Fifteen years. One engineer. Architecture, backend, frontend, pipeline. All of it shipped in Drupal Now with AI in the loop.
Fifteen years writing PHP and JavaScript for a living. Drupal, WordPress, Joomla, Shopify, Laravel, React, Node: if it runs on the web, I've shipped it and then kept it running afterwards. What's changed lately is how I build. AI sits in my workflow now, so the repetitive work goes faster and I spend my time where judgement actually matters. Acquia Certified on Drupal 11, currently leading development at Knectar with US and EU teams.
Start with what I have actually shipped.
Most of this was delivered through the agencies I work with, so the client and the agency are both named. Filter by the kind of work below.
Custom Drupal Platform & Migration to 10
Custom theme and custom module development for the museum's Drupal platform, alongside the migration up to Drupal 10. Local environments on DDEV, with Playwright smoke tests catching route, alias and redirect problems before they reached staging.
Joomla Recruiting Platform, 1.5 Through to 5
A recruiting platform for senior managers, and my longest-running direct client. I built it on Joomla 1.5 and have developed and maintained it ever since, carrying it up through every major Joomla release to 5 with custom extensions and full template rebuilds at each step. The same platform in production for well over a decade, still on my desk.
Rebrand, Redesign, Then Drupal 9 to 10
Three projects that had to land in the right order. The rebrand carried through every template, then a redesign that added new features on top of it, then the migration from Drupal 9 to 10. All of it on a live site that could not go dark in between.
Full Redesign and Drupal 8 to 11
A complete redesign of the college site with a set of new features built into it, plus a migration that carried the platform from Drupal 8 all the way to 11. Custom modules, custom theme, performance tuning and security work across the whole run.
Shopify Theme, B2B and Tracking Stack
Theme development plus a B2B implementation for wholesale buyers, with Meta Pixel and Google Tag Manager configured properly behind it. Then the PageSpeed work: hero image LCP, deferred third-party scripts, and a Meta catalog match-rate problem traced back to an orphaned server-side pixel nobody knew was still firing.
Workstream Codebase Behind Hundreds of Sites
Built the Bionorica workstream as a shared codebase, then used it to generate product websites at scale. One well-structured foundation producing hundreds of sites, instead of rebuilding the same thing from zero every time a product launched.
AI-Assisted Code Review Pass
Built an automated review step into my own delivery workflow with Claude. The diff goes in, and back come flagged security issues, missed edge cases and Drupal API misuse before a human reviewer opens the PR. The boring mistakes get caught early, so review time goes on design.
WordPress, WooCommerce and Magento Builds
Running alongside the Drupal work: a steady stream of WordPress and WooCommerce builds and Magento stores. Different platforms, same requirement, that whoever inherits it can still maintain it two years later.
Proprietary CRM Integration
Built a custom Drupal module that syncs client data into their CRM on its own. Manual data entry dropped by about 40%, and the team stopped copying rows between two systems by hand.
Zero-Downtime D7 and D9 Upgrades
Beyond the named projects, a run of migrations off Drupal 7 and 9 onto 10 and 11 across the client base. Live production sites, full content and user data intact, no downtime window. The unglamorous part is the field mapping, and that is where these projects are won or lost.
Apache Solr Search Overhaul
Replaced a search experience that returned almost nothing useful with a properly configured Apache Solr integration. Content became findable, and engagement followed.
Cross-Platform Hybrid Apps
Built the RESTful APIs and shipped Cordova and Ionic hybrid mobile apps on top of Drupal 8. Held 99.5% uptime across the run.
Eighteen jobs on Upwork. Every one of them five stars.
Akhtar is an excellent technical lead and we can only recommend him.
Akhtar is a great Technical Team Lead and we will continue collaboration on other projects.
Muhammad is a highly skilled and knowledgeable Tech Lead that we enjoy working with. He would make a great asset to any team.
Muhammad is an excellent partner for Drupal projects. He is very skilled at communicating how to most effectively use Drupal to meet our project requirements.
Muhammad was an excellent partner for our project. We started the project intending to use headless Drupal. Muhammad gave us excellent dispassionate advice on what Drupal could help with…
Thanks for your help during our project. We are looking forward to work with you together in future projects.
Verbatim from completed Upwork contracts. Read all of them on my Upwork profile →
Fifteen years of range. Three things I want to be hired for right now.
AI Engineering
LLM features inside CMS platforms and custom apps: semantic search, content assistance, summarisation and support automation. Plus AI-assisted delivery and code review running through every build I take on.
Enterprise Drupal
Drupal 10 and 11 architecture, custom module development, and the migrations off 7, 8 and 9 that most teams have been postponing for two years. Acquia Certified on Drupal 11.
Shopify Plus & B2B
B2B and wholesale implementations, theme development, and the tracking stack behind them. Google Tag Manager, Meta Pixel, server-side events and Core Web Vitals work that holds up under real traffic.
The person behind those projects.
I'm a full-stack engineer based in Lahore. Most of my career has run through PHP and CMS work, with Drupal at the centre of it (v7 through v11), plus a lot of WordPress, a fair amount of Joomla, and Shopify on the commerce side.
But I've never been only a CMS person. Laravel, Symfony, Node, React, Vue, Angular, hybrid mobile with Ionic and Cordova, REST and GraphQL APIs holding it all together. Every one of those has been in a paid, live project at some point, not a weekend tutorial.
The work I like best is the awkward kind. A Drupal 7 site nobody has touched in six years that needs to be on 11 by Q3. A Shopify store whose Meta pixel has been quietly reporting nonsense for months. A search box that returns nothing useful until you put Solr behind it properly.
I tend to stay. Four years at Knectar, four at April & June, and unitedinterim.com, a direct client whose Joomla platform I built on version 1.5 and still develop today on version 5. Partly loyalty, partly self-interest. If you make the architecture calls, you should still be there when the consequences arrive.
I've run teams too, as Technical Team Lead and then CTO, so I've done the estimates, the code reviews and the awkward conversation about why the date moved. I still prefer being in the codebase.
And since 2024 I've been putting AI on both sides of the job: into how I build, and into what the client ships.
- Full-stack development · PHP and JavaScript, front to back
- AI integration · LLM APIs, chat, semantic search, automation
- AI-assisted delivery · Claude and Copilot in daily use
- Drupal · v7 to v11, Acquia Certified
- WordPress, Joomla, Shopify · builds and migrations
- Laravel, Symfony, Node.js · custom application work
- React, Vue, Angular · frontend and headless builds
- APIs · REST, GraphQL, third-party services
- Cloud & DevOps · Pantheon, Acquia, AWS, CI/CD
- Performance · Solr, Redis, Varnish, Core Web Vitals
- Migrations · zero downtime, cross-platform
- Team leadership · Team Lead and CTO roles
Whatever the layer is, it is still me building it.
Custom Application Development
When a CMS is the wrong answer, I build the thing properly. Laravel, Symfony, Node on the back, React, Vue or Angular on the front, REST and GraphQL joining them up.
Enterprise CMS & Drupal
Drupal 7 to 11, WordPress and Joomla. Custom modules and plugins, theming, multisite, multilingual, and the migrations other people quietly decline to quote on.
eCommerce
Shopify and WooCommerce storefronts, and the tracking layer behind them. Core Web Vitals work, Meta and Klaviyo pixels, server-side tracking that reports numbers you can actually trust.
Cloud, DevOps & Performance
Pantheon, Acquia and AWS. CI/CD with Composer and Drush, Redis and Varnish caching, Solr search. Deployments that don't need a maintenance window.
AI Engineering & AI-Assisted Delivery
Two halves. In the product: LLM APIs wired into Drupal, WordPress and custom apps for content assistance, semantic search, summarisation and support automation. In the process: I build with Claude and Copilot every day and run an AI review pass over every diff, so the dull mistakes get caught in the pull request instead of production. It has made me quicker without making the code worse, which is the only version of this worth talking about.
I use AI properly, and I'm happy to show you exactly how.
Plenty of developers now say they "use AI". Here is what that actually means on my projects, on both sides of the work.
AI features your users touch
LLM APIs connected to the CMS or app you already run: content drafting inside the editor, semantic search that understands the question rather than matching keywords, document summarisation, and chat assistants trained on your own content.
AI that removes manual work
The unglamorous wins. Auto-tagging and categorising thousands of legacy nodes. Draft alt text for an image library nobody has time to caption. Bulk content cleanup during a migration that would otherwise take an intern three months.
Faster builds, same standards
Claude and Copilot handle scaffolding, boilerplate modules, test fixtures and repetitive refactors. I handle architecture, data modelling and every decision that matters. Nothing reaches a branch without me reading it first.
AI-assisted code review
Every diff gets an automated pass before a human sees it, looking for security holes, missed edge cases and misuse of the Drupal or WordPress API. Reviewers then spend their time on design instead of catching typos.
Where I don't let AI near the work
Architecture decisions, database schema, anything touching auth or payments, and any dependency I haven't read myself. AI is very good at producing code that looks right, and fifteen years of debugging other people's assumptions has made me suspicious of things that look right. You get the speed, and you still get an engineer who can explain every line of it.
Where the fifteen years actually went.
Senior Website Architect & Lead Developer
Knectar · Remote, USAI take technical initiatives from concept to deployment. Client work has included the Yale Center for British Art Drupal platform, the LIM College redesign and Drupal 8 to 11 migration, and the Mustang Seats Shopify B2B build. Custom modules, API integrations, migrations, and CI/CD across Pantheon, Acquia and AWS. Also the person pushing AI-assisted development and review into how the team ships.
Senior Drupal & WordPress Developer
ROI·DNALed platform redesigns and custom feature work, including the Apache Solr search integration. On flexential.com I handled the rebrand, the redesign that added new features on top of it, and the migration from Drupal 9 to 10.
Senior Drupal Developer & Technical Lead
Bright SolutionsLed multiple Drupal projects, including pfh.de and bioinfo, while maintaining strong collaborative relationships with design and client teams.
Senior Drupal & WordPress Developer
April & June GmbH — Internet MarketingBuilt the Bionorica workstream, a shared codebase used to generate hundreds of product websites, and delivered WordPress, WooCommerce and Magento work alongside it. Managed five developers, from empty repo through to live support. Four years with the same client, which tells you how it went.
CTO & Technical Project Manager
Virtual BaseOwned the technical direction as CTO while running delivery day to day. A team of ten developers and QA, a platform with a Node.js front end and a Laravel back end, taken through launch and the support period that followed. Stack decisions, hiring input and architecture sat with me alongside the schedule.
Senior Software Engineer
German IT SolutionsOwned resourcing on both ends of the stack, plus application architecture and project estimation. Spent a lot of it mentoring developers through Drupal, Joomla and WordPress builds.
Senior Software Engineer
Vizteck SolutionsWhere it started. Production software on Drupal and Magento, and the habits that everything since has been built on.
Years on each, counted honestly.
The bar is just time served. AI is the newest line on the list and the one moving fastest.
What is actually on my machine.
AI
CMS
Languages
Frameworks
DevOps & Tooling
Hosting & Cloud
Database
Performance & Search
Marketing & Tracking
Migration & Multilingual
Mobile
Testing & QA
The process is the same whether it is a migration or an empty repo.
Understand it first
What the business actually needs, what is already there, and what is going to break. Most bad builds are bad decisions made in week one.
Architect, then build
Data model, integrations, hosting. Then modules, themes and APIs in small pieces, with AI taking the repetitive parts so my hours go on the logic.
Harden before launch
Caching, query tuning, security review, AI-assisted code review over the whole branch. I would rather find the slow query now than at 9am on launch day.
Ship and stay
Zero-downtime deploy, CI/CD handed over, documentation a future developer can follow. Then I am still around when something needs changing.
★ Acquia Certified Developer — Drupal 11
Official Acquia certification verifying advanced Drupal 11 development expertise. View certification →
MCS, Computer Software Engineering
Bahauddin Zakariya University. System design, algorithms and database architecture. Two decades on, it is still the part of my training I lean on most when a project gets complicated.
One person, the whole build. Architecture, backend, frontend, deployment, and the AI layer on top. No handoffs between three contractors who each blame the other one.
I use AI openly. It writes the boilerplate, I make the decisions, and every line is reviewed before it ships. You get the speed without inheriting code nobody can explain.
Fifteen years of production, not demos. Sites with real traffic, real editors and real deadlines, kept running long after launch.
Based in Lahore, Pakistan, and working with US and EU teams for the last decade. Overlap hours, clear updates, no surprises.