athar.dev

I'm Athar.
I ship production mobile and web apps, AI-augmented and spec-first.
Currently engineering at AALA.

At AALA I lead Lila — plain English to SQL across 95 languages. On the side I'm shipping qck.sh (sub-50ms redirects, zero-sampling analytics) and Crane (native Rust IDE, no Electron). Before AALA, ten years on mobile, including running the mobile team at a Forbes 30 Under 30 company. Different domains, same way of working.

Athar Mahmood, Senior Mobile and Full-Stack Engineer
10+
years building software
41
projects on Upwork
$400K+
billed there
2M+
monthly clicks on qck.sh

Most link shorteners sample analytics so redirects stay fast. I didn't want to pick between speed and counting things correctly, so I built the architecture that lets you have both. Sub-50ms redirects, every click stored.

QCK.SH

Sub-50ms redirects. Zero-sampling analytics.

A URL shortening and attribution platform built for raw performance. Every redirect resolved through Rust with multi-layer caching. Analytics powered by ClickHouse for real-time, zero-sampling insights at scale.

Rust PostgreSQL ClickHouse KeyDB Bloom Filter Moka Cache Next.js Astro
Read Full Case Study →
Request Flow
REQ qck.sh/x
Click
RS Resolve
Rust
BF Exists?
Bloom
MK L1 Cache
Moka
KD L2 Cache
KeyDB
PG Fallback
Postgres
CH Analytics
ClickHouse
301 <50ms
Redirect
<50ms
P50 Latency
99.2%
Cache Hit Rate
0
Sampling Loss

Other things I've built.

QCK.SH A URL shortening and attribution platform built for raw performance. Every redirect resolved through Rust with multi-layer caching. Analytics powered by ClickHouse for real-time, zero-sampling insights at scale. Rust PostgreSQL ClickHouse crane A native, GPU-rendered desktop dev environment in pure Rust. Orchestrates terminals, editors, and git workflows across isolated git worktree-backed workspaces. No Electron, no web runtime, single binary. Rust Terminal UI Workspace Manager Lila AI-powered business intelligence platform that lets non-technical users query databases by typing in plain language. Architecting the LLM layer at AALA, wiring OpenAI, Claude, and Mistral together with caching, prompt optimization, and fallback logic for when the model gets it wrong. OpenAI Claude Mistral Pickle Pickle redefines fashion rental with its innovative peer-to-peer marketplace, promoting affordability and sustainability. React Native React AKN AKN, the companion app for students at the Academy of Naturopathy, offers offline learning through audiobooks for nutritional advisor training. React Native FONOS FONOS is Vietnam's leading book app on both the Apple App Store and Google Play, offering over 13,000 copyrighted audiobooks, podcourses, eBooks, podcasts, and a wealth of additional content. React Native Firebase Redux Kota.io Kota is a fintech application that aims to provide instant insurance and retirement benefits for modern teams. React Native Redux React Myant Health - SKIIN The Myant Health App, integrated with a BLE biometric sensor, enables users to track vital health metrics effortlessly throughout the day, including heart rate and sleep patterns. React Native Redux BLE Sitepics Sitepics is a robust picture management cloud designed for businesses. It efficiently geo-locates and collates all staff and contractor pictures, making them easily accessible for quoting, selling, servicing, and billing purposes. React Native Redux Industrii Insider Industrii Insider is a needs assessment/market insights app for the modern healthcare professional. Intuitive and fun design, short 3-5 minute surveys, and instant payout directly to your bank provides a unique and unrivaled user experience. React Native React Redux

A code editor written in Rust.

One binary. GPU-rendered. No Electron. I started it because my editor was using 1.4GB of RAM and I wanted to see how much further I could go in the other direction. It's open source; I'm building it in public.

crane, terminal-first code editor screenshot
Rust · egui + wgpu · Single binary · View on GitHub →

What 41 clients have said.

★★★★★
"Athar is a pleasure to work with. On many occasions, I have tasked him with vague technical requests and every time he finds a speedy solution, despite my poor direction. He is solutions-oriented and has a can-do attitude. I highly recommend him."
Andrew O'Reilly
VP, Product & Innovation at CTC Medical Communications
via LinkedIn · September 18, 2023
★★★★★
"Athar demonstrated strong skills in iOS and Android development (Swift, Kotlin), consistently delivering high-quality code and contributing to our projects' success. His adaptability, problem-solving abilities, and collaborative nature make him a valuable asset. He's a top-notch mobile developer, and I wholeheartedly endorse him."
Andre-Loit Valli
Cross Product Technical Project Manager @ Playtech
via LinkedIn · September 7, 2023
★★★★★
"Athar has worked well for us. I was very impressed with his passion, commitment, and willingness to get things done. He has been able to get up to speed quickly and proven that he is a professional developer by the work he has done for us. He has excellent knowledge of React Native, and has made great suggestions to improve the quality of the code. Athar's recommendations for code refactoring have saved us time and money by improving the structure of our app. I'd be happy to recommend Athar for anyone looking for a react native developer."
Nicolas Ritouet
Bringing technology and people together to build reliable, meaningful digital services
via LinkedIn · February 3, 2022
★★★★★
"Athar is a fantastic react native developer - He's been working with Hapi, improving our existing features as well as building new features from scratch. Writes clean code, and has delivered all tasks assigned to him with high quality. He's also just a super nice guy, it's a pleasure working with him - Happy to highly recommend Athar."
Sigurjón Ísaksson
CTO - Definely
via LinkedIn · December 30, 2021
★★★★★
"Athar has been amazing to work with! He took over a project and immediately made an impact by fixing bugs and adding on new features. He's been reliable, fast with completing tasks, and a great communicator. So far there hasn't been anything that Athar can't do."
David Childers
Senior Front End Engineer at RAPP
via LinkedIn · April 13, 2021
★★★★★
"Athar did an excellent job helping us finalize our phase two development for our mobile application DebtGo. His work was efficient and successful. The best part about working with Athar is that he is highly trust-worthy. We will continue working with Athar moving forward and highly recommend him to anyone seeking development work."
Ernest A. Pereira
Staff Product Manager | Product Strategy, Emerging Tech & AI Innovation | The TJX Companies, Inc.
via LinkedIn · September 14, 2020
★★★★★
"I've worked with dozens of outsource developers, but I'm hoping Athar will be the last one! He's far beyond the pack. Knowledgeable, communicative, expedient – really I couldn't suggest hiring him with more fervor."
Ryan Murphy
Ago Technologies, LLC
via LinkedIn · February 9, 2020
★★★★★
"Awesome work. Very thorough. Walked me through and explained all of the code changes."
React Native Code Optimization, Upwork
★★★★★
"I had the pleasure of working with Athar for the past year, and I must say it has been an outstanding experience. As a senior software engineer myself, I can genuinely appreciate the level of expertise and dedication that Athar brought to our projects. Thank you, Athar, for your outstanding contributions to our team"
React Native Engineer needed for fintech mobile application, Upwork
★★★★★
"Athar started this project by fixing some major bugs related to React Native track player. As he fixed the issues quite efficiently, we decided to move forward with him to fix more bugs that we had in our app - Throughout the project, Athar was very supportive and went the extra mile to resolve the bugs. I highly recommend Athar if you need reliable support for your mobile app. He is also highly skilled in IT project management and helped us in our projects.. We’ll continue working with Athar in the future too."
React Native Mobile App - Audio Player Fixes, Upwork
★★★★★
"Thanks for your great work."
Long Term React Native developer to work on an existing app, Upwork
★★★★★
"Really pleased with Athars work! handled everything with professionalism and made it easy for us to get the job done that we needed done. Highly recommend him!"
DebtGo Maintenance, Upwork
★★★★★
"Effective communication and successful maintenance and improvement for our React Native mobile game app."
Software Development, Upwork

Let's build
something.

Available for senior engineering roles and select freelance projects.