and built by the person you talk to. The first consultation is free.
Hiring for a role?
I'm open to relevant full-time positions — senior engineering, applied AI, and technical leadership — working remotely in your timezone.
Work delivered for teams at
Selected work
A sample across production SaaS, applied AI, and enterprise systems — each one built or led hands-on.
An AI startup-discovery platform that matches investors with emerging startups. As sole engineer I designed, built, and run all of it — a 100-endpoint Flask API, a Next.js web app, Claude-powered pitch-deck extraction, Stripe subscriptions, Firebase auth, and blue-green, zero-downtime deploys on AWS. 100+ companies onboarded, paid plans live. I also shipped its iOS & Android apps, since retired as the product went web-only.
firstglance.io — liveNetwork-management (NMS) software for satellite-communication ground systems, serving operators internationally. Added HEO-satellite support to the map-converter (GXT contour data → GeoJSON) and refactored legacy C++ back-end services into modern Node.js microservices.
A multi-agent system for small businesses that drafts press releases and earnings-call scripts and answers questions from a document vault, on OpenAI + Gemini. I led and architected it with my team.
Real-time C++ services behind enterprise contact centers — T-Mobile, UnitedHealth, Verizon: a multi-tenant integration stress-tested at 1,500 calls/minute, live telemetry, and a logging library I made 2× faster.
A local-first English tutor on Qwen3 via Ollama. A two-layer design — instant heuristics plus a single LLM call — cut responses from 60–120s to ~5s, with zero data leaving the device.
What it's like to work with me
“Really good intuition about product building, which I think is kind of rare in developers … makes improvements without asking, which I think is the key to any good kind of CTO.”
“Talha was incredibly professional and moved very fast.”
Why hire one person
No account managers, no outsourcing, no handoffs. The person you brief is the person who designs the architecture and writes the code — so nothing gets lost in translation.
FirstGlance is live with 100+ companies onboarded and paid plans running — every line of the API, web app, and AI pipeline is mine. I've also delivered for Nestlé, Citibank, and enterprise contact centers. Real users, real money, real uptime.
Scrum at the core: a live board, weekly demos of working software, and continuous delivery — not a big reveal at the end. Certified in product management (IBM) and project management (Google), working fully in your timezone.
Capabilities
Most of my recent work is applied AI on top of a decade of serious systems engineering. That combination is the point: I can design the model behavior and the production system it lives in.
Credentials
Verify the Top 3% badge above against Toptal's network.
Let's build
Tell me the problem and I'll tell you how I'd build it — the first consultation is free. AI products, full-stack SaaS, or systems work that needs a senior pair of hands — $35/hour through 2026.
