Backend & payments · UAE · Open to roles

Muhammad Umair Virk

Backend & Payments Engineer

I build and run payment and API systems behind a GCC subscription platform — six payment gateways, a .NET payments service on ECS, and the move from legacy PHP/Python to serverless .NET and containers without breaking live traffic. Three years on the Python platform (search, personalization, batch jobs) plus L2 support for payments, orders, and releases.

Featured work Download CV Technical profile LinkedIn
1,514Release & ops requests
171Issues to prod (Jun–Oct 2026)
6Payment gateways (GCC)
25Payment routes on .NET
~/services 
$ curl /health
{
  "status": "healthy",
  "services": ["api", "search", "payments"],
  "runtime": "production"
}

$ deploy --env prod
✓ microservices updated
✓ pipelines passed
_

Impact at a glance

Evidence from Jira and GitHub records — details in the technical profile.

~11,000Auto-renewals handled in 2025
10+Product & membership launches since 2023
GCC XLUpgrade campaign · Jun 2026
Qatar 2027Membership launch support
14Python APIs → Native AOT Lambdas
4Backend languages in production
L2Live payments, orders & accounts
4+ yrsBackend · Terafort → Entertainer

Renewal volume is from operational reporting — confirm against orders data before external quoting. Company internals omitted on purpose.

About

Backend engineer with 4+ years building production systems in the UAE. I started at Terafort on a healthcare platform, then joined The Entertainer in late 2022, where I've grown from Python serverless APIs into Go microservices, platform libraries, and .NET cloud-native backends.

At The Entertainer I own the .NET payments service (six gateways, auto-renewal, PHP→.NET migration) and co-led pieces of the Python→Native AOT API move. I still work across merchant and delivery APIs, personalization, search, consent, and account deletion — plus 1,500+ release and operations requests as release owner.

I also maintain personal learning projects in DevOps Career Lab to deepen Docker, Terraform, and CI/CD skills outside production work.

🐍

Python Backend

Flask APIs, microservices, SQLAlchemy, AWS Lambda

🔷

Go & .NET

High-performance services, shared libraries, Native AOT

☁️

Cloud & Security

AWS Lambda, Secrets Manager, Azure Pipelines, Docker

🔗

Integrations

Payments, search, third-party APIs, event-driven flows

Skills

Languages

Python Go C# / .NET SQL Bash

Backend & APIs

Flask REST APIs Microservices AWS Lambda FastAPI

Cloud & DevOps

AWS Lambda Docker Azure Pipelines GitHub Actions Secrets Manager Terraform

Data & Platforms

MySQL DynamoDB Redis Search & Indexing Recommendations Payments

Experience

Jan 2023 – Present

Software Engineer, Backend

The Entertainer · UAE · Payments owner

  • Own the .NET payments service on ECS — 25 routes migrated from PHP with strangler cut-over, six GCC gateways, auto-renewal and consent logging
  • 171 production issues delivered Jun–Oct 2026; 1,514 release/ops requests since 2023 (Jira DVOP)
  • Supported 10+ product launches including GCC XL (Jun 2026) and Qatar 2027 membership with config-driven upgrade rules
  • Built Python platform work: Flask API (v65–801), Personalize pipeline, OpenSearch/Glue jobs, Elasticsearch search APIs
  • Co-led 14 Python APIs → Native AOT Lambdas and monorepo Lambda migration; FCM push library for AOT
  • Go Lambdas for delivery/call-centre dashboards; L2 for payments, orders, reconciliation, and releases
Sep 2021 – Dec 2022

AWS Developer (Python Backend)

Terafort · Full-time · UAE

  • Backend developer on eShaafi, a healthcare platform focused on patient care and accessibility
  • Architected a serverless microservices backend on AWS — Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, and S3
  • Designed database access patterns and data models for performance and data integrity
  • Built REST APIs and integrated payment gateways and Agora.io for real-time video calling
  • Facilitated Agile delivery as Scrum Master — sprint planning, standups, and retrospectives
  • Supported QA, product, and customer success teams through demos and ongoing technical alignment

Featured Work

Selected areas where I delivered meaningful backend impact

Healthcare · Serverless

eShaafi — Healthcare Platform

Serverless backend for a telehealth platform at Terafort — REST APIs, real-time video via Agora.io, payment integrations, and AWS-native infrastructure built for scale.

Python AWS Lambda DynamoDB Serverless
Product · ML

Personalization & Recommendations

Built a recommendation API that serves personalized content to app users — including membership-aware filtering, ranking logic, and integration with existing backend services.

Python Flask Recommendations
Microservice

Merchant & Delivery Platform

Core backend work on merchant-facing and delivery services — offer management, order flows, third-party logistics integrations, and multi-language support.

Python REST APIs Integrations
Search · Data

Search & Discovery

Improved outlet search with indexing pipelines, bulk data processing, and modern search capabilities to help users discover merchants faster.

Python Search Data Pipelines
Platform · Go

Go Microservices & Shared Libraries

Contributed to shared Go platform code and delivery-related APIs — product models, session handling, and operational services for order and branch workflows.

Go Microservices Redis
Serverless

User Account Services

Serverless backend for user profiles, product history, referrals, and support integrations — built on a shared layer with secure auth and database access patterns.

AWS Lambda Python MySQL
Modernization

Cloud-Native .NET Migration

Helping migrate legacy services to .NET Native AOT microservices — user profiles, authentication, wallets, subscriptions, and notification flows.

C# .NET Azure Pipelines
Payments

Payments service owner

ECS-hosted .NET service — Checkout.com, Adyen, Tap, Tamara, Tabby, Atome; wallet and scheduled renewals; two-level cache, IAM DB auth, route-by-route migration from PHP. ~11k renewals in 2025 with consent on record.

Payments ECS Fargate Terraform .NET
Open Source ↗

DevOps Career Lab

Personal project — a containerized task platform used to practice Docker, Terraform, GitHub Actions, and modern platform engineering workflows.

Docker FastAPI CI/CD

More on github.com/umairrafi

What I Bring

Capabilities a hiring manager or tech lead can expect

End-to-end feature delivery

From API design and business logic through testing, deployment, and production fixes.

Polyglot backend development

Production experience across Python, Go, and .NET — not limited to a single stack.

Microservices at scale

Comfortable working in large service ecosystems with shared libraries and CI/CD pipelines.

Security-aware engineering

Experience standardizing secrets management and reducing credential risk across services.

Integration-heavy systems

Payments, search, third-party logistics, chat support, and cross-service data flows.

Platform modernization

Actively contributing to migrating legacy backends to modern cloud-native architectures.

Writing

Technical articles on backend engineering — deployment, API design, payments, and production patterns.

Medium

Medium

Why Serverless Engineers Already Understand Containers

Immutable deploys, runtime config, and the networking mistakes that cause production outages — mapped from Lambda to Docker.

 Medium

REST vs SOAP vs GraphQL vs gRPC: How I Actually Choose

Not a glossary — a decision framework for when each style earns its complexity in real systems.

 Medium

What Production Checkout Taught Me About Idempotency

When the charge succeeds but the order fails — retries, reconciliation, and why POST is dangerous in payments.

Dev.to

Dev.to

Docker Compose for Python Backends

Production-shaped Dockerfiles, health checks, and the localhost mistake that breaks every first deploy.

 Dev.to

REST vs SOAP vs GraphQL vs gRPC — Interview Notes

HTTP methods, status codes, and the comparison table I use when designing or reviewing APIs.

 Dev.to

Idempotency Keys for Python Payment APIs

Preventing double charges — header design, DB constraints, gateway pass-through, and webhook safety.

 Dev.to

AWS Secrets Manager Patterns for Python Microservices

Centralized retrieval, in-process caching, IAM least privilege, and rotation without redeploying code.

Let's Connect

Open to backend and platform engineering roles in UAE and remote.

Email Me Download CV (.docx) CV (PDF) LinkedIn GitHub

📍 United Arab Emirates · 🕐 GST (UTC+4)