Mohammad Afzal
About

I build reliable software systems—and write down what I learn.

I'm Mohammad Afzal, a Senior Staff Engineer working across backend systems, cloud platforms, software modernization, and engineering leadership.

What I do

For more than ten years, I have built and modernized software across digital banking, insurance, SaaS, ERP, and product platforms. Most of my work sits between application architecture and platform engineering: designing backend services, making cloud infrastructure repeatable, improving delivery pipelines, and keeping production systems dependable.

My core stack includes Java, Spring Boot, microservices, AWS, Kubernetes, and CI/CD. I have also worked across frontend applications, data and machine-learning platforms, observability, enterprise integrations, and applied AI. The common thread is practical engineering: understanding the system end to end and taking responsibility for how it behaves in production.

What I am doing now

I currently work as a Senior Staff Engineer with First Abu Dhabi Bank through Nagarro. I lead a team of five engineers working on mission-critical digital banking applications, with responsibility spanning new development, modernization, releases, hotfixes, incident resolution, and production reliability.

Before that, I led cloud engineering work for Liberty Mutual's insurance platforms, including Spring Boot APIs, AWS infrastructure, Kubernetes delivery, automation, and integrations around AI-driven systems.

Experience

The path here

  1. 2025 - present

    Senior Staff Engineer

    First Abu Dhabi Bank, via Nagarro

    Digital banking systems, modernization, production reliability, and engineering leadership.

  2. 2024 - 2025

    Lead Cloud Engineer

    Liberty Mutual, via Technumen

    Cloud architecture, Spring Boot APIs, AWS automation, and reusable delivery platforms for insurance systems.

  3. 2023 - 2024

    Full Stack Developer

    Northern Trust, via eTeams

    Microservices, enterprise authentication, automated delivery, and performance testing.

  4. 2020 - 2023

    Product Development Engineer

    Calibo

    Cloud-native product development across microservices, Kubernetes, data platforms, and DevOps.

  5. 2019 - 2020

    Senior Associate

    Nagarro

    Scalable enterprise applications and microservices for digital engineering workflows.

  6. 2015 - 2019

    Senior Software Engineer

    Enbraun

    The architecture and first public release of a multi-user resource-management platform.

Education

Learning in layers

  • Master of Science in Data Science
    Liverpool John Moores University
  • Executive PG Programme in Data Science
    IIIT Bangalore
  • Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science
    Uttarakhand Technical University
This site

Why I write

This blog is where I document the systems I build, operate, and learn from: cloud architecture, automation, networking, self-hosting, developer tools, and the small technical decisions that make infrastructure more reliable.

I prefer useful details over polished abstractions. When something works, breaks, or teaches me a better mental model, I try to leave behind a clear account that another engineer can use.

Read my writing