Azeem Ashraf
Lead Full-Stack Engineer · Fintech & Blockchain · Ex-CTO
Lead full-stack engineer, 8 years in TypeScript and Node across regulated fintech and blockchain. Co-founder & ex-CTO of NIFTRON, a funded tokenization platform, where I wrote the entire codebase (Solidity, Node and Go) from zero and led the team who built on it. Deep in smart contracts (ERC-20/721/1155, upgradeable proxies, gasless meta-transactions), serverless AWS backends, and KYC/AML systems. Open to senior / lead roles, remote-first, or UAE · Saudi · Qatar · Singapore · Australia.
Experience
Lead Full-Stack Engineer · Mist Financial (Dijital Team)
Mar 2025 to present
A$3M funds processed · 99% uptime · 10 microservices · 700+ PRs shipped · ~8-engineer team · ASIC / AUSTRAC · AWS cost cut ~40%
- Architect and lead the backend for a regulated (ASIC/AUSTRAC) Banking-as-a-Service platform, a 10-service Node microservices system on AWS spanning identity, KYC/AML, money movement, documents, e-commerce and notifications, working directly with the CEO and owning technical direction and production releases for an 8-engineer team.
- Built the KYC / AML pipeline end to end; integrated onboarding across third-party KYC / identity and onboarding providers.
- Introduced Claude-based agentic testing for automated bug detection.
Co-Founder & CTO · NIFTRON
Feb 2020 to Feb 2025
10K users · 100K tokens minted · 5 products shipped · led 10 engineers · $285K raised
- Wrote the entire initial codebase myself from zero, every Solidity contract, the Node.js backend and the Go services, then recruited and led a team who continued it. Built a blockchain-agnostic Blockchain-as-a-Service platform: ERC-20/721/1155 with transfer restrictions and role-based access, plus escrow, vesting and timelocks.
- Shipped a developer console, multi-chain SDK, hosted identity & auth, IPFS storage, token explorer and marketplace; React Native mobile apps (the Niftron wallet and AimChat) released to the App Store and Google Play; Go services for concurrent event indexing on AWS.
- Ran it as a platform and a studio: in-house products (Nexentry KYC, DePro traceability) plus client delivery: CreditNature, Elevate, Amaten, AimChat, UNNE-T.
- Raised $285K (Lankan Angel Network, Spiralation); led engineering, finance and compliance.
Freelance Software & Blockchain Engineer · Self-employed
Apr 2019 to present
- Custom Solidity protocols, EcoFutures: a modular, upgradeable multi-contract protocol tokenizing conservation land easements (forked upgradeable ERC-20, gasless meta-tx, escrow / vesting / dividends), hardened across six production iterations.
- Cross-chain bridge (Ethereum ↔ Polygon), BEP-20 token + NFT domain registry, and an on-chain event indexer for Ink Chain (viem → Prisma / Postgres → GraphQL + WebSocket).
Blockchain Developer · Blockevent
Feb 2019 to May 2020
15,000+ registrations in 30 min · Google I/O Extended Sri Lanka 2019 · Dialog Ideamart · Stellar
- Built Blockevent, the blockchain-based (Stellar) registration and ticketing platform used for Google I/O Extended Sri Lanka 2019, powered by Dialog Ideamart and Google Developer Group Sri Lanka. Also researched protocol upgrades and financial smart contracts.
Software Engineering Trainee · 99X Technology (Tracified, now Tillit)
Feb 2018 to Apr 2019
- One of the founding engineers on Tracified (now Tillit); built the Tracified Gateway from scratch in Go, gorilla/mux routing, goroutines for concurrent chain ingestion, test suites in Mocha and Chai.
Skills
LanguagesTypeScript, JavaScript, Solidity, Go, PHP, Java, Dart, Python, Swift
FrontendReact, React Native, Next.js, Angular, Flutter, Vue
BackendNode, NestJS, Express, GraphQL
BlockchainEVM, Stellar, ERC-20/721/1155, UUPS proxies, EIP-712 meta-tx, ethers.js, Truffle, Hardhat, Foundry
Cloud / DataAWS (Lambda, SQS, API Gateway, DynamoDB, Cognito), Serverless Framework, Docker, Terraform
DatabasesPostgreSQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB, Redis
Education & Certifications
- BSc (Hons) Computer Science & Software Engineering, University of Bedfordshire · First Class Honours
- HND in Information Technology, SLIIT · CGPA 3.82, Dean's List
- Corda Certified Developer (R3) · Publication: Jigsaw, decentralized knowledge sharing
Endorsement & References
“Takes ownership. Doesn't panic. Works quickly. Takes initiative. Solves problems.”
Shariq Khwaja, Fractional CTO, Mist Financial · Technology Transformation Executive, 25 yrs
References available on request: Shariq Khwaja (Fractional CTO, Mist Financial) · Dileepa Jayatilake (CEO, Tillit, formerly Tracified).