Lecture

From Pre-sales to Production: Solutions Architect, decoded

A guest lecture at COMSATS on how mid-career engineers can move into architecture roles.

COMSATS · Sep 2025Talks

How to move from pre-sales engineering into an architecture role without taking a step backward.

Pre-sales teaches you to understand customers, translate business problems into technical ones, and communicate across disciplines. Those skills are foundational for architecture.

What transfers, what doesn't

Customer empathy transfers. Speed of understanding transfers. Imposter syndrome also transfers—but it's unfounded. You know how to learn quickly. Architecture is just learning on a larger scale.

The career narrative

We walked through three engineer stories: one who moved too fast and burned out, one who moved too slow and got left behind, and one who got the pace right.

More resources

Series · 4 parts

Building production voice agents that don't embarrass you

A walkthrough of the state machine, audio pipeline, and fallback design I use for Chasyr.

Updated Apr 2026
Tutorial

A pragmatist's guide to RAG (with code)

When RAG actually beats fine-tuning, when it doesn't, and how to tell which one you need.

Updated Mar 2026
Tutorial · Open source

AI-first PR review, codified

The exact prompts and CI workflows my team runs on every PR. Copy-paste, MIT licensed.

github.com/isheraz/ai-pr
Starter kit

Next.js × Supabase × Stripe - a deployable starter

The boilerplate I clone for every new SaaS bet. Auth, billing, RLS, AI hooks pre-wired.

github.com/isheraz/saas-kit
Talk · 32 min

AI-First Engineering Teams - Lahore Devs Meetup

How I restructured a 7-person team around AI tooling. Velocity numbers, cultural pitfalls, what worked.

November 2025
Panel

Voice Agents in Regulated Markets

Panel at AusFinTech 2026 - the legal, technical, and ethical scaffolding for AI that talks to customers.

AusFinTech · 2026
Curated list

Books that changed how I architect systems

A handful of titles - short list, opinionated commentary, no affiliate nonsense.

12 books
Stack

Tools I actually use, daily

My exact dev stack - IDE, terminal, AI agents, productivity hacks. Updated quarterly.

Updated Q2 2026
Reading list

AI-engineering reading list

Papers, blog posts, and talks I send every engineer I mentor on getting up to speed with AI.

40+ links
Career guide

Resources for engineers from Pakistan

Remote-friendly companies, visa sponsors, OSS scholarships - things I wish I had a decade ago.

Free