$ whoami
// sarmad saleem
Builder at heart, engineer by craft. Curious about the rest.
15+ years bootstrapping startups, leading digital transformations, and building ventures from zero to production. Equal parts maker and multiplier. I care about things that hold up against users, regulators, and scale.
Raised in Karachi. Lived in Trento, Helsinki, Singapore. Based in Berlin.
Side quests: dialing in the perfect espresso, chasing mechanical keyboard induced nirvana, playing table tennis with more enthusiasm than talent, and eating my way through every city I land in.
## work
2018 - Now Principal & Venture CTO @ BCG X Leading founding teams. Healthcare, media, fintech, and beyond.
+ −
Leading founding teams. Healthcare, media, fintech, and beyond.
Medical imaging workflows for clinical trials. Multi-tenant, compliance-first, AI-ready.
End-to-end workflow management meets AI marketplace for real-time detection, diagnostics, and quality scoring on live video feeds.
Travel experiences marketplace for a major airline. ML-driven personalization. PoC, team setup, foundational architecture.
Digital-first banking platform for a major financial consortium. PoC, team setup, foundational architecture.
Maritime procurement marketplace. Zero to MVP, team setup, foundational architecture.
Unified recommender blending collaborative filtering, content signals, and editorial curation for streaming.
2015 - 2021 Fractional CTO @ Bogo Scaled consumer lifestyle platform from zero to exit.
+ −
Scaled consumer lifestyle platform from zero to exit.
API services powering web, mobile, and backoffice clients. Built to handle deal-hungry users at scale.
Browse deals, redeem offers, repeat. The web experience.
Deal configuration, redemption tracking, analytics. Where merchants watched the magic happen.
2016 - 2018 Senior Software Engineer @ Al Jazeera Media Network Shipped election dashboards and data-driven interactives.
+ −
Shipped election dashboards and data-driven interactives.
2015 - 2016 Digital Project Manager @ Dawn Media Group Led digital transformation - web, apps, video, ad monetization.
+ −
Led digital transformation - web, apps, video, ad monetization.
2013 - 2015 Programmer Analyst @ Aga Khan University Developed ERP systems, campus workflows, and integrations.
+ −
Developed ERP systems, campus workflows, and integrations.
Replaced paper applications with a web portal on Oracle PeopleSoft Campus Solutions. Thousands of students, zero lost forms.
BI dashboards that turned campus data into decisions leadership actually acted on.
Decades of academic records, digitized. Ctrl+F beats filing cabinets.
2010 - 2013 Co-Founder & CTO @ Xipnox Bootstrapped design and dev studio for SMEs.
+ −
Bootstrapped design and dev studio for SMEs.
Dispatch system for local law enforcement. Web and mobile. Real emergencies, real stakes.
Social network for setting and tracking goals. Frontend build.
Enterprise virtual desktop infrastructure built on Ulteo. Thin clients, centralized management.
## funsies
Figma and Notion, finally talking.
Vibe designing plugin for Figma.
Offline video transcription. No cloud, no nonsense.
All your stars, likes, and saves. One search away.
Your old WhatsApp chats, searchable again.
Uber, Uber Eats, Wolt invoices in bulk. Expense season, sorted.