About

I’m Habiba Faisal, a software engineer from Karachi, Pakistan. I’ve spent about three years in startups, mostly working directly with founders, across frontend, backend, mobile and product.

There’s a pattern to my work. I join a company in a domain I don’t know and learn it well enough to build the central system. At Sail Wellness that was health and toxicology. At Livedin it was property management in Saudi Arabia. At a stealth US freight-factoring startup it was invoice finance, where I built the funding-decision engine, the ledger and money movement.

How I work

What I’m good at is translation between the product, the domain and the code. If I understand the business and the operator’s day well enough, a small change can have an outsized effect.

I like staying close to operations and the business. When someone asks for a feature, I look for the real pain behind it: in reviews, in engagement, and in the things that don’t show up in metrics. Then I fix it, and check whether the fix worked.

I care about detail, and Apple is a big influence there. Soon after I joined Sail, the app felt wrong, even though it matched the design file. I traced it to the font. Changing it changed the whole app.

Earlier

I studied computer science at SZABIST in Karachi and graduated as the silver medalist. Right after, I taught there for a semester as adjunct faculty: Software Development and Construction. Explaining things to a room is still how I check whether I understand them.

I was once acknowledged by the US Department of Defense for a responsible vulnerability disclosure.

Side projects

Mellow. A Chrome extension that gives Google Docs a real dark mode: the page itself goes dark while images keep their true colours. It also shows two pages side by side, like an open book. Free.

Swing Badminton. A badminton game in the browser, controlled by tracking your hand through the webcam. Play solo against the computer, or two players on one webcam. Free to play.

Contact

The best way to reach me is email: habibafaisal8@gmail.com. My résumé is a one-page PDF. I’m also on GitHub and LinkedIn.