---
title: "Mehboob Shaikh | Lead Full-Stack Engineer, Mumbai"
description: "Lead Full-Stack Engineer in Mumbai with 8+ years in Next.js, headless CMS (Sanity, WordPress), Django and Node on AWS/GCP. Open to senior and tech lead roles."
url: "https://mehboobshaikh.com"
html: "https://mehboobshaikh.com/"
---

# Hi, I'm Mehboob. A lead full-stack engineer who takes ideas to MVP and platforms to scale.

**Lead Full-Stack Engineer · Thane, Mumbai, India · IST · UTC+5:30**

Napkin sketch or a platform you've outgrown — I've shipped both. One grew from 3M to 10M searches a month with zero downtime. The stack is never the blocker; the problem is the job.

- Website: https://mehboobshaikh.com
- Résumé: https://mehboobshaikh.com/resume/ (Markdown: https://mehboobshaikh.com/resume.md)
- Email: hello@mehboobshaikh.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mehboob-shaikh-86878b114/
- GitHub: https://github.com/smehboobaxioned
- Availability: Open to senior IC & tech lead roles

## What each key on the site opens

- **P — Projects.** Four pieces of work I'd happily be judged by: a forecasting product taken from idea to MVP, a monolith-to-headless re-platform, a publishing platform that tripled its search footprint, and the delivery pipeline that made all of it repeatable.
- **O — Overview.** Full-stack engineer and technical lead who lives at the seams: where marketing meets engineering, where the CMS meets the frontend, where the roadmap meets the sprint. Eight years across PHP, Python, TypeScript, three CMSs, two clouds and a forecasting model taught me that the stack is never the hard part — the problem is. Hand me one I haven't seen before.
- **R — Résumé.** Eight years at Axioned, from junior engineer to the lead who owns architecture, sprint delivery and code reviews for a team of engineers who report directly to me — while keeping most of my week hands-on. Greenfield products, re-platforms and long-running platforms, often all at once.
- **T — Toolkit.** TypeScript and Python. Next.js and React in front; Sanity, WordPress and Contentful as content backends; Django, Node and NestJS for services; AWS and GCP underneath, wired together with Docker, GitHub Actions and Terraform.
- **F — Focus.** Two things, end to end. Taking an idea from discovery to a shippable MVP — scope, architecture, data model, first users — and taking a platform from MVP to scale: headless architecture, ISR caching editors understand, Core Web Vitals in the green, and analytics, SEO and tracking treated as engineering requirements.
- **O — Outcomes.** Numbers I'm accountable for: search impressions grown from 3M to 10M+ a month, platforms kept stable for 100K+ monthly active users, page loads cut by 45% after migrations, release cycles shortened by a third.
- **L — Lessons.** Short notes on what eight years of client platforms taught me: why editors decide whether a headless migration succeeds, how SEO breaks silently during re-platforms, and what a forecasting model actually needs from its data.
- **I — Ideas.** Separate content from presentation. Measure before you optimise. SEO and tracking are engineering, not marketing's problem. Boring infrastructure, interesting products. Five principles that shape how I build.
- **O — Offline.** When I'm not shipping: tinkering with AI developer tooling and keeping up with whatever is new in tech — scrolling X, changelogs and launch threads for what just shipped, pulling it apart, and running small experiments to see what actually makes the work faster. Spare time goes to trying things before they're safe bets.
- **⏎ — Let's talk.** I'm looking for a senior individual-contributor or tech lead role where I can own architecture, performance and product decisions hands-on — whether that's a zero-to-one build or a platform at scale. The stack matters less than the problem; bring me a hard one. I read everything, even if I am sometimes slow to reply.

## Selected projects

### 01. Monolith to headless: WordPress → Sanity + Next.js

*Consumer services marketplace · Axioned · 2023 — 2025*

Architected the migration of a high-traffic marketing and booking site from a themed WordPress monolith to Sanity with a Next.js App Router frontend. Designed the content model and block-based page builder, wrote the migration scripts, and shipped it with ISR so editors never waited on a deploy.

| Result | |
| --- | --- |
| −45% | page load time after cut-over |
| 95+ | Core Web Vitals performance score |
| 0 | ranking losses through the URL migration |

Stack: Next.js, Sanity, TypeScript, Tailwind, Vercel, CloudFront

### 02. Publishing platform that tripled its search footprint

*B2B media & events group · Axioned · 2021 — present*

Long-term owner of a WordPress publishing ecosystem for a business-news and events brand. Hardened the platform for scale, instrumented it end to end with GA4, GTM and Search Console, and worked with marketing on the structured data and performance work that grew organic reach.

| Result | |
| --- | --- |
| 3M → 10M+ | monthly search impressions |
| 100K+ | monthly active users supported |
| 0 | downtime releases in 3 years |

Stack: WordPress, PHP, WPGraphQL, GA4 / GTM, Cloudflare, GitHub Actions

### 03. Idea to MVP: product forecasting for an ad-tech client

*Advertising client · Axioned · 2024*

Started as a question in a client workshop: can we predict how a product will perform before the campaign spends? Scoped the MVP, built the Django service and data pipeline, trained time-series models with Pandas and scikit-learn, and shipped projections in a Next.js dashboard the client team used from week one.

| Result | |
| --- | --- |
| Idea → MVP | in one quarter, approved for a paid pilot |
| 12 wks | forecast horizon |
| 1 | dashboard replacing three spreadsheets |

Stack: Django, Python, Pandas, scikit-learn, BigQuery, Next.js

### 04. Standardised delivery: CI/CD across AWS and GCP

*Platform work · Axioned · 2022 — present*

Replaced per-project deployment folklore with one set of GitHub Actions workflows, Docker images and Terraform modules used across client repositories on AWS and GCP. Added preview environments, type checks and test gates so reviews focus on design, not setup.

| Result | |
| --- | --- |
| −35% | release cycle time |
| 95%+ | on-time sprint completion |
| 1 | pipeline for every engineer on the team |

Stack: GitHub Actions, Docker, Terraform, AWS, GCP, Nginx

## On the side

- [Dil Ki Cassette](https://songs.mehboobshaikh.com) — A calm, free Bollywood listening room behind a rainy window. 871 hand-picked Hindi film songs, 1988 to 2024, played only from the labels' official YouTube uploads. Seven moods reshape the songs, the weather in the window and the player's colours. Turn any YouTube or Spotify playlist into a mixtape, play Antakshari or the daily guess-the-song, share a song at the exact second, or dedicate a cassette with a handwritten note. Free, no ads, no sign-up; your listening stays in your browser. Built with Next.js, React, TypeScript, WebGL, YouTube IFrame API, Cloudflare Pages, Claude API.
- [Subscription Diet](https://diet.mehboobshaikh.com) — See what your subscriptions really cost in a year, and cut the ones you don't use. Free, private, no sign-up. A private tracker that turns every plan into a dark-metal card in a wallet. Add any of 250+ services with real logos and typical prices, and each shows its true yearly cost — ₹649 a month reads as ₹7,788 a year. Decide keep, maybe or cut, see the next four weeks of charges on a calendar, add renewal and free-trial reminders, and watch your savings grow. A ⌘K palette, a diet-scale view, a shareable savings card and a guide that shows every formula. No account, no bank login, no trackers; your data stays in your browser. Built with Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Motion, React Aria, Cloudflare Pages.
- [Clean Your TV](https://cleanyourtv.mehboobshaikh.com) — A family TV, debloated and given a home screen of its own. Our Sony BRAVIA running Google TV, with 26 bloat packages switched off (never uninstalled) and a launcher of our own: a 3D dock where each app lights the screen in its own colour, a family screen, an offline screensaver, and one script that rebuilds the TV after a factory reset. Built on Gathin's open-source cleanyourtv and not affiliated with it. The site tells the story screen by screen, with a drag-to-compare before and after. Built with Java, Android TV, ADB, Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Cloudflare Pages.

## About

I'm a lead full-stack engineer based in Thane, just outside Mumbai, with eight years of experience delivering high-impact digital products — all of it at Axioned, where I grew from junior engineer to the technical lead for an enterprise delivery team. My career is defined by long-term ownership: evolving platforms from their first architecture to supporting millions of users.

I work as the technical bridge between business and execution. That means sitting with marketing, design and analytics teams to make sure what we build is optimised for SEO, tracking and conversion, then translating that into roadmaps, RFCs and code. My specialism is headless architecture — Sanity and WordPress behind Next.js — but I'm equally at home in Django, Node and NestJS services, and in the AWS and GCP infrastructure that runs them.

I believe in problem-solving over syntax and culture over raw output. My experience is deliberately diversified — PHP and WordPress, Python and Django, TypeScript and Next.js, AWS and GCP, analytics and forecasting — because the technology has never been the blocker. Understanding the problem is, and that's the part I enjoy most; the unfamiliar challenge is the one I'll volunteer for. I use AI tooling daily for prototyping and code optimisation, and I'm deliberately careful with it around sensitive data. Every key on this site works, by the way. Try typing.

- Based in: Thane / Mumbai, India
- Experience: 8+ years
- Currently: Lead Full-Stack Engineer, Axioned
- Specialism: Headless · Sanity · Next.js
- Speaks: English, Hindi
- Education: B.E. Computer Engineering

> Mehboob is an extremely valuable person to have in your network. He has an in-depth understanding of various technologies, manages all the work very effectively and has very strong problem-solving skills. He is an asset to any company.
>
> — Prajakta Dhuri, Senior UX/UI Designer · worked with Mehboob on the same team

## Experience

### Lead Full-Stack Engineer, Axioned

*2023 — Present · Thane · Hybrid*

Technical lead for an enterprise delivery team that reports directly to me. Own architecture, sprint execution, mentoring and code quality for several concurrent client platforms, while staying hands-on most of the week.

- Taken client ideas from discovery workshop to shipped MVP — scoping, architecture, data model and first release — then grown them into platforms with real traffic.
- Architected 5+ migrations from monolithic CMS platforms to Next.js with Sanity or Contentful, cutting page load times ~45% and lifting Core Web Vitals scores to 95+.
- Designed B2B backend modules in Django and NestJS handling high-concurrency transactions and third-party integrations (HubSpot, payment and analytics APIs).
- Delivered a Python forecasting proof of concept (Pandas, scikit-learn) for an advertising client, projecting product performance from campaign data.
- Standardised CI/CD with GitHub Actions, Docker and Terraform across AWS and GCP; release cycles shortened ~35%, sprint on-time completion held at 95%+.
- Run architecture reviews and RFCs, enforce TypeScript strictness and testing standards, and mentor engineers through promotion.

### Senior Software Engineer, Axioned

*2021 — 2023 · Thane*

Owner of a publishing platform serving 100K+ monthly active users; the bridge between engineering, marketing and analytics.

- Grew a B2B media platform from 3M to 10M+ monthly search impressions through structured data, performance and crawlability work with the marketing team.
- Built headless WordPress frontends with React and WPGraphQL; integrated GA4, Google Tag Manager and Search Console as first-class engineering requirements.
- Introduced Dockerised environments and GitHub Actions pipelines to the team; zero-downtime releases became the default.

### Junior Software Engineer, Axioned

*2018 — 2021 · Thane*

Full-stack web development for marketing and content platforms.

- Built responsive sites and custom WordPress platforms with PHP, JavaScript, SASS and the WordPress REST API.
- Integrated Google Maps, Mapbox, YouTube, Twitter and HubSpot APIs into client applications.
- Managed hosting, DNS, SSL and server configuration on AWS EC2, S3 and CloudFront.

## Toolkit

- **Languages:** TypeScript (6 yrs), JavaScript (8 yrs), Python (5 yrs), PHP (8 yrs), SQL (8 yrs)
- **Frontend:** Next.js (5 yrs), Tailwind (4 yrs), shadcn/ui (2 yrs)
- **CMS & content:** Sanity (4 yrs), WordPress (8 yrs), Contentful (3 yrs)
- **Backend:** Node.js (7 yrs), Django (4 yrs), NestJS (3 yrs), GraphQL (4 yrs), Prisma (3 yrs)
- **Data:** Postgres (5 yrs), MySQL (8 yrs), MongoDB (3 yrs), BigQuery (2 yrs)
- **Cloud & infra:** AWS (7 yrs), Vercel (4 yrs), Google Cloud (3 yrs), WP Engine (6 yrs), GitHub Actions (5 yrs), Docker (5 yrs), Terraform (3 yrs)
- **Tooling:** Bun (1 yr), pnpm (3 yrs), npm (8 yrs), pip (5 yrs), Gulp (4 yrs)
- **Practice:** Technical SEO (7 yrs), Analytics & GTM (7 yrs), Web performance (6 yrs), AI tooling (2 yrs), Tech leadership (4 yrs)

## Principles

1. **Separate content from presentation.** Editors deserve a structured studio; users deserve static-site speed. Decoupling the CMS from the frontend is how you get both, and it's the single decision that has paid off most often in my career.
2. **Measure before you optimise.** Core Web Vitals in CI, Search Console on a dashboard, real-user data over lab scores. A rewrite without a baseline is a guess with a budget.
3. **SEO and tracking are engineering.** Redirect maps, structured data, canonical URLs and analytics events belong in the ticket and the code review, not in a plugin installed the week after launch.
4. **Boring infrastructure, interesting products.** Postgres, a CDN, one CI pipeline and a typed codebase cover a remarkable amount of ground. Spend novelty where the product actually needs it.
5. **Lead by staying hands-on.** The best architecture reviews come from people who still ship. I keep most of my week in the codebase so the team's standards are ones I live by, not ones I remember.

## Lessons from the field

- **Editors decide whether a headless migration succeeds.** The frontend is the easy part. If the content model doesn't match how the marketing team thinks, they'll route around it. Model with them, not for them.
- **SEO breaks silently during re-platforms.** Rankings don't drop on launch day; they drop six weeks later. Redirect maps, canonical tags and structured data need the same test coverage as checkout.
- **A forecasting model is only as good as its joins.** Most of the forecasting POC was reconciling campaign, product and spend data from three systems. The model was the last 10%.
- **ISR is a conversation, not a config value.** Revalidation windows are a product decision. Explain the trade-off to editors once and you'll never get the 'my change isn't live' ticket again.
- **One pipeline beats eight clever ones.** Standardising CI/CD across client repos was unglamorous and cut release time by a third. Consistency is a feature your future self ships.

## Outcomes

- **3M → 10M+** — monthly search impressions on a platform I've owned since 2021
- **100K+** — monthly active users supported with zero-downtime releases
- **−45%** — page load time after monolith-to-headless migrations
- **−35%** — release cycle time after standardising CI/CD
- **95%+** — on-time sprint completion for the team I lead and mentor

## Now (2026-10)

- Taking a new client product from discovery to MVP, and leading headless re-platforms to Sanity + Next.js.
- Shipped Dil Ki Cassette, a Bollywood listening room, as a side project.
- Shipped Subscription Diet, a private subscription tracker, as a side project.
- Shipped Clean Your TV: the family TV debloated, a launcher of its own, and a site that tells the story.
- Exploring OpenAI and LangChain in editorial and data workflows.
- Mentoring my team through architecture reviews, RFCs and 1:1s.
- Looking for my next senior IC or tech lead role.

## Contact

Email hello@mehboobshaikh.com. Open to senior IC & tech lead roles. I read everything, even if I am sometimes slow to reply.