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Dubai, UAE

Noman Ghani

Principal Software Architect

I turn slow, manual and risky processes into fast, automated systems, and lead the teams that run them.

ArchitectureSoftware DevelopmentAgentic AI SolutionsData PlatformsAutomation

Get in touch Download CV

Open to conversations about principal and architect roles, consulting and advisory work.

years building software
17+
applications shipped
200+
years leading teams
15
brands on my data platform
50+
Noman Ghani
17+ years Software · AI
LinkedInCareer, recommendations and updates GitHub21 public repos · ★ 6 MediumLatest: I Built PakAlerts Because Knowing What Is Happening Around You Matters My Blog Stack Overflow468 reputation · 39 answers

About

I don't just design systems, I build them.

Principal Software Architect with 17 years of hands-on software development and 15 years leading teams across luxury retail, government, healthcare and enterprise. At Chalhoub Group, one of the Middle East's largest luxury groups with 50+ global brands, I lead digital transformation: architecture, hands-on software delivery, agentic AI and data platforms that pay for themselves.

My work is measured in outcomes: a 30-day inventory reconciliation cut to 5 minutes, a ZATCA e-invoicing engine that reached 100% compliance where earlier attempts had failed, data pipelines moving 10M+ records a day on GCP, and agentic AI workflows saving 200+ hours a month. Before that I built software for IBM, RTA, Mediclinic, Global Village and Hallmark Channel, and shipped more than 200 applications.

I bridge strategy and delivery: every architecture decision is written down, reasoned and tied to business value, and I still write production code. Technical author on Medium, with Stack Overflow answers read by 2.7 million developers.

Impact

Outcomes, not adjectives

30d → 5min

SIOCS Turnaround

99.7% time reduction · zero manual intervention

Weeks → min

Data Source Onboarding

Configured in my DIL dashboard, not new code, repos and Airflow DAGs

How it works

100%

ZATCA Compliance

First team to solve it · millions of invoices

200+

Hours Saved / Mo

via Agentic AI & automation pipelines

10M+

Records / Day

BigQuery pipelines · 50+ luxury brands

60%

Process Reduction

Govt portals · 500+ employees served

Got a process that takes 30 days but should take 5 min? Let's talk about what it would take.

Get in touch Download CV

Clients

Who I've built for

Work I delivered directly for these organisations, in-house or through the companies I was with.

Global Village

Events & venues · via GTECH

Web platform for one of the region's largest visitor attractions, built for high seasonal traffic.

globalvillage.ae

UAE Government Games

Government

Mediclinic Middle East

Healthcare · via GTECH

ICD/CPT medical-records backend: millions of records, under 2 seconds per request.

mediclinic.ae

Level Shoes

Luxury retail · at Chalhoub Group

Inventory reconciliation (SIOCS) cut from 30 days to 5 minutes.

levelshoes.com

Faces

Luxury retail · at Chalhoub Group

Inventory reconciliation (SIOCS) cut from 30 days to 5 minutes.

faces.ae

Tanagra

Luxury retail · at Chalhoub Group

Inventory reconciliation (SIOCS) cut from 30 days to 5 minutes.

Also built for Roads & Transport Authority (RTA) · National Electronic Security Authority · Education & Human Resources Council · Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque Centre · Chalhoub Group · Lacoste · IBM · Hallmark Channel · Coca-Cola · Michelin · HMD Global · Global Women's Forum Dubai

How I can help

What I can do for your team

Pick the one that sounds like your problem.

Software architecture & modernisation

The problem
Legacy systems slow the business down, and every change feels risky.
What I do
I map the system, write the decisions down, and re-architect in safe steps while it keeps running.
Proof
A 30-day inventory reconciliation cut to 5 minutes; a ZATCA e-invoicing engine at 100% compliance.
Talk about this

Software development

The problem
A product to build, and it has to be built properly.
What I do
Hands-on delivery in .NET, C#, Python and TypeScript: clean APIs, automated tests and CI/CD from the first commit, in code your team can confidently own.
Proof
200+ applications shipped since 2009, from Global Village's web platform to the software behind a Guinness World Record.
Talk about this

Agentic AI development

The problem
You want AI agents that do real work in your systems, not another demo.
What I do
Agents built with Microsoft Agent Framework, Semantic Kernel and LangChain: tool use, retrieval over your own data, human review where it matters, and evaluation before anything ships.
Proof
Agentic workflows in production saving 200+ hours a month, with model costs kept low by running open models on Ollama and Hugging Face where they fit.
Talk about this

Data platforms

The problem
Data lives in silos and reports take days.
What I do
A modern stack on GCP with BigQuery, dbt and Airflow: configuration-driven pipelines with quality checks and lineage.
Proof
10M+ records a day for 50+ brands; new data sources onboarded in minutes, not weeks.
Talk about this

Process automation

The problem
Manual, repetitive work is eating your team's week.
What I do
I map where the time actually goes, then automate it end to end: integrations, scheduled jobs, and AI only where it earns its place.
Proof
200+ hours of manual work removed every month, with near-zero manual intervention in core processes.
Talk about this

Engineering leadership

The problem
A team that needs direction, standards and a roadmap leadership trusts.
What I do
Mentoring, design reviews and architecture decision records, with trade-offs explained in business terms.
Proof
Leading teams since 2011; my ADR practice was adopted across the engineering organisation.
Talk about this

Career arc

Capabilities that stack up

Each line starts the year I began doing it, and none of them has stopped.

  1. Software engineering since 2009 · 17 yrs
  2. Team leadership since 2011 · 15 yrs
  3. Solution architecture since 2019 · 7 yrs
  4. Data engineering since 2024 · 2 yrs
  5. Agentic AI since 2024 · 2 yrs

Experience

17 years of shipping

  1. Principal Software Engineer & Digital Transformation Lead

    Jul 2021 – Present · 5 yrs 3 mos

    Chalhoub Group · Dubai, UAE

    Digital transformation across one of the Middle East's largest luxury conglomerates, operating 50+ global brands.

    Show details

    Architectural Turnaround — SIOCS Inventory Reconciliation

    • Inherited a legacy reconciliation process requiring a full team and 30 days of manual effort per cycle.
    • Re-architected the data ingestion and automation layer end-to-end, compressing the cycle from 30 days to under 5 minutes — 100% elimination of manual processing effort and near-zero error rates, saving millions of dirhams annually across Level Shoes, Lacoste, Faces, Tanagra, and Guess.

    Modern Data Infrastructure (GCP / BigQuery)

    • Led the transition to a modern data stack on GCP to support 50+ luxury brands across the group.
    • Architected high-throughput pipelines using dbt and Apache Airflow with a YAML-driven DAG builder pattern, processing 10M+ daily records into BigQuery with automated quality checks and lineage tracking.
    • Built complex dimensional models enabling real-time Looker dashboards — reducing "Time to Insight" from days to seconds.
    • Built the Data Ingestion Layer (DIL): new data sources are configured in a dashboard instead of new code, repos and Airflow DAGs, cutting onboarding from weeks to minutes.

    Agentic AI & RAG Implementation

    • Designed and deployed agentic AI workflows using Microsoft Agent Framework, Semantic Kernel and LangChain on Azure OpenAI Service — integrating RAG pipelines with vector search to automate high-frequency business logic and knowledge retrieval across enterprise datasets.
    • Built demand forecasting models using ML.NET and Python to optimise stock levels for tier-1 brands, improving inventory efficiency and reducing overstock costs.
    • Automation suite saves 200+ man-hours per month, with near-zero manual intervention across core business processes.
    • Cut LLM running costs by serving open-weight models through Ollama and Hugging Face for workloads that didn't need a hosted model, keeping Azure OpenAI for the tasks that did.

    ZATCA Compliance Breakthrough (KSA E-Invoicing)

    • Solved a critical regulatory blocker where prior implementations failed due to floating-point discrepancies in cryptographic signing — a problem that had stumped multiple engineering teams.
    • Engineered a custom mathematical rounding engine ensuring 100% ZATCA compliance across millions of invoices, eliminating significant regulatory and financial risk for the group.

    Leadership, Governance & Stakeholder Communication

    • Led and mentored a cross-functional team of 5 engineers; introduced Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) and structured design review processes adopted across the engineering organisation.
    • Presented architecture proposals and technology roadmaps directly to senior leadership and C-level stakeholders — translating complex system trade-offs into clear business impact narratives.
    .NETC#PythonGCPBigQuerydbtApache AirflowMicrosoft Agent FrameworkSemantic KernelLangChainLangGraphAzure OpenAIOllamaHugging FaceRAG PipelinesML.NETBlazorAzureAWSKubernetesDockerSQLNoSQL

  2. Tech Lead / Solutions Architect

    Apr 2019 – Jul 2021 · 2 yrs 3 mos

    Education & Human Resources Council (UAE Gov.) · Dubai, UAE

    Show details
    • Architected mission-critical government portals serving 500+ employees across UAE federal entities, with full compliance to UAE national cybersecurity and data residency standards.
    • Reduced manual processing overhead by 60% through design and integration of AI-powered chatbots and intelligent recommendation engines — deployed on Azure.
    • Led full delivery lifecycle across multiple concurrent programmes — requirements, architecture, development, and Azure production deployment — interfacing directly with government stakeholders.
    .NETC#PythonDjangoReactAzureAzure FunctionsSQL ServerGraphQLRabbitMQ

  3. Senior Software Engineer & Tech Lead

    Feb 2016 – Mar 2019 · 3 yrs 1 mo

    GTECH Information Technology · Dubai, UAE

    Show details
    • Mediclinic Middle East: Architected a high-availability backend system processing millions of ICD/CPT medical records for concurrent users — optimised to handle individual requests in under 2 seconds with 99.9% uptime SLA.
    • GlobalVillage UAE: Architected and delivered the web platform for one of the region's largest visitor attractions, supporting high-traffic seasonal load.
    • IBM IoT Project: Built an IoT-connected foosball scoring system for IBM — Raspberry Pi sensors feeding real-time goal events via Python through IBM's IoT platform, with a Node.js + Node-RED backend and NoSQL data layer.
    • Guinness World Record Event: Engineered the software and iOS application (Ionic + PHP API) for a Dubai event that broke the Guinness World Record for most energy generated by bicycles.
    • Global Women's Forum Dubai: Built a live step-counting pedometer app and API for the forum attended by HH Sheikh Hamdan — participant steps aggregated in real time on the main event screen.
    • Computer Vision Donation Box: Developed a motion-detection system using Python and OpenCV for a Ramadan charity installation in Abu Dhabi.
    • RTA UAE Captive Portal: Configured and deployed a secure network captive portal for Roads & Transport Authority UAE using Cisco Identity Service Engine (ISE) 2.0.
    .NETPythonPHPNode.jsNode-REDRaspberry PiOpenCVIonicAzureAWSDockerSQLNoSQLKafkaCisco ISE

Earlier career

  1. Senior Web Developer · AutoTrader UAE Nov 2014 – Jan 2016
    • Built Arabic (right-to-left) support and the mobile website for the UAE's leading car marketplace.
    • Introduced Git for distributed development, built analytics tools for deeper site reporting, and helped hire engineers.
  2. Web Developer · Time Group Middle East Jun 2013 – Oct 2014
    • Built and maintained Forge, the in-house PHP framework used by every developer and designer in the company.
    • Delivered websites including the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque Centre, plus iOS and Android apps with PhoneGap.
  3. Senior PHP Developer · Invortex Technologies Nov 2011 – May 2013
    • Built allsoppandallsopp.com, named one of the best new websites in Dubai at the Terrapinn Internet Show Awards.
    • Integrated the Newegg API into e-commerce platforms, sped up applications with indexing and Memcache, and set coding standards.
  4. Team Lead / Applications Engineer · Next Generation Innovations Jun 2010 – Oct 2011
    • Led development teams from requirements to delivery for US clients, and introduced CodeIgniter, Amazon S3 and Kount fraud prevention.
    • Built the Facebook app for Martha Stewart's debut on Hallmark Channel, and Facebook apps for brands such as Coca-Cola and Pillsbury.
  5. Web & Applications Developer · Genetech Solutions Apr 2009 – May 2010
    • Started as a .NET developer and took on PHP and MySQL to build and maintain client web applications, plus desktop property-management software.

Problem solving

Problems I couldn't leave alone

Some at work, some just for me. What they share is the thinking.

Knowing which streets are safe

Side project · 2026

Street crime (phone snatching, robbery) is a daily risk in Pakistan's cities, yet there was no single place to see where and when it happens.

The reports already existed, scattered across trusted news and people's posts. The job was to read them automatically, place them on a map and score the risk.

View more

Pakistan's only nationwide street-crime alert app, in English and Urdu.

PakAlerts turns scattered news and community reports into a live risk map, so people can check an area or a route before they go.

Under the hood: a news-ingestion pipeline that reads vetted sources on a schedule, a transparent risk model, vector map tiles, web push alerts and a staff review panel, all on a lean Node.js and SQLite stack.

pakalerts.com

The tax formula nobody could match

Chalhoub Group

Saudi e-invoicing (ZATCA) kept rejecting invoices over tiny differences, a problem that had stumped established vendors, Cygnet among them.

It wasn't a tax problem but an arithmetic one: floating-point drift and rounding in the wrong place. Exact decimal maths, rounded exactly where ZATCA rounds, made every total match.

View more

100% compliance across millions of invoices.

ZATCA validates each invoice's totals and its cryptographic signature, so a difference of a single halala is enough for a rejection. Earlier implementations calculated in floating point and rounded at different points from the specification, and the errors added up.

I rebuilt the calculation as a small rounding engine: exact decimal arithmetic, line-level rounding where the rules require it, and totals derived the way ZATCA derives them. Simple maths, applied precisely, closed a regulatory risk for the group.

Stop building a pipeline per source

Chalhoub Group

Every new data source meant a new repo, new code and a hand-written Airflow DAG: weeks of work, repeated for every source.

Most ingestions do the same few things: read, map, load, schedule, monitor. Build that once, and make each new source a configuration, not a project.

View more

Onboarding a new source went from weeks to minutes.

The Data Ingestion Layer (DIL) is a dashboard where a new source is described rather than coded: where the data comes from, its credentials, schema and mapping, how often it runs, and whether it appends or replaces.

A deterministic engine runs every ingestion the same way. AI helps only with the parts that need interpretation, such as suggesting a schema or spotting a renamed column, never with running the pipelines.

medium.com

A notes app that works the way I think

Personal

None of the note-taking apps I tried had the specific features I needed.

Instead of bending my workflow around someone else's product, I built my own, with exactly those features.

Making the games I want to play

Personal

I love playing games, but the ones I wanted to play didn't exist.

So I make them myself: Purple Bird is designed and built end to end by me.

Projects

Things I've built on my own time, and for the record books

VidScribe

Open-source AI media localisation tool

Author★ 1 · C#

AI-powered command-line tool that extracts audio from videos and generates subtitles using OpenAI Whisper and GPT-4o, built on .NET 9 and FFmpeg.

.NETC#OpenAI APIsWhisperFFmpeg
Code

HardCredentialsScanner

AI-powered DevSecOps tool

Author★ 1 · C#

Detects hardcoded secrets and credentials in UiPath RPA workflows using AI-assisted static analysis — addressing a real enterprise security governance gap at scale.

C#.NETNLP
Code

AI-Generated Podcast

Generative AI meets media distribution

Creator★ 1 · C#

End-to-end AI-generated podcast exploring the intersection of generative AI, creativity, and modern media distribution. Published on Spotify.

Read the story

Powered by PodcastGenerator, my open-source tool that turns any text into a full episode with AI: it brainstorms ideas, writes the script, and generates the audio.

C#.NETOpenAI APIs
Listen on Spotify Code

Guinness World Record

Most energy generated by bicycles

Software lead · GTECH

Engineered the software and iOS application (Ionic + PHP API) for a Dubai event that broke the Guinness World Record — real-time tracking of bike energy output across hundreds of participants.

IonicPHP

IBM IoT Foosball

Real-time goal scoring over IBM's IoT platform

Engineer · GTECH

Raspberry Pi sensors feeding real-time goal events via Python through IBM's IoT platform, with a Node.js + Node-RED backend and a NoSQL data layer.

Raspberry PiPythonNode.jsNode-REDNoSQL

Computer Vision Donation Box

Ramadan charity installation, Abu Dhabi

Engineer · GTECH

Motion detection with Python and OpenCV — Raspberry Pi cameras detect a donor's presence and trigger contextual video content.

PythonOpenCVRaspberry Pi

Indie games

Purple Bird and Science Enthusiast, built in my own time

Creator · Hobby

Small games I design and build end to end: gameplay, physics and rendering. Science Enthusiast grew out of my interest in physics and astronomy. It keeps my real-time and engine skills sharp.

Technical spectrum

The toolbox

Pick a skill to light up every role and project where I used it.

Architecture

Software Engineering

AI & Agentic Stack

Data Engineering

Cloud & DevOps

Game & Engine Dev

Web & Mobile

Writing & community

Thinking out loud

Medium Featured · 12 days ago Stop Building a Data Pipeline for Every New Data Source A recurring data-engineering trap, and the configuration-driven pattern that replaces one-pipeline-per-source. Medium Featured Architect's Calculator: The Simple Math That Kills Unnecessary Complexity A practical decision framework (Risk = Probability × Impact) that challenges over-engineering in enterprise teams. Medium · 11 months ago Why Most Projects Fail: The Two-Sided Coin Gathering requirements is the cornerstone of every problem, be it a task, project, or whatever you want to call it. And arguably, this is the most important step. Well, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Medium · 9 months ago The State of Web Development I’ve been building software long enough to see the same pattern repeat itself again and again. New tools arrive, people panic, roles are declared dead. Then, slowly, the industry adapts, and what actually changes is how Medium Featured · 8 days ago I Built PakAlerts Because Knowing What Is Happening Around You Matters Why I built a community street-safety map for Pakistan instead of waiting for someone else to.

Latest on Medium

Stack Overflow · live

468 reputation

0 3 9

39 answers · member since 2013

GitHub · live

Public repos
21
Stars
6
Followers
1

Recently pushed

@Heroftime

In the news

Recognition & learning

Awards, education, certifications

Game Changer AwardChalhoub Group
Most Valuable Person AwardChalhoub Group
Best New Website in DubaiTerrapinn Internet Show Awards allsoppandallsopp.com, built at Invortex Technologies

BS in Computer Science

Newports Institute of Communications and Economics

Continuous learning

  • Software Architecture Specialization · Udemy
  • Foundational C# with Microsoft · freeCodeCamp / Microsoft
  • Complete C# Masterclass · Udemy
  • Machine Learning & AI Fundamentals · Coursera
  • Deep Learning Specialization · Coursera

Contact

Let's build something that lasts.

Architecture reviews, principal and lead roles, AI and data platform work, or just a good engineering conversation.

LinkedIn GitHub Medium My Blog Stack Overflow
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