Bassam Ismail

Résumé

Director of Engineering · 14 years in software.

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Srinagar, JK, India

+91-8803721227[email protected]skippednote.devlinkedin.com/in/skippednotegithub.com/skippednote

Open to remote roles with US/EU overlap and to relocation.

Summary

Engineering leader with 14 years in platform and infrastructure engineering, eight of them managing engineers. Accountable for 80+ engineers across 10 teams and a $2 - 4M delivery portfolio, spanning multi-region Kubernetes platforms at 50k concurrent users and enterprise web and commerce replatforms for global brands. Hands-on in Go, Python and AWS; equally accountable for hiring, performance management, architecture governance and executive stakeholder management.

Technical skills

Languages
Go, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP
Infra
AWS, Kubernetes, ArgoCD, Terraform, Helm, GitHub Actions
Data
Postgres, Redis, Kafka, Iceberg, Athena, DuckDB
Monitoring
OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana
Frameworks
Fiber, FastAPI, Nest.js, React.js
Architecture
Distributed Systems, Microservices, System Design, Scalability, Reliability Engineering
Leadership
Hiring, Performance Management, Architecture Governance, Cloud Cost Ownership, Executive Stakeholder Management

Work experience

Axelerant

Director of Engineering

  • Lead 80+ engineers across 10 teams delivering 3 - 5 concurrent enterprise engagements worth $2 - 4M; own hiring, performance management, technical direction and client governance, holding voluntary attrition at 2 - 5%.
  • Direct engineering, infrastructure, mobile and platform delivery for PADI's global web and commerce replatform, running 3 - 6 parallel workstreams to a fixed launch date across internal and vendor teams.
  • Led design and launch of a multi-region Fantasy Gaming platform handling 10k - 50k concurrent users at p99 sub-150ms, opening new revenue streams.
  • Architected a 15+ microservices ecosystem on Kubernetes (EKS) with regional failover and 10x auto-scaling, running peak events with no customer-visible downtime.
  • Rebuilt event ingestion and betting logic in Go, cutting per-instance memory from 1GB to 250MB against the Python services it replaced and doubling sustained throughput.
  • Established observability with Prometheus and OpenTelemetry, holding mean time to detection under 30 minutes and moving incident response from reactive to alert-driven.

ClipboardHealth

Principal Software Engineer

  • Drove development of dashboards adopted by thousands of healthcare professionals, raising engagement across every dashboard by 15% in 3 months.
  • Automated scheduling, payroll, and compliance workflows with API integrations, saving 100+ weekly hours of operations time and reducing manual errors.
  • Partnered with product and operations to align engineering execution with business goals, influencing roadmap and feature prioritization.
  • Implemented release automation with DevOps/QA, reducing production incidents by 30% and improving delivery predictability.

Axelerant

Engineering Manager

  • Led distributed teams of 15+ engineers delivering enterprise platforms across multiple high-value clients; owned hiring, performance and career development.
  • Built the interview loop and technical assessment adopted across the engineering organization; mentored engineers through structured programs, with multiple mentees promoted into senior and lead roles.
  • Championed DevOps and CI/CD modernization, reducing deployment cycles from weeks to daily releases.
  • Guided adoption of microservices and event-driven architectures, scaling systems to handle complex client requirements efficiently.

Acquia

Senior Software Engineer

  • Moved from agency architecture into product engineering; engineered reusable front-end solutions with Drupal and React deployed across enterprise clients serving millions of users.
  • Authored a project template standardizing front-end architecture, reducing setup time by 40% and improving onboarding.

Axelerant

Software Engineer

  • Built complex front-end architectures using Drupal and JavaScript frameworks, powering high-traffic client applications.
  • Collaborated with pre-sales on technical architecture, contributing to multi-year client wins.

Certifications

Kubernetes
CKACKAD
Observability
OTCA
Node.js
JSNADJSNSD
Cloud & Platform
AWS Certified AI PractitionerAcquia Certified Drupal Expert

Education

BSc in Information Technology

University of Kashmir · Completed alongside full-time work