Majd Louka

Backend Engineer · Laravel · ASP.NET · Remote

Majd Louka

Backend systems that stay fast under load.

I design APIs, async pipelines, and data layers for e-commerce, logistics, and gaming products, and I'm increasingly building AI features into them.

View projectsDownload CV
  • 2+ years production
  • 3 companies
  • 5 gateway & logistics integrations
  • 53-table schema designed
  • Kafka · Hangfire · Redis

01 / About

Backend engineer with 2+ years shipping production systems in Laravel and ASP.NET, from Gulf e-commerce checkouts to AI-powered analytics.

I'm a backend engineer based in Damascus, working remotely with teams across the region. I graduated in Software Engineering from Damascus University's Faculty of Information Technology Engineering in 2026, after already spending two years building production systems.

Most of my work sits where reliability matters: checkouts that have to go through, background jobs that can't silently fail, and APIs that have to stay fast as data grows. I've built in Laravel and ASP.NET, deployed on Azure, Hetzner, and bare Linux servers, and mentored interns along the way.

Lately I've been building AI into backends: natural-language analytics over SQL with a teammate, LLM chatbots, and the integration of an external AI route optimizer. That's the direction I'm growing in.

What I bring

  1. Production commerce and payments. Real, live platforms with Gulf-market gateways (Tabby, MyFatoorah, Noon) and Aramex shipping. Directly relevant to KSA/UAE employers.

  2. Async and distributed workloads. Laravel Queues, Hangfire, and Kafka used in practice, including a Kafka-backed notification service.

  3. Performance work. Query optimization, indexing, and Redis/Valkey caching to cut API response times.

  4. Two ecosystems, same rigor. PHP/Laravel and C#/ASP.NET, both with Clean Architecture and CQRS.

  5. Applied AI. Gemini Text-to-SQL over business metrics, built with a teammate; an OpenAI chatbot prototype; an external AI route optimizer integrated into a production-style system.

02 / Featured Projects

Two projects in depth: logistics and gaming.

  • Graduation project · Jan – Aug 2026

    IntelliPharma

    Planning, selling and delivering medicine from one platform

    Backend engineer: owned route planning and the AI-optimizer integration, co-built the ERP core, designed and ran the evaluation

    Delivery routes branch out from the warehouse to every pharmacy, and the route the optimizer picks for the day is highlighted through them.
    median shorter routes vs. list order
    43.9%
    median gap to the exact optimum
    8.1%
    stop coverage on 79-stop days after the fix
    24% → 100%
    Problem
    pharma distributors run their warehouse, sales reps and delivery drivers on separate tools, spreadsheets and memory, so routes are guessed, visits are self-reported, and stock, cash and targets get reconciled at the end of the month, a problem validated with two pharmaceutical warehouses and field pharmacists in Syria.
    Solution
    one modular Laravel backend that holds the catalogue and stock, books and prices orders, plans every rep's and driver's day with an AI optimizer, replans mid-day, and sends what really happened back to the optimizer every night, with driver identities pseudonymized.
    Gains
    in a 117-run evaluation against the production API, optimized driving tours were a median 43.9% shorter than visiting stops in list order and came within 8.1% of the mathematical optimum. The evaluation also surfaced a bug, and after the fix, coverage on large days went from 24% to 100%.
    System diagram: one Laravel API, a modular monolith, with three branches. Route planning: API ↔ queue ↔ AI optimizer, an external service ↔ OSRM. Live tracking: API → Reverb → live map. Analytics: API → Gemini → read-only SQL → MySQL.
    Read the case study
    Explore the live dashboard (opens in a new tab)

    The project story (opens in a new tab)Arabic and English

  • Professional · Mobile game

    Snatchtown — Match-3 Game Backend

    Gameplay logic is heavy, and reward endpoints get hit with retries on flaky mobile networks, which risks double rewards.

    • Backend structured with Clean Architecture and CQRS to handle heavy gameplay logic.
    • Idempotent spinner-reward processing, so repeated retries never grant a reward twice.
    • Lower latency through indexing and caching.
    • CPU-heavy calculations moved to Hangfire background jobs.

    Idempotency under retries. A concrete reliability story worth telling in interviews.

    Status

    Deployed, in internal testing ahead of Google Play launch.

    Stack

    • ASP.NET
    • Clean Architecture
    • CQRS
    • Hangfire
    • caching
    A three-by-three match-3 board: one stone slides down to line up three in a row, the row bursts, and new stones fall in to fill the gap.
    Read the case study

03 / More Work

Production work across commerce, legal tech, recruitment, and messaging.

  • Doctor Boutique — E-Commerce Platform

    Professional · Legacy production system

    • Maintained a live commerce platform with three payment gateways and Aramex delivery.
    • Improved checkout reliability.
    • Fixed configuration issues that could have exposed payment secrets.

    Gulf payment-gateway experience on a live store.

    Integrations

    • Tabby
    • MyFatoorah
    • Noon Payments
    • Aramex

    Stack

    • Laravel

  • VLP — Virtual Lawyer Platform

    Professional · Large production codebase

    • Diagnosed and fixed background-job failures that were breaking message delivery.
    • Shipped the fix with no service disruption.

    Safe changes inside a large, unfamiliar production system.

    Stack

    • ASP.NET
    • background jobs

  • Qaddim — Recruitment Platform

    Professional

    • Secure media streaming through Cloudflare CDN.
    • Profile management and social interaction modules.

    Stack

    • NestJS
    • Cloudflare CDN

  • Kafka Notification Service (PanCode)

    Professional · Internal service

    • Multi-client notification service with Kafka as the job queue.

    Stack

    • Bun
    • TypeScript
    • Kafka

04 / Experience

2+ years across three teams, in Laravel and ASP.NET.

  1. Feb 2025 – Present

    Damascus

    Backend Developer · PanCode

    • Laravel
    • ASP.NET
    • Bun
    • Kafka
    • Hangfire
    • Redis/Valkey
    • Docker
    • Filament
    • React
    • Designed and built backend services in Laravel and ASP.NET for new and legacy systems.
    • Built async processing pipelines with Laravel Queues, Hangfire, and Kafka.
    • Built a multi-client notification service on Bun, using Kafka as the job queue.
    • Cut API response times through query optimization, indexing, and distributed caching (Redis/Valkey).
    • Contributed to architecture decisions, CI/CD setup, Docker deployments, and Linux production support.
    • Applied rate limiting, access control, and API security best practices.
    • Built an internal LLM chatbot prototype on the OpenAI API.
    • Built Filament admin panels, supported React frontend integration, and mentored interns through code review.

  2. Oct 2024 – Feb 2025

    Saudi Arabia

    • Remote

    Backend Developer · Ape Revolution Zone

    • ASP.NET
    • MediatR
    • Azure
    • CDN
    • Built modular backend services with Clean Architecture and CQRS (MediatR).
    • Managed Azure resources, deployments, and environment configuration.
    • Integrated a CDN to speed up media delivery.

  3. Aug 2024 – Oct 2024

    Damascus

    • Freelance

    Laravel Backend Developer · Taatof NGO

    • Laravel
    • MySQL
    • Designed the relational schema and a repository-based architecture.
    • Delivered backend features and handled production hosting and deployment.

05 / Skills

What my backends are cut from.

The cloth

Core skills, by where they sit in the stack.

Plate I · PinstripeEngland, 1800s

Named for stripes as thin as a pin. It came up through English business dress in the 1800s, and by the next century it was the banker's and the broker's suit.

A row of pins, pressed in by hand.Each one leaves a line behind.Two languages, one straight seam.

  1. Languages

    PHP · C#

    Also TypeScript, Python, SQL

  2. Backend

    Laravel · ASP.NET

    Also NestJS, Bun

  3. Architecture

    Clean Architecture · CQRS (MediatR)

    Also Repository Pattern, DDD basics

  4. Async & Messaging

    Kafka · Hangfire · Laravel Queues

  5. Data

    MySQL (tuning, indexing) · Redis / Valkey

Trimmings

Supporting skills, sewn in where a project calls for them.

  • DevOps & Cloud

    Docker · Linux · Nginx · CI/CD · Azure · Coolify

  • AI / LLM

    OpenAI API · Gemini · Text-to-SQL

  • Integrations

    Stripe · Tabby · MyFatoorah · Noon · Aramex

  • Frontend

    React · Blade · Filament

06 / Education

B.Eng. Software Engineering

An eight-pointed Damascene star, built from a compass circle and two squares, inside a ring lettered with the university, faculty and years.

Sep 2021 – Aug 2026

Damascus University

Faculty of Information Technology Engineering

  1. 2021
  2. 2022
  3. 2023
  4. 2024
  5. 2025
  6. 2026

Graduation project IntelliPharma

Damask, the patterned cloth, takes its name from Damascus, where it was woven for centuries and carried west along the Silk Road. The eight-pointed star in the city's tile and woodwork is drawn the way it is here: a compass, a straight edge, and construction lines.

A compass, a straight edge,five years of construction lines.Then the pattern holds.

07 / Contact

Let's build something reliable.

I'm open to remote backend roles. If your team needs someone who cares about fast APIs, clean architecture, and jobs that don't fail quietly, I'd like to hear from you.

majdlouka4@gmail.com
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Majd Louka

Backend Engineer

Damascus, Syria (UTC+3)