Nawaf Alsharqi
Senior Software
Engineer
Backend engineer at Delivery Hero, focused on quick-commerce systems in the Middle East. I mostly write Go, break apart monoliths, and try to keep things running when traffic spikes.
production
through my services
per day
A bit about me
I like building things that don't fall over. Most of my work is backend: APIs, event-driven pipelines, data migrations. The stuff that's invisible when it works and very visible when it doesn't. Right now my systems handle around 26 million requests a day, which is a fun number until something breaks at 2am.
I started out writing Node.js and building mobile backends. Somewhere along the way I picked up Go and never really looked back. At Sary I got deep into Domain-Driven Design because the codebase needed it badly. At HungerStation I've been leading a small team, shipping new services from scratch, and doing the unglamorous work of migrating data out of monoliths without losing records.
I did my degree at KFUPM in Software Engineering. When I'm not working, I'm usually reading about system design, mentoring other engineers, or trying to make on-call rotations less miserable.
Where I've worked
Startups, scale-ups, and one of the biggest delivery platforms in the region.
HungerStation (Delivery Hero)
Riyadh, Saudi ArabiaSenior Software Engineer
Jul 2025 — Present- Tech lead for the New Initiatives squad. We take ideas from zero to production, and I own the backend architecture side of that.
- Managing 4 engineers day-to-day: planning sprints, estimating work, making sure we actually ship on time.
- Shipped the Coupon Packs service in 3 weeks (Go, PostgreSQL, Pub/Sub, K8s). It's now behind ~100M SAR in GMV, which was a nice surprise.
- The coupon system generates millions of coupons daily through an event-driven pipeline. 91%+ test coverage, full Datadog observability.
- Started an interview process overhaul across Backend and Mobile. Ended up being adopted by 80+ engineers company-wide.
- Migrated the cart service data from a monolith to a proper microservice. 20M+ records moved over via pglogical replication without downtime.
Software Engineer II
Mar 2024 — Jun 2025- Was the first engineer on KSA Quick-Commerce. Onboarded and mentored 3 IC3s as the team scaled up.
- Rewrote order reconciliation from Ruby to Go. 67% faster, now handles ~750K requests/day.
- Built an item-heartbeat system that checks inventory proactively. Cut QC order failures by 10%.
- Designed push + SMS notifications for QC orders. Customer care escalations dropped 76% after rollout.
Sary
Dammam, Saudi ArabiaSoftware Engineer I
Mar 2023 — Feb 2024- Brought DDD into the codebase: aggregates, repositories, bounded contexts. The legacy code really needed the structure.
- Rebuilt the buyer's wallet from scratch. The old one was a pain to extend; the new one isn't.
- Reworked the payment workflow using DDD patterns so we could actually add new payment methods without breaking everything.
Associate Software Engineer
Jan 2022 — Mar 2023- Scaled driver tracking to handle hundreds of millions of data points using pglogical replication across two PostgreSQL replicas.
- Driver location logs were getting lost at a 90% rate. Reworked the tracking flow and got losses down to 3-5%.
- Built a driver location insights service that both internal teams and external partners use.
Backend Software Engineer
Oct 2021 — Jan 2022- Owned the database modeling for the POS system and a few internal projects.
- Built the grocery POS backend with Django and PostgreSQL.
- Set up code standards for the team: test structure, project layout, the usual stuff that saves time later.
Alraedah
Riyadh, Saudi ArabiaSoftware Engineer
May 2021 — Oct 2021- Built the backend for a fintech app: user onboarding, loan tracking, repayment flows.
- Set up auth with Keycloak and OTP verification.
- Integrated with the MonshaatSA API and wrote an algorithm to assign clients to managers.
Cart
RemoteBackend Software Engineer
Jan 2021 — May 2021- Built the backend for the Cart mobile app from scratch.
- Wrote APIs for Saudi grocery chains like Tamimi, Panda, and Carrefour.
- Did a bunch of Python scraping to collect product data from different retailers.
Axenda
Saudi ArabiaSoftware Engineer
Jul 2020 — Jun 2021- Built the backend with Node.js, Express, and MongoDB.
- Made an iOS app in SwiftUI with Firebase. Added VoiceOver support because accessibility matters.
Things I've shipped publicly
PRs to projects I actually use, and libraries I built because I needed them.
Contributions
Apple's Go binding for the Pkl config language. Added tests for core functionality that was missing coverage.
RabbitMQ's official Go AMQP client. The publish methods weren't actually respecting context cancellation, so timeouts didn't work. Fixed that.
LinkedIn Learning course on observability with OpenTelemetry. Spotted some issues in the course materials and submitted fixes.
Libraries
Wraps net/smtp so you can send emails in Go without writing the same boilerplate every time.
View on GitHubLoad testing tool for message queue consumers. Publishes at configurable rates so you can simulate traffic patterns and see how your consumers hold up.
View on GitHubThe Go project structure I kept copy-pasting, so I turned it into a proper starter kit. HTTP APIs, gRPC, background jobs, consumers.
View on GitHubSpins up mock HTTP/gRPC servers that can simulate failures, latency, and bad status codes. Configure everything via JSON. Useful for testing and K8s chaos scenarios.
View on GitHubWhat I work with
What I actually use day-to-day.
Languages & Runtimes
Databases & Messaging
Infrastructure & DevOps
Architecture & Patterns
Testing & Observability
Frameworks & Tools
Background
King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals
Bachelor's degree, Software Engineering
Information & Computer Science
Credentials
Let's talk
Got a project in mind, want to talk distributed systems, or just want to say hi? I'm around.