I help founders and businesses build customer apps, the tools their teams run on, and the software and cloud that connect them. One experienced technical partner, from design and architecture through launch and ongoing operation.
13+ years in production systemsFormer engineering managerStartup CTO
Most products need more than an app or a website: the tools a team runs on, a backend and data, the cloud they live in, sometimes a device. I build all of it, so nothing falls between vendors.
01Customer appiOS, Android and web, from one codebase, in the stores
Diners had no single place to find where to eat by mood, craving or dish. Most restaurants took bookings by phone, with menus scattered across PDFs, photos and Instagram.
What I did
Designed and built every part alone: the diner apps for iOS, Android and web, the restaurant portal and digital menus, the backend and AI search, a pipeline that reads menus into structured data, and the AWS infrastructure.
Where it is
Live and rated 4.8★ on both the App Store and Google Play, with about 1,400 venues listed across Lebanon.
Diner app · iOS, Android, web
Restaurant portal & digital menus
AI search in English, Arabic & French
Menu reading pipeline
Bookings over app, web & WhatsApp
AWS · moved from Bahrain to Frankfurt
Operations software · Founder
Dinesty Host
The restaurant's side of Dinesty: the floor, live service, bookings and the waitlist.
Restaurants ran service from a paper diary and phone calls: double bookings, lost walk-ins and no record of their regulars.
What I did
Designed and built the tablet and phone apps, the floor-plan editor, real-time service and waitlist, the public booking page and the backend, with CI/CD and crash reporting.
Where it is
On the App Store six months after the first commit, with a founding offer for the first 50 restaurants.
Tablet app for the host stand
Phone app for the floor
Floor-plan editor
Live service, synced across devices
Public booking page
Guest profiles & feedback
Hardware + cloud + app · Founder
einie
Home solar monitoring for Lebanon, where a house runs on state power, a generator and batteries.
The inverter's own app is minutes behind and can't tell the grid from the generator, so families can't see what powers the house or when to run the water heater.
What I did
Built the device firmware, the cloud server and the iPhone and Android apps, plus the printed enclosure, the website and the tooling to release firmware safely.
Where it is
A working pilot in real homes, 13 days after the first commit.
ESP32 firmware, signed updates & rollback
Cloud API that decodes the inverter
iPhone & Android app with widgets
Routines that switch smart plugs
Runs on a $7-a-month server, backed up
B2B SaaS · Co-founder & CTO
LightHouse by Sarya
Group medical insurance pricing for insurers and brokers in the UAE.
Quoting a company's group medical cover meant cleaning its staff spreadsheet by hand before anyone could price it.
What I did
Designed and built the whole platform as the only engineer: census ingestion with AI-assisted cleaning, a configurable rating engine, the underwriting workspace, quote PDFs and multi-tenant security.
Where it is
A multi-tenant platform for insurers and brokers, with pricing checked against real insurer quotes on every build.
Census ingestion · Excel & CSV
AI-assisted cleaning, held to tests
Configurable rating engine
Underwriting workspace & quote PDF
Single sign-on & roles
AWS, with security scans in CI
Experience
Built for production, not for the demo
2013 – 2025
Before my own products, I spent twelve years building and running systems for companies in North America and Europe, first as a backend engineer, then as an architect and engineering manager. Systems with real traffic, real money and real consequences when they fail. That is the bar every project gets, whatever its size.
Track record
Systems I built and ran for others
Flight documentation for airlinesFlydesk, an FAA-certified electronic flight bag used by US, Canadian and European airlines. Backend APIs. Lixar, Canada.
Point of sale for about a thousand golf coursesTeesnap, course management with POS and food & beverage across North America. Backend APIs. Lixar.
An audio platform with over a million usersLWAYVE, a proximity-aware audio tool. Microservices and the upload pipeline, tuned for high traffic. Lixar.
Hospital and clinic paymentsVestaPay, hospital and practice administration with payment management, from the backend to the interface. VestaCare, US.
Smart-building IoTEnd-to-end features in an IoT environment, on AWS. 1VALET, Canada.
Engineering management at a high-growth SaaSLed two cross-functional teams at Superside (remote, 4 years): access-role architecture, the move from a monolith to services, growth and activation features at scale.
Recommendations
From people I've worked with
“With Youssef in the lead you'll get a team that consistently delivers and meets deadlines in an environment where people enjoy working.”
Tor Egil FusdahlVP Engineering, Superside · managed Youssef directly
“While working in my team as a developer, he has always been top of class, delivering value with strong focus on time-to-value and fantastic quality.”
Damien AntipaPrincipal at Adobe · managed Youssef directly
“Thanks to his leadership, our team consistently delivered, often being the most productive software team in the whole company.”
Hugo MonteiroProduct Manager, Superside · same team
Designed for volumeData models, queues and caches planned for the load you expect in year two, not for the launch demo.
Quality gates, not hopeAutomated tests, code review, a staging environment and a release checklist before anything reaches users.
Seen and reversibleMonitoring, alerts, backups and a rollback path, so a problem is caught and undone before customers find it.
Ready to hand overDocumentation, runbooks and clean structure, so your own team can run and extend the system after launch.
Continuity
Built for continuity, with you in control
You own everythingCode repositories, cloud accounts, app store accounts and domains are in your name from day one.
Support after launchA monthly support plan covers fixes, updates and monitoring, with response times agreed up front.
Nothing locked in my headWritten architecture, runbooks and a recorded handover, so your team or another engineer can take over at any point.
A team when the project needs itOn larger projects, a business analyst, QA and design specialists I have worked with join in. I stay accountable for the system.
Services
Ways to work together
Written plan · fixed scope · fixed price
01
Build a new product
From idea to launch: customer app, team tools, backend and cloud, designed, built and released to the stores.
02
Extend an existing system
Add the missing layer: a backend for your app, an operations tool for your team, an app for your device, or AI that reads your documents.
03
Review and improve a system
A written review of architecture, code, UX and cloud costs, with a prioritised plan to fix what matters most.
No hand-off between a design agency, an app shop and a backend contractor. The person who drew the architecture also designed the screen and wrote the API behind it.
AI-accelerated, reviewed by me
I use AI tooling to cut build time. Every change is designed, reviewed and tested by me, and I stand behind it in production.
Written and visible
A written plan before any code, weekly builds you can click through, and documentation you keep.
Built to be run
I run my own systems in production: data runs, staged firmware releases, store submissions. Yours ships with the tooling to operate it, not just the app.
Craft
Design, motion and experiments
Design
Identity, systems and UX rules
Every product gets its own identity, a design system behind it and written UX rules, so people find it obvious from the first tap.
A distinct identity per product: palette, type, mark and voice.One design system, 14 components, shared by the Dinesty app and Host.
The app never guesses.If einie can't tell the grid from the generator, it says "Grid or generator".
One gesture, one meaning.In Host you drag a booking onto a table to seat it. A press is a tap or a drag, never both.
An error is a state, not an empty screen.A failed load says so. It never pretends there are no reservations.
Never block the main task.Phone verification never holds a booking hostage.
Hide what you can't use.LightHouse never shows a disabled button for a permission.
Built for local life.Arabizi, French and Arabic search, LBP and USD prices, right-to-left menus, WhatsApp flows.
Motion
Videos written in code
Launch films, ads and store previews written in code with Remotion, from the product's real screens and data, so a new version is a re-render, not a re-shoot.
AI search ad
Offers ad, from live deals
Host launch film
Partner reel
Reservations reel
Snaptrap launch ad
Experiments
Two games for the iPhone Duo
The foldable iPhone launched this month. I built games where opening and closing the phone is the controller: a new device, a new kind of input, shipped fast.
