Hire a full stack and AI engineer
I am Atif Iqbal, a fullstack and AI engineer in Lahore, Pakistan, working with clients in the UK, the USA, Australia and the UAE. 23 projects shipped over 10 years. This page is the practical half: what I take on, how it is priced, when I can start, and what I am not the right person for.
Send a brief and you will have a straight answer on fit, scope and price, usually within a day.
What you are actually hiring
Web platforms
Laravel, Next.js, React and MySQL. Booking marketplaces, multitenant SaaS, ERPs, point-of-sale systems, learning platforms, exchanges and payment products. Architecture first, the data model and the API surface, then the build through launch, documentation and the support window after it.
Every project, with the problem it solvedThe AI layer on top
Retrieval over private data with citations and a refusal path, chunking and embeddings tuned against real query sets, vector databases under production load, small models finetuned where cost and latency beat raw capability, and agents with bounded loops, evals and an audit trail.
How the AI work is built and evaluatedHiring a full stack developer and an AI specialist separately means paying for the handover between them, and the handover is where these projects stall. A retrieval pipeline is a backend problem with a model in the middle of it. Hire one engineer for both sides and nobody has to agree whose side the bug is on.
Four ways to work together
Work only comes in four shapes, and which one fits yours decides everything else about how we start.
| Model | What it suits | How it is priced | Typical start |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fixed-scope project | A defined build with a deadline: a new platform, a rebuild, a migration, one integration. | One price against a written scope, invoiced per milestone. | One to two weeks after the scope is signed. |
| Monthly retainer | A live product that needs continuous work: features, performance, the things that broke on Friday. | A block of days per month, on the same days each week. | The next month boundary. |
| Day rate or fractional lead | You have developers and need senior capacity, or an architect who owns the technical decisions. | Per day, two days a week minimum so the context is worth loading. | Within a fortnight. |
| Architecture review | A second opinion before you commit a budget, or an inherited codebase nobody can vouch for. | Fixed fee, fixed length, written findings at the end. | Usually the same week. |
Every quote names its milestones, what is explicitly out of scope, and the dates I do not control. Meta business verification, a tenant administrator consenting to permissions, an app store review: those run in somebody else's queue, and a timeline that pretends otherwise is quoting the easy half.
Working from a different timezone
I work from Lahore on PKT, which is UTC+5, and normal hours are 10:00 to 19:00, Monday to Saturday. For most of the world that is more overlap than people expect.
| Where you are | Overlap on a normal day | How calls work |
|---|---|---|
| UK and Ireland | About five hours, your morning into early afternoon | Any time before your lunch |
| Western Europe | Four to five hours, most of your morning | Morning slots |
| UAE and the Gulf | The full working day | Whenever suits you |
| US East Coast | About an hour, at the very start of your day | Your 08:00 is my 17:00, and I start earlier when a project needs it |
| US West Coast | None inside standard hours either side | Booked, not spontaneous: your morning, my evening |
| Australia and New Zealand | Around two hours, your late afternoon | Your afternoon, my morning |
Those shift an hour either way with daylight saving. A standing call gets booked at a time that is reasonable for both of us and then actually kept. Everything else runs in writing, because work that depends on being in the same hour stops whenever one of us is not.
Where I am a good fit, and where I am not
Worth a conversation
Real users, and the next phase needs an owner
The data model, the API surface and the infrastructure decisions, not just the tickets already written.
Early, and the shape of it matters
Tenancy, permissions and billing boundaries decided in month one are what stop a rewrite in year two.
You want AI in the product, done honestly
Including being told which parts of it do not need a model at all.
You inherited a codebase and the team is gone
A paid review first, then a plan. Continue or replace is a decision worth making on evidence.
One engineer beats coordinating three
Database to deployment to the agent is one person's job here, which removes the handover that eats schedules.
Not me, honestly
Hourly work through a marketplace
For a two-hour fix the marketplaces at the top of your search results are genuinely the better tool.
Equity instead of payment
I will scope a smaller first phase. I will not discount the invoice against a future neither of us can underwrite.
Design from nothing
I build against a design or a design system. Brand and visual identity is somebody else's craft.
Autonomy with nobody accountable
If the specification is make the AI decide, and no human owns it deciding wrong, this is the wrong hire.
A deadline that is already gone
Where the plan is for the contractor to absorb a slip that happened before they arrived.
Six things that make the first reply useful
A paragraph on each is plenty. With these I can usually tell you in one reply whether I am the right fit, what the work involves and roughly what it costs. Without a budget range the reply is a question instead of an answer, which costs us both a day.
The email button above opens with those six as a template. If you would rather see the whole engagement process first, that is on the contact section of the home page.
The questions I get asked first
What does it cost to hire you?
No rate card here on purpose: a number without a scope attached is a guess one of us pays for later. Send the brief and you get a real figure, the milestones behind it and an explicit out-of-scope list, usually within a day.
How soon can you start?
A review usually fits into the same week, a fixed-scope project one to two weeks after the scope is signed, a retainer at the next month boundary. Availability moves, so ask in the week you are asking.
Can you work with my existing team and codebase?
Most of what I do is exactly this: your repository, your conventions and your review process rather than mine. On an unfamiliar codebase the first few days are reading it and running it locally, before a line changes.
Who owns the code, and will you sign an NDA?
You own it, assigned on final payment and written into the contract rather than assumed. An NDA is normal, so send yours. Which third-party services the build depends on, and what data leaves your infrastructure, is agreed before anything is wired up.
Do you work through agencies or as a subcontractor?
Yes, on a named scope with a named technical contact. What I ask for upfront is honesty about who the end client is and what has already been promised to them, because that is where subcontracted projects go wrong.
Can you take over a project someone else started?
Yes, and a short review first is worth paying for. A fixed-fee pass over the codebase, the data model and the deployment tells you whether continuing is cheaper than replacing. Better to learn that in a week than a quarter.
Tell me what you are building and where you are with it.