Albara Hassan

Albara Hassan

Senior Backend Engineer. Python, FastAPI, PostgreSQL and LLM systems.

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina Remote, CET (UTC+1) albara.m.hassan@gmail.com linkedin.com/in/albara-m-hassangithub.com/AlbaraHassan

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Professional summary

Senior Backend Engineer with 5 years building production Python services on FastAPI, PostgreSQL and asyncio. Currently owns a production RAG pipeline on Azure and OpenAI for a UK benefits platform, answering in under 3 seconds over 500+ documents, and cut slow API responses from 20 seconds to under 2. Strong in rule-driven SaaS backends, third-party integrations, query optimization, pytest-driven testing, and serverless pipelines on AWS and Azure.

Skills

Languages
Python, TypeScript, Swift
Backend
FastAPI, REST APIs, asyncio, Node.js, OAuth2, RBAC
AI / LLM
OpenAI API, RAG, LangChain, Embeddings, Vector search
Data
PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Azure Cosmos DB
Cloud and DevOps
Azure Functions, AWS Lambda, Step Functions, Docker, GitHub Actions, CI/CD
Testing and Frontend
pytest, React

Work experience

Kinly Senior Backend Engineer

Aug 2025 to present Remote UK benefits platform: Python, FastAPI, Azure, Cosmos DB, OpenAI

  • Own the knowledge-base RAG pipeline end to end (Azure Functions ingestion and embedding, Cosmos DB vector search, OpenAI-backed FastAPI): 500+ documents indexed, answers in under 3 s.
  • Scheduled ingestion for freshness: hourly incremental ingest plus a weekly full resync and external web crawl, staggered into the lowest-traffic window.
  • Eliminated latency spikes for ~270 users by tuning the API and adding a second uvicorn worker: windows with p95 over 2 s fell from up to 13 a day to 0, business-hour p95 from 1.0-1.7 s to 0.5-0.7 s.
  • Cut requests over 3 s by 80%+ (up to 3,900 a day down to 469), health-check 503s from up to 30 a day to 0, and autoscale instance churn by half, with no new errors.
  • Took the slowest endpoints from 20 s to under 2 s by eliminating N+1 queries and tuning database queries and async I/O, guarded by a 1,400+ test pytest suite.
  • Shipped eligibility-form prepopulation from website enquiries via HubSpot and Cosmos DB: agent-open trigger, config-driven mappings across 8 field groups, and freeze rules that protect agent edits from automation.
  • Authored the post-incident review for a 65-minute production outage caused by Key Vault references resolving empty after a slot swap, with root cause, recovery runbook and 12 corrective actions.

Rayna Corp Full Stack Engineer

Oct 2025 to May 2026 Remote TypeScript, Express, TypeORM, React, AWS

  • Built a dedicated AWS Lambda for TypeORM migrations that runs idempotently at 3 points: every staging deploy, the end of the nightly replication Step Function, and behind an approval gate in production.
  • Moved migrations off an API Gateway endpoint capped at 30 seconds onto Lambda's 15-minute window, so long schema changes stopped timing out.
  • Redesigned onboarding for law-firm admin users, replacing two conflicting verification and password emails with a single verify-and-set-password flow.
  • Shipped platform features across React and Express, including cross-tab cache synchronization and bulk provider connection management.

Epiisa Software Engineer

Sep 2021 to Jul 2025 Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

  • E-Advokat (legal AI agent): built a LangChain and ChromaDB RAG pipeline that answers legal questions with citation-level attribution, with OCR ingestion of statutes and court rulings served through FastAPI.
  • CueLoop (AI email and calendar assistant): built FastAPI services on Google APIs via OAuth2, with LLM draft generation, meeting detection and embedding-based semantic search over email threads.
  • Engineered an asyncio task engine for minute-level polling and concurrent background jobs across parsing, scheduling and indexing.
  • Built secure multi-tenant FastAPI services with PostgreSQL and MongoDB schemas, token-based authentication and RBAC.
  • Designed a dynamic-programming pricing engine that optimizes rental rates from regional usage patterns (Vroomski).
  • Ran CI/CD with Docker Compose and GitHub Actions, maintained pytest coverage, and delivered Next.js frontends where products needed them.

Rapidfacture GmbH Full Stack Engineer (Contract)

Jan 2025 to May 2025 Remote

  • Built an e-commerce platform for industrial clients with real-time quoting, part configuration and inventory synchronization.
  • Automated backend workflows in Python, including CAD file parsing, PDF generation and email handling.
  • Extended Node.js APIs and a custom CRM, replacing brittle legacy logic with modular, testable services.

Epifront Software Engineer

Sep 2023 to Sep 2024 Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

  • Led development of Spacerra, a hosting automation platform offering no-code deployment and generated CI/CD pipelines.
  • Built modular FastAPI services with PostgreSQL and MongoDB schemas, authentication and RBAC.
  • Built containerized environments and Git-triggered Docker pipelines with infrastructure-as-code tooling.

Projects

Indie iOS apps, designed and built solo in Swift:

  • Kandilj: Prayer times for Bosnia. Accurate vaktija with on-time ezan notifications, under a live sky drawn over your own town. Localized into German and Swedish for diaspora users. On the App Store.
  • Couch: Universal TV remote. Controls Roku, Samsung, LG and Google TV from the iPhone over the local network, with weekly, yearly and lifetime StoreKit plans. On the App Store.
  • Morsel: AI food journal. Resolves free-text meals through personal history, a 13,660-food USDA database and on-device Apple Intelligence, synced via iCloud with no backend. On the App Store.
  • Pilot: Control a Mac from the iPhone. A trackpad, keyboard and remote for your Mac over the local network, with the live trackpad and keyboard as the paid tier. Coming to the App Store.
  • Proof: Focus and app blocking. Users set a goal, lock in, then attach proof of what they accomplished. Launching January 2027.

Education

BSc Information Technologies International Burch University, Sarajevo

Certifications

  • Machine Learning (Stanford Online)
  • AI Programming with Python (Udacity, AWS)
  • AWS Machine Learning Foundations (Udacity, AWS)
  • Data Analytics with Python (IBM)
  • Introduction to Back-End Development (Meta)

Languages

English (full professional), Arabic (native), Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian (native)