The first payment system I ran was judged by whether failure had consequences: reliability wasn't a metric, it was the job.
That standard came from before payments. My career started on power-utility infrastructure — five substations, field operations, downtime monitoring — where a system that fell over had immediate, physical consequences. I have carried that definition of "done" through every role since.
Engineering → delivery → product
I began as a planning engineer on utility and power infrastructure in Karachi (PESCO, 2009), then moved into programme delivery — a $15M engineering portfolio at DS Engineering, ERP and IT projects in the Democratic Republic of the Congo at CIMKO, and my first Dubai role building a PMO from nothing for a $12M+ portfolio at Wing Logic. Different industries, one thread: plan for the day nothing is reliable.
Product followed delivery. At Tapmad I owned monetization for Pakistan's leading OTT platform and built the billing that turned it into a business. At Daraz (Alibaba Group) I ran payment operations across five markets through a COVID volume surge. Then at Simpaisa I became Chief Product Officer, building full-stack payment infrastructure — card acquiring, wallets, cross-border corridors, settlement and the risk controls underneath.
Frontier markets became the specialty on purpose. Constraint breeds operators: when the rails are fragmented, the regulator is watching and the infrastructure is unreliable, you learn to build products that survive contact with reality. That is the work I am best at, and the work I chose.
- 2009PESCO — Sr. Planning Engineer (power infrastructure)
- 2012DS Engineering — Project Manager, PMO
- 2016CIMKO — Asst. Manager, Projects (DR Congo)
- 2017Wing Logic — PMO & Project Manager (first Dubai role)
- 2017Tapmad — Sr. Project & Product Manager (OTT billing)
- 2020Daraz (Alibaba Group) — PM, Payments Operations
- 2020Simpaisa — Chief Product Officer (acting CTO, 2024)
Three operating beliefs
Domestic rails beat international schemes.
In frontier markets the cheapest, most reliable money movement is local: wallets, DCB, IBFT, bill-payment and cash-over-counter. My job at Simpaisa was to turn those fragmented local rails into products enterprises could actually integrate against — so global platforms could collect and disburse where they had no rails of their own.
The wallet is the market's real UX.
At Tapmad I watched carrier billing bleed half of revenue to the telcos, then led the migration to wallet-based billing. The wallet — not the card, not the checkout page — is where retention, subscription management and unit economics are really decided in these markets.
Compliance is a product surface, not a checkbox.
KYC/KYB, AML/CFT, sanctions screening and settlement controls are features you design, not paperwork you bolt on. Treating them as product is how onboarding went from weeks to hours for standard-risk merchants while fraud loss stayed under control.
Product management and program delivery
How do you connect product strategy, business cases and delivery?
I connect product strategy and roadmap priorities to market-entry business cases, ROI and the work needed to launch a regulated payment product. My approach uses competitive and market analysis to clarify the problem, costs, constraints and measurable outcomes. Product roadmap ownership means keeping those priorities connected to delivery. Prioritization should make the trade-offs explicit before a team commits to delivery.
How do you manage programs, milestones and cross-functional delivery?
My program management work includes PMO governance, milestone planning, scheduling, risk registers, RAID logs and stakeholder reporting. At Tapmad, the delivery model connected five technology workstreams to one launch milestone. Cross-functional collaboration and clear communication help engineering, operations, partners and compliance teams work against shared milestones and KPIs.
What does technical fluency mean in your product work?
It means working through architecture and release trade-offs with engineering, not treating an API or platform as a black box. Alongside the CPO role, I served as acting CTO at Simpaisa during 2024. My work connects product requirements to integration architecture, security, settlement and the operating model needed after launch.
How do you keep teamwork and accountability clear when plans change?
I treat stakeholder management as a delivery responsibility: written communication records decisions, verbal communication resolves trade-offs, and named owners make accountability clear. My approach to problem solving combines analytical thinking with operational context. Working through ambiguity requires adaptability: update the plan when constraints change, explain the impact and keep the team aligned on the next milestone.
How do you use analytics and AI in product management?
I use data-driven decisions to connect payment outcomes, decline-code analytics and operational issues to product priorities. My AI work focuses on GenAI, large language models (LLMs), retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and support or incident workflows. Production support systems and a fraud/AML pilot are distinct stages; a pilot is not evidence of a production machine-learning model.
Explore the delivery case studies and career experience behind this work.
The paper trail
Executive education, professional certifications, recognition, chapter service, and the compliance programmes I stood up. The last line is Simpaisa-platform scope.
- Executive education
- MIT Sloan — Mastering Design Thinking (executive program)
- Professional certifications
- PMP
- PMI-ACP
- CSPO
- CSM
- COBIT 5
- ITIL v3
- Recognition
- Youngest Project Manager of the Year, 2015
- Service
- PMI Karachi — VP, Volunteering (2022–2023)
- PMI Karachi — Director, Governance (2021–2022)
- Programmes led (Simpaisa platform)
- Built PCI DSS Level 1 and ISO/IEC 27001 certification from scratch
Where to go next
Read the recruiter brief and book a call.
A 5-minute view of role fit, then a slot to talk.
Payments essays and the infrastructure notes.
Field notes on rails, reconciliation, KYB and AI in operations. Advisory opens Q4.
Talks, podcasts and press.
Frontier-market payments, regulated-fintech product and AI-assisted delivery.