Story
About
Hello, I'm Muktar Sayed Saleh, a husband and father, based in Dubai. My relationship with writing began with writing software, in my boyhood more than two decades ago, as a hobby later sharpened by practice and study: a Bachelor's in Software Engineering (2011), a Master's in Web Technologies (2016), and cloud and AI certifications from the leaders of the field: Anthropic's two AI-engineering certifications, and cloud certifications from AWS, Google Cloud and Alibaba Cloud.
I wrote dozens of applications for most platforms and environments before specializing in the web, and in recent years in cloud computing and AI. I worked directly with clients for many years, then in startups and multinational companies, rising from trainee programmer at the bottom of the pyramid to leading engineering teams at the top. Since 2023 I have been VP of Engineering at a technology company. I founded my own company twice, Monjz in 2019 and Ayadi in 2025. Neither succeeded the way I'd hoped, but both taught me lessons about building a company that I still rely on.
Alongside the code, writing had another side for me: literary leanings that pressed on me as sleeplessness and obsession until they revealed a poet. The poems took first place in several distinguished Arab literary awards: the Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity (UAE, 2011), the Imam University Award for the best Arabic poem (Saudi Arabia, 2016), and the Dr. Souad Al-Sabah Award for Intellectual & Literary Creativity in two consecutive sessions (Kuwait, 2017 and 2021). Alongside the poetry came technical books that were each the first of their kind in Arabic.
In short: if a person could describe their whole life in one word, the word that describes mine, briefly and deeply, is "writing."
Milestones
From 2002 to today
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First lines of code, in my boyhood, and the first system I actually delivered: an app for the Al-Khaled fitness center, written while still in middle school.
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A Syria-wide award for the voice-enabled money-transfer system, written while still in high school.
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An internet-cafe management system and a pharmacy system, both written in high school and later published as open source.
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A first engineering job: web developer at Ajram-Tech in Damascus, building web ERP systems and a CodeIgniter extension that generated CRUD pages on its own.
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Learn jQuery in 120 Minutes, the first Arabic book on its subject.
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A Bachelor's in Software Engineering, a graduation project that scans websites for security vulnerabilities (published as open source), and first place at the Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity for 'In the Depths of Love'. Joined SIST in Damascus as a Senior Developer; the first Arabic HTML5 & CSS3 book follows a year later.
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Promoted to Development Team Lead at SIST, and led the Edfa'li project: e-payment systems feeding roughly 1,500 self-service bill-payment kiosks across Syria. The same year, the release of Al-Faraheedy, an open-source engine for the meter and rhyme of Arabic verse, where code and poetry met.
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Moved to Kuala Lumpur. From there, Axiata Group's interactive annual report, and the first Arabic book on PhoneGap.
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Became Tech Lead at Tigerlab, one of its first engineers, and led the technical build of the InsureTech cloud insurance platform.
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A Master's in Web Technologies, and the Imam University Award for the best Arabic poem (Saudi Arabia).
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First place at the Dr. Souad Al-Sabah Award (Kuwait), for 'He Now Crosses the Slopes of Song'. Became tech lead at SEEK Asia, which runs JobStreet and JobsDB. Led its Hirer platform team through the platform's modernization, and helped lead the migration of core services to AWS.
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Launched Monjz, an Arabic marketplace for independent work, built alone and run for years. Then became a software engineering manager at GoQuo, leading multiple engineering teams building a customer data platform (CDP) for airlines. A first AWS certification the same year.
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'A Moon Over Mecca', poems for children on the Prophet's biography; 'A Guide to Independent Work Online'; a first Google Cloud certification; and became a senior software engineering manager at AirAsia, leading multiple engineering teams across airline products and the loyalty platform.
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First place at the Dr. Souad Al-Sabah Award for the second session in a row. Joined Mercator.ai in Canada as director of software engineering and employee #1, leading the product from idea to production and contributing technically to securing funding rounds, the largest at $5.1M.
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A fourth poetry collection, 'When Will My Exile End, O Winds?' (Mosaic House, Istanbul), plus two technical books: one on Git and one on AWS. Three professional cloud certifications in one year, from AWS and Google.
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The complete Alibaba Cloud certification path; PsychFlow, a platform for psychiatry practices in Australia; and became VP of Engineering at a technology company.
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Founded Ayadi, and built an AI-powered contact center on AWS for a leading European vehicle-inspection company.
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Anthropic's two AI-engineering certifications, with scores of 912 and 911 out of 1000.
Certifications
AI and cloud computing
Two AI engineering certifications from Anthropic, and cloud certifications from AWS, Google Cloud and Alibaba Cloud.
AI
- Claude Certified Architect – Professional
- Claude Certified Developer – Foundations
Cloud
- Google Professional Cloud Architect
- AWS Solutions Architect – Professional
- Google Professional Cloud Developer
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
- Google Associate Cloud Engineer
- AWS Certified Developer – Associate
- Alibaba Cloud – the complete certification path