~/bilal

▸ Enterprise Architecture · Distributed Systems & AI Platforms

Bilal .
Ahmad

Enterprise Architect & Systems Leader | AI Infrastructure, Real-Time Platforms & Distributed Systems @ Washington, DC

// need a copy of my resume? message me ↓

bilal@systems:~ (zsh)
active
$ whoami
bilal_ahmad
$ cat role.txt
Enterprise Architect & Systems Leader | AI Infrastructure, Real-Time Platforms & Distributed Systems
$ sys.arch --focus
Distributed Systems · Real-Time Runtimes · AI Infrastructure
$ ls -la projects/ | wc -l
20 # open source & production systems
$ echo $SCALE
100+ TB/mo streaming · 70+ teams · 20+ yrs
$
/* Summary

Enterprise Architect, systems engineer, and hands-on technical leader with 20+ years of experience architecting distributed systems, low-latency streaming infrastructure, autonomous AI platforms, and high-scale applications. Director-level Enterprise Architect at Cvent, steering the organizational and technical transition to AI-native repositories and autonomous agent workflows; previously the senior-most Android-focused engineer on the Amazon Alexa Mobile Platform, pioneering agentic automation that drove a 3-engineer, 4-month migration of 600+ packages across 70+ distributed teams in separate VP orgs. First engineer at Jigsee, designing a proprietary adaptive-bitrate streaming protocol for low-bandwidth delivery plus the distributed cloud infrastructure behind it, from 0 to 100+ TB/month through acquisition by Vuclip. Works end to end across product, design, engineering and verification, on the view that once code generation stops being the constraint the bottleneck simply moves. Deep hands-on expertise spanning frontier AI models & evaluations, agent execution kernels, real-time media/WebSocket pipelines, and cross-organization engineering scale.

$

ai --evaluation

// 5

Measuring, gating, and improving the output of AI systems. The roles these sit within are detailed under experience.

  • Autonomous coding-agent orchestration kernel

    Orchid · Bash · Git · Claude Code · Codex · Antigravity · Hermes

    Architected an auditable, resumable kernel coordinating coding-agent CLIs across specialized roles (orchestrator, plan critic, implementer, reviewer, arbiter), enforcing hermetic worktree test suites, explicit quality verdicts, and automated escalation before merge.

  • Cross-AI agent skill for release automation

    Listing Kit · Claude plugin · Gemini extension · Maestro · Playwright · Fastlane

    Built an agent skill that walks a mobile repository, learns how to run it, captures store-compliant screenshots, and assembles App Store and Google Play metadata versioned with the app; used to ship the author's own store releases.

  • Remote terminal continuation for agent workflows

    Shellbell · React Native · Expo · Cloudflare Workers · WebSockets · Protobuf

    Engineered an end-to-end encrypted relay that mirrors live terminal sessions to mobile and accepts input back, so work continues away from the machine; notifies when a command finishes or an agent blocks on a decision.

  • Frontier model evaluation & benchmark authoring

    Mercor · Senior Software Engineer Expert · 2026

    Authored software-engineering benchmark tasks and deterministic test suites for frontier-model evaluation; diagnosed failure modes, reasoning regressions, and edge-case behavior to harden code generation.

  • AI-assisted delivery at production scale — Shipped six production web platforms solo in 2026 through agent orchestration, including ~130,000 lines in about four weeks, with automated validation suites as non-negotiable acceptance gates.

$

work-experience --professional

// 6
  1. Cvent, Inc.

    —Enterprise Architect [architect]

    McLean, VA · Mar 2026 - Present

    • ▸ Director-level role reporting to the VP of Engineering; sole mobile-focused architect with responsibility for architecture and AI-first strategy across Cvent's mobile products and supporting services.
    • ▸ Lead the shift to AI-native repositories, collapsing large mobile teams into 1–2 person AI-first teams through a Research-Plan-Implement framework with explicit milestone gates, iterated to improve agent output quality and reduce rework.
    • ▸ Restructure repositories to be navigable and safely changeable by agents: durable context and architecture decision records checked in beside the code, invariants and known traps documented for humans and agents alike, and conventions that cut the time an agent spends orienting before it can make a correct change.
    • ▸ Define and build the mobile paved road, a golden-path workflow combining Claude Code, Kiro, GitHub Copilot, Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools, Maestro, and Playwright for AI-assisted development and automated validation.
    • ▸ Lead architecture reviews, technical mentorship, and platform direction across mobile and adjacent engineering teams.
  2. Amazon.com, Inc.

    —Senior Software Development Engineer / Software Development Manager [manager]

    Ottawa, ON; San Francisco Bay Area; Arlington, VA · Aug 2016 - Mar 2026

    Senior Software Development Engineer, Alexa Mobile Platform (2023 - 2026) · Software Development Manager (2022 - 2023) · Senior Software Development Engineer, Alexa Mobile Foundation (2018 - 2022) · Software Development Engineer, Alexa Communications (2016 - 2018)

    • ▸ Proposed and led a 3-engineer, 4-month overhaul of Alexa Mobile's build system after the 600+ package migration had remained stalled for three years and a 12-engineer, 8-month proposal had not been funded.
    • ▸ Designed reusable AI agents, skills, and automation that reduced package migrations from about one day to minutes, SDK upgrades from 2–3 months to one week, and dependency additions from one month to one day.
    • ▸ Coordinated delivery across 70+ teams in separate VP organizations through office hours, Slack support, migration guides, scripts, wiki documentation, FAQs, and cross-team design reviews.
    • ▸ Served as the senior-most Android-focused engineer on Alexa Mobile Platform, a hybrid native and React Native codebase; provided architecture reviews, security reviews, and escalation support for high-severity operational events.
    • ▸ Managed engineers for one year and mentored across levels throughout the tenure; contributed to engineer ranking and performance calibration, conducted dozens of technical interviews, supported promotions, and served as an Alexa design review bar raiser.
  3. BlackBerry Limited

    —Senior Software Developer / Android Team Lead [lead]

    Ottawa, ON · Mar 2013 - Aug 2016

    Client engagement through Macadamian; hired directly by BlackBerry eight months into the contract.

    • ▸ Led Android engineering for BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), a real-time messaging product with 100M+ downloads and tens of millions of monthly active users at peak.
    • ▸ Selected for direct hire based on impact and asked to continue leading the team and training incoming internal engineers.
    • ▸ Drove architecture, code quality, and feature planning across Android, iOS, and backend teams while remaining hands-on in implementation and technical mentorship.
  4. Jigsee, Inc. (acquired by Vuclip)

    —Lead Software Architect / Transition Consultant [architect]

    Ottawa, ON · Sep 2010 - Jun 2013

    Contract engagement from Sep 2010, hired full-time Jan 2011 through Mar 2013, then part-time consulting for a further three months to support the transition to Vuclip.

    • ▸ First engineer; helped grow the team from 3 to 25+ and the product from zero to hundreds of thousands of users, streaming 100+ TB of video per month before the Vuclip acquisition.
    • ▸ Architected the low-bandwidth Android streaming application and core backend, including media encoding, content management, analytics, Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure, and video codec pipelines.
    • ▸ After the acquisition, led integration of Jigsee technology into Vuclip's next-generation Android application, a platform serving 25M daily video views.
  5. Vayyoo, Inc.

    —Software Architect [architect]

    Ottawa, ON · Jan 2008 - Jan 2011

    • ▸ Promoted from Software Developer to Software Architect while helping the company grow into a multimillion-dollar mobile enterprise solutions provider serving Microsoft, RIM, NHLPA, and Airtel; designed cross-platform BlackBerry, iPhone, and Android libraries plus REST APIs and AWS infrastructure used to deliver and operate customer applications.
  6. Earlier Experience

    Ottawa, ON · 2004 - 2008

    • ▸ Pleora Technologies — Applications Engineer (2007 - 2008): Built .NET wrappers and C#, C++, and C integration samples; served as the primary technical contact during SDK beta testing.
    • ▸ Cognos / IBM — Software Engineer and Technical Analyst, Co-op (2004 - 2006): Worked across quality assurance and enterprise support for Cognos 8 and Framework Manager.
$

projects --independent

// 8

Work completed independently outside my employment, separated by context: public open-source engineering and unpaid pro-bono systems.

public source code

Open Source

Independent open-source engineering outside my employment; code and documentation public on GitHub.

volunteer · unpaid

Pro Bono · Unpaid

Unpaid pro-bono engineering completed independently outside my employment for nonprofit and community organizations.

$

skills --all

// 5
01 Architecture & systems leadership
Enterprise and platform architecture · System and API design · Architecture and security reviews · Distributed systems · Modernization · Cross-organization leadership
02 Mobile engineering
Android · Kotlin · Java · Jetpack Compose · iOS · Swift · SwiftUI · React Native · Expo · Kotlin Multiplatform · Gradle · Mobile SDKs
03 AI & developer productivity
Autonomous coding agents · Agentic workflows · Agent output quality gating · Automated validation harnesses · Model Context Protocol (MCP) · Anthropic API · OpenAI API · Gemini API · Developer platforms · Repository automation
04 Cloud, backend & web
Amazon Web Services (AWS) · Cloudflare Workers · EC2 · S3 · SES · DynamoDB · REST APIs · TypeScript · React · Next.js · PHP · MySQL
05 Testing & delivery
Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) · GitHub Actions · GitLab CI · Maestro · Playwright · Appium · XCTest · Espresso · PHPUnit · Fastlane
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education

University of Ottawa / Université d'Ottawa

Software Engineering, Entrepreneurship & Management option, Co-op program · 2002 - 2007

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languages

English (native/bilingual) · French (native/bilingual) · Urdu (professional)

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open ~/lab

// a working terminal. type help to start.

~/bilal — zsh

Last login: today on /dev/website

Welcome to bilal_ahmad@lab. Type help to see what's available.

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contact

▸ send a message

Want to talk about systems architecture, AI-first engineering, or hiring?

Drop a note. I read everything; serious inquiries get a response within a few days. Need a copy of my resume? Just ask and I'll send the PDF over.

// never shared, never spammed