Najaf Ali
Engineering Manager at Givery, Inc.- Claim this Profile
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English Native or bilingual proficiency
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Japanese Professional working proficiency
Topline Score
Bio
LinkedIn User
Ali is a talented, communicative, and adaptable engineer who was hired to lend additional manpower and expertise to a particularly complex Ruby on Rails app. He demonstrated an eagerness to add value and a genuine care for his work, which included several large and non-trivial technical upgrades. His solutions were thoughtful and well-tested, and he went out of his way to learn and understand the organization’s development processes and design patterns. As a result, his contributions felt more like those of a coworker than a contractor, and his productivity and self-sufficiency allowed him to take on multiple tasks in parallel. We were fortunate to have Ali stay on past the length of his initial engagement, and I’d gladly recommend him and seek out his expertise again.
Hannah Dwan
At Happy Bear Software, and as an apprentice in what was a new industry for me professionally, I was introduced to a workplace and environment that nurtured and encouraged growth, thanks primarily to the work of Ali. Managing extends much further than setting deadlines and organising meetings; at Happy Bear Software Ali fostered a positive work environment for all levels of developers working remotely, often from different time zones, a feat in itself. I could not have asked for a better first job as a developer than my job at Happy Bear Software. There were many factors to this, but Ali was a key one. As now a junior, I could not have asked for a more accomplished and brilliant person to respond to.
Etienne Mustow
Ali is one of the best people I've ever had the pleasure to work under. He's incredibly gregarious, caring and appreciative of those he mentors and manages. He always listened to the queries of us who worked under him immediately and dealt with issues in an attentive manner. It's obvious that he's already technologically and managerially accomplished and I couldn't recommend Ali enough for any role, senior or otherwise, as he's an irreplaceable asset to any team he'd work with.
LinkedIn User
Ali is a talented, communicative, and adaptable engineer who was hired to lend additional manpower and expertise to a particularly complex Ruby on Rails app. He demonstrated an eagerness to add value and a genuine care for his work, which included several large and non-trivial technical upgrades. His solutions were thoughtful and well-tested, and he went out of his way to learn and understand the organization’s development processes and design patterns. As a result, his contributions felt more like those of a coworker than a contractor, and his productivity and self-sufficiency allowed him to take on multiple tasks in parallel. We were fortunate to have Ali stay on past the length of his initial engagement, and I’d gladly recommend him and seek out his expertise again.
Hannah Dwan
At Happy Bear Software, and as an apprentice in what was a new industry for me professionally, I was introduced to a workplace and environment that nurtured and encouraged growth, thanks primarily to the work of Ali. Managing extends much further than setting deadlines and organising meetings; at Happy Bear Software Ali fostered a positive work environment for all levels of developers working remotely, often from different time zones, a feat in itself. I could not have asked for a better first job as a developer than my job at Happy Bear Software. There were many factors to this, but Ali was a key one. As now a junior, I could not have asked for a more accomplished and brilliant person to respond to.
Etienne Mustow
Ali is one of the best people I've ever had the pleasure to work under. He's incredibly gregarious, caring and appreciative of those he mentors and manages. He always listened to the queries of us who worked under him immediately and dealt with issues in an attentive manner. It's obvious that he's already technologically and managerially accomplished and I couldn't recommend Ali enough for any role, senior or otherwise, as he's an irreplaceable asset to any team he'd work with.
LinkedIn User
Ali is a talented, communicative, and adaptable engineer who was hired to lend additional manpower and expertise to a particularly complex Ruby on Rails app. He demonstrated an eagerness to add value and a genuine care for his work, which included several large and non-trivial technical upgrades. His solutions were thoughtful and well-tested, and he went out of his way to learn and understand the organization’s development processes and design patterns. As a result, his contributions felt more like those of a coworker than a contractor, and his productivity and self-sufficiency allowed him to take on multiple tasks in parallel. We were fortunate to have Ali stay on past the length of his initial engagement, and I’d gladly recommend him and seek out his expertise again.
Hannah Dwan
At Happy Bear Software, and as an apprentice in what was a new industry for me professionally, I was introduced to a workplace and environment that nurtured and encouraged growth, thanks primarily to the work of Ali. Managing extends much further than setting deadlines and organising meetings; at Happy Bear Software Ali fostered a positive work environment for all levels of developers working remotely, often from different time zones, a feat in itself. I could not have asked for a better first job as a developer than my job at Happy Bear Software. There were many factors to this, but Ali was a key one. As now a junior, I could not have asked for a more accomplished and brilliant person to respond to.
Etienne Mustow
Ali is one of the best people I've ever had the pleasure to work under. He's incredibly gregarious, caring and appreciative of those he mentors and manages. He always listened to the queries of us who worked under him immediately and dealt with issues in an attentive manner. It's obvious that he's already technologically and managerially accomplished and I couldn't recommend Ali enough for any role, senior or otherwise, as he's an irreplaceable asset to any team he'd work with.
LinkedIn User
Ali is a talented, communicative, and adaptable engineer who was hired to lend additional manpower and expertise to a particularly complex Ruby on Rails app. He demonstrated an eagerness to add value and a genuine care for his work, which included several large and non-trivial technical upgrades. His solutions were thoughtful and well-tested, and he went out of his way to learn and understand the organization’s development processes and design patterns. As a result, his contributions felt more like those of a coworker than a contractor, and his productivity and self-sufficiency allowed him to take on multiple tasks in parallel. We were fortunate to have Ali stay on past the length of his initial engagement, and I’d gladly recommend him and seek out his expertise again.
Hannah Dwan
At Happy Bear Software, and as an apprentice in what was a new industry for me professionally, I was introduced to a workplace and environment that nurtured and encouraged growth, thanks primarily to the work of Ali. Managing extends much further than setting deadlines and organising meetings; at Happy Bear Software Ali fostered a positive work environment for all levels of developers working remotely, often from different time zones, a feat in itself. I could not have asked for a better first job as a developer than my job at Happy Bear Software. There were many factors to this, but Ali was a key one. As now a junior, I could not have asked for a more accomplished and brilliant person to respond to.
Etienne Mustow
Ali is one of the best people I've ever had the pleasure to work under. He's incredibly gregarious, caring and appreciative of those he mentors and manages. He always listened to the queries of us who worked under him immediately and dealt with issues in an attentive manner. It's obvious that he's already technologically and managerially accomplished and I couldn't recommend Ali enough for any role, senior or otherwise, as he's an irreplaceable asset to any team he'd work with.
Experience
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Givery, Inc.
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Japan
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Technology, Information and Internet
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1 - 100 Employee
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Engineering Manager
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Aug 2023 - Present
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Skiller Whale
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United Kingdom
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E-learning
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1 - 100 Employee
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Coach - SQL Core and Advanced PostgresQL
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Apr 2023 - Present
I teach professional developers about SQL and advanced PostgresQL on behalf of Skiller Whale. I teach professional developers about SQL and advanced PostgresQL on behalf of Skiller Whale.
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Independent Consultant
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Aug 2018 - Present
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Happy Bear Software Limited
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United Kingdom
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Internet Publishing
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1 - 100 Employee
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Founder and CTO
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Jan 2012 - Aug 2018
Happy Bear Software was a Rails/JavaScript development consultancy that I founded and acted as the CTO of for almost seven years. In that time I: * Worked hands-on and managed more than thirty projects, using Ruby, Rails, modern JavaScript, and a large variety of back-end technologies to deliver software for our clients. * Personally hired and trained multiple apprentice developers all the way from raw beginners to senior developers that our clients were happy to pay our full rate for. * Grew a distributed team of developers with the team working from all continents (aside from the poles). * Grew the company’s annual revenue to half a million pounds. * Created technical/communication processes and guides for the team in order to maintain a consistently high standard of software and client experience. Show less
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Happity
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United Kingdom
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Individual and Family Services
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1 - 100 Employee
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Technical Advisor
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Dec 2016 - Oct 2017
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New Bamboo
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United Kingdom
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Software Development
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1 - 100 Employee
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Developer
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Oct 2011 - May 2012
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MOO
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United Kingdom
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Printing Services
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300 - 400 Employee
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Senior Developer
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Aug 2010 - Oct 2011
At moo, along with a team of 12+ developers, I was responsible for: - Planning and implementing new functionality on our high-traffic e-commerce website - Maintaining a high standard of code - Mentoring junior members of the development team Where possible all new code is unit tested, the tests being run on a CI server. The codebase while not necessarily following the MVC pattern, is well thought out and has good separation between business logic (using Zend Framework + Doctrine ORM) and view logic (using Smarty + CouchDB). We used an Agile development process (Scrum) in two week sprints, with planning poker, daily standups, sprint planning meetings and retrospectives. Achievements to date: - Contributing to various projects, including rush printing, logo design and pre-defined packs. - Migrating the 40,000+ commit svn repository to git - Adding hash-based integrity checks to the shopping cart Show less
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Webgains
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United Kingdom
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Advertising Services
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1 - 100 Employee
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Developer
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Dec 2009 - Aug 2010
At Webgains I was responsible for new features, bugfixes and maintenance of a high-traffic affiliate marketing platform, built with an in-house MVC-style framework. Achievements included: - Plugging a major security hole on the platform. - Contributing to a refactor of the codebase from individual php files to using a front controller. - Contributing to architectural planning of new features. At Webgains I was responsible for new features, bugfixes and maintenance of a high-traffic affiliate marketing platform, built with an in-house MVC-style framework. Achievements included: - Plugging a major security hole on the platform. - Contributing to a refactor of the codebase from individual php files to using a front controller. - Contributing to architectural planning of new features.
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Web Developer
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Jan 2007 - Aug 2010
As a freelancer in Japan I dealt mainly with individuals and small businesses, building smaller, brochure-style sites along with larger content-managed sites, usually in both Japanese and English. Currently I do a range of web development work including basic tasks like wordpress theme customizations all the way up to building web applications with frameworks such as Symfony. I work directly with small business clients and provide extra programming manpower for digital agencies. As a freelancer in Japan I dealt mainly with individuals and small businesses, building smaller, brochure-style sites along with larger content-managed sites, usually in both Japanese and English. Currently I do a range of web development work including basic tasks like wordpress theme customizations all the way up to building web applications with frameworks such as Symfony. I work directly with small business clients and provide extra programming manpower for digital agencies.
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Web Developer
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Aug 2009 - Nov 2009
As a contract developer at Lost Ferret, I was tasked with an XML integration of a clients e-commerce website based on Lost Ferrets propriety Aurora platform and the clients Java-based accounting/fulfilment system. While working for Lost Ferret, I was exposed to a number of web-service technologies in an e-commerce context, including OAuth and SOAP. As a contract developer at Lost Ferret, I was tasked with an XML integration of a clients e-commerce website based on Lost Ferrets propriety Aurora platform and the clients Java-based accounting/fulfilment system. While working for Lost Ferret, I was exposed to a number of web-service technologies in an e-commerce context, including OAuth and SOAP.
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Web Developer
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Aug 2008 - Jul 2009
At Score my primary responsibility was to build content-managed client websites using XHTML/CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, Drupal and the LAMP stack. I was also responsible for small-scale website amends/bugfixes and day-to-day system administration tasks including automated backups, site-migrations and producing technical documentation. I contributed to formalization of Scores development process and helped put in place security best practices for client websites. At Score my primary responsibility was to build content-managed client websites using XHTML/CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, Drupal and the LAMP stack. I was also responsible for small-scale website amends/bugfixes and day-to-day system administration tasks including automated backups, site-migrations and producing technical documentation. I contributed to formalization of Scores development process and helped put in place security best practices for client websites.
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Berlitz Corporation
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United States
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Education
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700 & Above Employee
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English Instructor
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Aug 2007 - Jul 2008
Based in Tokyo, my role here was to provide Business English instruction to senior executives and high-level medical, legal and consulting professionals. Lesson subjects ranged from beginners English to differences between Japanese/Western business culture and corporate presentation skills. Based in Tokyo, my role here was to provide Business English instruction to senior executives and high-level medical, legal and consulting professionals. Lesson subjects ranged from beginners English to differences between Japanese/Western business culture and corporate presentation skills.
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Japan Exchange and Teaching Program(me) (JET)
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International Affairs
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700 & Above Employee
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Assistant Language Instructor
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Aug 2006 - Aug 2007
Deep in the Japanese countryside, this job involved teaching English to Japanese Senior High School students (aged 16-18). Also ran an English Conversation club in evenings and helped to organize cross-cultural events local to the town I lived and worked in. Deep in the Japanese countryside, this job involved teaching English to Japanese Senior High School students (aged 16-18). Also ran an English Conversation club in evenings and helped to organize cross-cultural events local to the town I lived and worked in.
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Education
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2003 - 2006
UCL
BSc, Computer Science -
Isleworth and Syon School for Boys
