How to Level Up as an Engineer: My Journey and Tips

12 min readJan 31, 2023

Hello, everyone! I am Ali Zahid Raja, a creator, developer, mentor, and entrepreneur passionate about technology and innovation. Throughout my career, I have had the privilege of working with some of the leading companies and startups in the field and participating in various personal projects that have allowed me to expand my skill set and knowledge. I have achieved a few notable things in my tech career, such as coming in the top 1% of Kaggle Expert and the Global Top 0.1% for Advent of Code 2021 & 2022. In this blog, I want to share my experiences and expertise in technology and engineering to provide value to other engineers and help them level up in all aspects — technical and non-technical.

Pre-Career History

Before graduating from the National University of Computers & Emerging Sciences (NUCES-FAST) in 2020, I needed guidance on the career side. I knew I wanted to do something great in the field, and I felt that learning Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning would complement that. What I didn’t know was how to get there well. Today I hope this article finds its way to someone as lost as I was.

Until the final year, I had no idea what to “specialize” or “major” in. I saw people around me worrying about it, but I couldn’t care less. I knew I was not too fond of front-end; I couldn’t wrap my head around making websites or mobile apps working on a massive number of files, and then comes the HTML/CSS part, which is straight-up boring, so up until the last year, the one thing I knew was that I hate front-end, this was a pretty great start.

During my graduation, I figured out that I like coding, and therefore, I was good in some essential assignments like classes, OOP, data structures, etc. I also figured out that some people around me aren’t, which led me to start selling my coding skills, and I started taking up freelancing projects. It wasn’t hard, I just had to know what to google, and there came a few rupees to get my week by from a couple of clients, both on campus and from online places like Fiverr, Upwork & Freelancer.

Continuing the story of how I figured out my major, at the start of final year, my FYP(Final Year Project) group partner, Saad, and I sat down and discussed that “We aren’t going to do some average website or application for the FYP, we have to do something amazing and something notable! After a few crazy ideas, we landed the perfect project to amaze everyone, “A Sign Language Translator.” Was it a fantastic idea that was going to amaze everyone? YES! Do we have the slightest idea of how to implement it? NOPE! But we decided to go through it anyway.

Lucky for us, Google released its MediaPipe in the same month our FYP started, and if it weren’t for that perfect timing, we would’ve gotten a straight-up “F” grade. After the idea was finalized, we worked on it for the entire year. Due to the complexity and effect of that project, this idea managed to be a runner-up in the Pakistan Science Fair Award 2020 hosted by Ulster University, UK. This recognition further fueled my passion for technology and innovation.

Runner-up Pakistan Science Fair Award 2020

After a few months, I graduated with a pretty average GPA because I never really cared about it (2.69) and started on my journey.

Corporate History

I did one internship during my degree at the end of my 3rd year. This was, in fact, my only office-based job. I was a Data Science Intern at VisionX, Islamabad. During my internship at VisionX, I worked with text extraction of over 1 million documents using Regex. I also made a mobile application for taking stable and accurate pictures using the phone, which speeded up the process of text extraction by a factor of 20. It was a fun workplace; I played a lot of table tennis and explored the world of VR and AR using their cool tech. They also gave us time to brainstorm our ideas, their applications, and their uses. I won’t say internship is a must-have for a career, but if you can find a place offering a PAID internship for a couple of weeks around the 3rd 4th year of your degree, go for it! You might end up liking it (like I did).

I still remember the last few months of the university; a few people already had jobs lined up, COVID had just started, and I was applying to 10–30 jobs per day, mostly not even replying. I gave my final exam online and booked a car in the afternoon to meet up with my friends for after exam party. I sent a snap saying, “Straight outta FAST & right into unemployment,” well, that didn’t hold for long as in the evening, I got my first offer letter!
The offer letter was from a company named Sedenius; the only red flag for me was that the contract had a clause saying I will have to return my last three months’ salary if I left before a year, which put a lot of perspective in my head. I instantly knew that I might not be suitable for the corporate world. I rejected them, my only offer letter, only because of that clause.

Eventually, I got an offer letter from a company named OneByte, a fantastic team, an excellent manager, and work I liked doing, i.e., Machine Learning. As a Machine Learning Engineer at OneByte, I made data pipelines for production, worked on Image Classification algorithms and NLP models, and developed software to detect Lung nodules using both Image Classification and Text Parsing. I also managed databases, extracted and processed results from API end-points used in production, and created a dashboard to study data. During my second month, I made a small script in Python to make a hectic process of manually typing from PostGre SQL into an easy one-click automated script. I got appreciation from my manager & CTO, but I could still do something more and rise to somewhere where my work could have more impact, not just a small weekly task.

On the side, I was constantly working on projects related to AI & ML, either personal or freelance-based. I followed Gary Vee at the time, and he just mentioned that the LinkedIn algorithm is best for getting publicity for your work as it has become straightforward, which made me start posting ALL my work on my LinkedIn. The actual project might as well be a couple of lines, but I screen-recorded it and displayed it as something unique, and well, that helped me hook a massive fish from the sea of corporate named KeepTruckin’!

I was SDET or Research Software Development Engineer in Test in KT(now Motive). I started the SDET team in the Research Department of AI and was responsible for making an end-to-end testing pipeline for Deep Learning and Machine Learning models. I also helped debug and optimize software products. I mentored new hires on the team and kept the documentation up to date. Additionally, I refined software requirements and machine learning models to ensure accuracy.

My experience for both companies was three months each; I would find a reason not to like corporate, the long hours, the feelings of being a small cog in a big machine, wanting to start my own thing and build my name, etc., etc. After three months in KT, I left to pursue a startup I had been cooking alongside since September 2020.

Startup History

In September 2020, A guy named Ali, based in Saudi Arabia found my work (from the LinkedIn strategy above) and asked if I could join his AI startup on equity bases without pay. I was more than happy about the opportunity! My very own startup with a person with way more experience than me! I was appointed Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer at Maverick AI. As the co-founder of Maverick, I led the AI research and development department and grew the team from 3 to 12 members. I also had the chance to mentor and recruit new talent to the company. My work involved cutting-edge research in various areas of AI, including vision, drones, and autonomous vehicles. Our AI applications, designed to aid with daily processes nationwide, were expected to reduce the budget by 20% and included a mask detection system, a people counter, and a social distance checker.

After I left KeepTruckin in March 2021 to give full time to my startup, that is well one of the first biggest mistakes I made, and to sum it up, “I had put all my eggs into one basket,” A basket which paid nothing but took most of my time, a basket which had a 50–50% chance of making golden eggs or being dropped. I still strictly advise against working anywhere without pay OR having at least 6–12 months of the financial net before jumping into a startup.

By mid-August 2021, I was in debt of a few lakhs, and our startup missed ALOT of deadlines. I had no idea how to scale solutions, all I could do was make a bunch of python notebooks, and they couldn’t just put that in front of every mall in Saudi Arabia. We were in direct contact with the Government of Saudia Arabia (hence the chances of golden eggs), but we missed deadlines mainly because the team and I couldn’t scale it. The lesson here is to learn JavaScript or hire someone who knows it!

During my debt phase, I started consulting a firm in the UK. As the Technical Lead at GreenTech, I was responsible for leading the company’s technical department, recruiting and mentoring new developers, and overseeing the development of the EPOS system, which was shifted to a SAS product. I also provided consultancy services for technical and marketing decisions related to our SAS product. This was mainly to get me out of debt, along with freelancing. My startup officially failed around the end of December when we stopped working on it. No one tells you that, okay guys, we failed; we all knew this wasn’t going anywhere for now.

When 2022 started, I was jobless, startupless, and almost cashless when I started grinding again, looking for a job to get me financially stable to work or build the next best thing I could think of, and that is how I spent more than half of the year on an entirely new topic, WEB3.

Web 3

After looking tirelessly on a couple of websites like “Angel List” and “Work at a Startup,” my friend Daniyal sent me a link to a job post that said something like “Web 3 developer, 5–7 years of experience, USD 150k/year” and he asked me to apply to it. And my first reaction was, HUH???
First, I do not have 5–7 years of experience; I barely have 1–2; second, the salary is ALOT more than an average salary in Pakistan; and third, I have no idea about Web3, Go, or Solidity; it just didn’t make sense even to apply. On the other hand, I was also using and failing for the last 4–5 months, so what’s the worse that could happen, right?

I applied, got some interviews, passed them, AND GOT THE JOB???

I was as amazed as anyone who found out; I mean, it was surreal, I was not mentally or emotionally prepared for the job and started having imposter syndrome from the very first day, but I thought to myself, I got this; I have to make sure to go through with it!

My family and a few close friends know how much I hate working at a job; they know I will leave it no matter how much money I am being paid, and this time I had special instructions not to leave the job, and I obliged; I didn’t know until the day they realized that my caliber was not upto someone with seven years of experience and as they needed someone who could learn far quicker than me, we said our goodbyes after 6–7 months. As a Member of the Technical Staff at the company Polymer Labs, I researched and worked on the Cosmos IBC-GO, focusing on bringing interoperability between all blockchains. I had the opportunity to collaborate with our startup investors on open-sourced projects directly and even explored a DevRel role for the company.

I got two things from this job: money, my main goal, and the other that I got to learn so much about web 3 see the community from within, and meet many incredible people!

One of my Bucket lists is to
“Birth a child between ML & Web3”
because I think that would be a fantastic thing that people would see.

Personal Projects

In addition to my professional experiences, I am passionate about secret projects that allow me to continuously improve my skills and explore new technologies. My most notable personal projects include the following:

Paint using Hand Gestures: This machine learning application replicates the Windows paint app, using hand tracking to draw on the screen using hands.

Quran & AI: I am using NLP knowledge on The Quran and looking forward to making something unique!

Real-Time Video Stability: Python code stabilizes any video and makes it look like it’s made using a Gimbal. I used YOLO V3 to detect objects in the stable video.

Custom OCR for Captcha: A custom OCR that works on any captcha using Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network Model (CRNN).

Indexing COVID-19 Research Papers: A search engine I made by indexing all the research papers mentioning COVID-19 available on Kaggle, using NLP. I could index 5GB of text data, resulting in a query time of 1 second.

Vehicle Speed & Number Plate Detection: A deep learning model mixed with mathematical calculations to detect vehicles’ speed and OCR to extract the number plates of the detected vehicles.

Youtube Video Tags Analysis ETL: An ETL pipeline I implemented that extracts data from the Youtube API, transforms it, stores it into SQL, and converts it to get analysis reports our needs. The project includes the classification of video information to their relevant tags.

Bomber Pacman: A game I made with GLUT GUI in C++, using Dijkstra to find the main character using the shortest path.

Blockchain: A unique Blockchain consensus algorithm that multiple users can use over the network, implemented using the Go Language.

These projects demonstrate my diverse skillset and passion for learning and exploring new technologies. As a mentor and open-source contributor, I always look for opportunities to help others and give back to the community.

In conclusion, I have over four years of technology and engineering experience, focusing on AI, machine learning, and software development. Through my professional experiences and personal projects, I have developed a wide range of skills, including software development, data processing, deep learning, and project management. I constantly strive to stay ahead of the curve and share my knowledge with others.

These achievements demonstrate my dedication and commitment to continually improving my skills and knowledge. I am eager to bring my passion and expertise to new challenges and opportunities in the future.

Latest Updates:

I am working on myself, on a few startups with my friends, and giving AI consultancy to a few foreign startups. I am still determining where I will be when you read this article or what I will be doing at that point, but I hope to do something I love that is outstanding in 2023.

If you need my help with anything do let me know in the comments or send me a message!

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