How do you usually charge?

Fixed price per milestone once the scope is written down, or a monthly rate for ongoing product work. I put the number in writing before anything starts, and it does not move unless the scope does.

How long does a project take?

A focused build is usually two to six weeks. A full platform with billing, admin and integrations is typically two to four months. You get a schedule with the scope, not after it.

Do you work with existing codebases?

Yes. A large share of my work is picking up something half finished, understanding it, and getting it to production. I will tell you honestly whether it is worth continuing or worth rebuilding.

What happens after handover?

You get the repository, the deployment and the documentation. I stay available for a support window after launch, and most clients keep me on for the next phase, which is where the repeat orders come from.

Where are you based and does it matter?

Islamabad, Pakistan, on UTC plus five. I have delivered to clients in more than fifteen countries and keep overlap hours with Europe and North America. Time zone has never been the reason a project slipped.

About

Masab Farooque*

I am a full stack engineer in Islamabad. I started with games, moved to the web, and now spend my days on the parts of a product that decide whether it survives contact with real users.

Based in

Islamabad, Pakistan

Time zone

PKT, UTC +5

Focus

SaaS, AI, data

Status

Open to new work

Curriculum vitaePDF, 120 KB, updated August 2026

GitHub LinkedIn Fiverr Upwork X Instagram Facebook

The long version

I started building because I wanted to make games, and games taught me the thing I still care about most: a system is only good when it feels right to the person using it.

Between 2020 and 2023 I shipped Unity games, won a few competitions, and learned to work to a deadline that does not move. Two of those games passed ten thousand downloads. One won Best Mechanics at a national jam and was picked for incubation.

In late 2023 I moved to the web on purpose. Not because games stopped being interesting, but because the problems I wanted to solve were on the other side: data, scale, money moving through a system, and products people rely on at work. I learned Next.js, FastAPI, NestJS and retrieval architectures, then started taking clients and building products with them.

Since then I have delivered more than one hundred and ninety orders to clients in twenty three countries. Today I sit inside two product teams as an external engineer, building AI assisted internal tooling for an engineering studio and a browser based audio editor for a media team. Solo work keeps running alongside that, platforms like FirstDeal and Javea Denia Rentals that I took from an empty repository to paying users. The companies are named in the path below.

I work best when I own the whole thing. Schema to interface, first commit to deploy. That is not ego, it is fewer seams for a product to fail along.

AThe path so far

2018
Education
Started Computer Science
COMSATS University Islamabad, Wah Campus
Began a Computer Science degree and started taking small paid projects in the first semester, because reading about software is not the same as shipping it.
B.Sc. Computer Science
2020
Role
Unity Developer
10Static Studios
Shipped two Android games, Twirly Ball and Little Monster Jump, built in Unity and C#. Together they passed ten thousand downloads on the Play Store.
UnityC#10k downloads
2020
Award
The Hustler Award
Epiphany Games
Recognised for output and work rate across the competition.
2021
Role
Game Development Fellow
Mindstorm Studios
Built Bizarre Adventures, a hyper casual runner. First real lesson in retention loops and in tuning something until it feels right rather than until it compiles.
UnityGame design
2022
Award
Best Mechanics Award
Rookie Game Jam, Mindstorm Studios
Won Best Mechanics for Titanic Rescue, which was then selected for incubation.
2022
Award
Runner up, Developers Game Jam 2.0
Developers Game Jam
Placed second nationally with Food Planet, against teams from across Pakistan.
2023
Education
Graduated
COMSATS University Islamabad
Finished the degree after three internships and a six month full time job, plus a set of competition results.
2023
Turning point
Moved into web and AI
A deliberate pivot out of games. Learned Next.js, Node.js, FastAPI, NestJS, LangChain and retrieval architectures, then started taking web clients and building products with them.
Next.jsFastAPILangChain
2024
Role
Web Developer and SEO
PentaByteX
Built client sites on React, Next.js, WordPress and Shopify, and led the migration from client side to server side rendering across the portfolio.
ReactNext.jsSSR
2025
Role
Web Developer
Fixels.nl
Shipped Javea Denia Rentals and FirstDeal.nl, one booking platform and one monitoring SaaS, both from empty repository to paying users.
FastAPICeleryStripe
2026
Role
Full Stack Engineer
Skylight Studio and Chord.fm
Two product teams at once. Internal tooling and AI proposal generation at Skylight Studio, and the browser based audio editor at Chord.fm.
Next.jsAWS LambdaClaude API

BTools I reach for

Languages

TypeScript
Python
Go
SQL
C#

Front end

Next.js
React
Tailwind CSS
Framer Motion
Canvas
Web animations

Back end

FastAPI
Node.js
NestJS
Express
Celery
Redis

Data

PostgreSQL
Supabase
DynamoDB
MongoDB
Vector search

Cloud

AWS Lambda
API Gateway
S3
Docker
Vercel
Serverless Framework

Claude API
OpenAI
Groq
LangChain
RAG pipelines

Full stack product build

AI systems that do real work

Data pipelines and scraping

SaaS platforms end to end

Interfaces with motion

Performance and search

CQuestions I get asked

Products with a real backend. SaaS platforms, AI systems that touch live data, scraping and pipeline work, and full applications that need one person to own the whole stack. If the hard part is a marketing page, you can hire cheaper than me.

Open to new work

Tell me what you are trying to build.

If I am the right person you will get a scope and a number in writing. If I am not, I will say so and point you somewhere better.

Start a project

contact@masabfarooque.com

Started Computer Science

Unity Developer

The Hustler Award

Game Development Fellow

Best Mechanics Award

Runner up, Developers Game Jam 2.0

Graduated

Moved into web and AI

Web Developer and SEO

Web Developer

Full Stack Engineer

Tell me what you are trying to build.