Mechatronics engineer / Software developer / Saudi Arabia
I build software
that runs inside cars.
Mechatronics engineer by training, mechanical engineer by day, developer for as long as
something needed building. I write Android and backend software that lives on the
dashboards of GWM and HAVAL SUVs — and I am currently teaching a local AI model to
understand construction.
I did not arrive at programming through a computer science degree. I arrived through
hardware, and then through being the only person available to fix things.
I studied mechatronics at Istanbul Bilgi University — mechanical systems,
electronics and control theory, which is a useful way to learn that most problems are
just a signal going somewhere unexpected.
My first job was IT support at ORANGE Bed & Bath in Jeddah, where I
was the entire IT function: sixty stores, the head office and the e‑commerce site.
When Saudi Arabia rolled out ZATCA e‑invoicing, I built the integration that put
compliant QR codes on our invoices across the whole estate. Nobody handed me a
specification; I read the standard and made the system produce it.
Since 2023 I have been a mechanical engineer at Majarrah Global, working
on construction and building automation — commissioning Siemens Desigo controllers, BACnet
MS/TP networks over RS‑485, and VAV terminal units on projects including work at an
airport in Jeddah.
Everything else is what I build after hours. Kafo Team sells custom head-unit
software for GWM and HAVAL SUVs across the Gulf, and right now I am training a local AI
model on construction data because the questions I answer at work should not need me to be
in the room.
02 Selected work
A selection of what is in production. All of it has paying users.
Live
Android / Kotlin / 2025 – present
Kafo Themes
Sole developer & designer
A theming and automation app that replaces the factory instrument cluster on GWM head
units, starting with the HAVAL H9. Owners pick a cluster design, rearrange gauges, run
split‑screen apps and teach their steering-wheel buttons new tricks — all on a
locked-down OEM Android system that was never meant to be extended.
The hard part was never the visuals. It was resolving the vehicle from its VIN, reading
live speed and RPM off the OEM bus through GWM's vehicle data and signal APIs, and
rendering a 1920×720 cluster at a steady frame rate on hardware with no GPU headroom
to spare. Themes are HTML documents driven by a native bridge, so a new design ships
without touching the app.
It is in more than 1,000 cars today, sold through dealers in
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain. Dealer agreements for
Qatar, the UAE and Oman are in progress.
1,000+Customers
18Cluster themes
15kLines Kotlin / Java
HMACSigned licensing
Kafo Porsche1920 × 720
Five of eighteen. Real renders from the shipping app — select one:
“لأنك كفو تستاهل برمجة كفو”
The line we put on everything. Roughly: you deserve work as good as you are.
Kotlin 2.0
Android SDK 36
Coroutines
OkHttp
Glide
WebView bridge
Accessibility Services
Foreground Services
GWM Vehicle API
Reverse engineering
Gradle KTS
Cluster engine HTML-driven themes plus native gauge rendering, hot-swappable.
Gauge designer Drag, scale and recolour individual dials on the car's screen.
Split screen Ratio control, app launcher panel and a picture-in-picture close button.
Key learning Remap steering-wheel buttons to in-app actions.
Vehicle alarms Speed and TPMS warnings surfaced on the cluster.
Now playing Media metadata mirrored to the dashboard.
Licence gate Activation codes and trials, verified against a signed API.
Self-update In-app APK download and install, no PC needed.
Live
Backend / Node.js / kafo.pro
Kafo Store & Licensing Platform
Sole developer
The business side of Kafo Team, and the server every car phones home to. It issues and
revokes licence keys, runs a dealer network with balances and credit, keeps a
VIN‑keyed record of every vehicle configuration we have modified — original and
current values, with full change history — and distributes APKs, wallpapers and
announcements to the fleet.
Built plainly on purpose: Express, server-rendered EJS and SQLite, running behind a single
port. Dealers log in and mint codes against their balance, customers check activation
status by VIN, and I can roll back a bad config on a specific car from my phone. Fully
bilingual Arabic/English with proper RTL, because most of the people using it read Arabic
first.
3Portals: admin, dealer, service
7+REST endpoints for the apps
VINKeyed config history
AR/ENBilingual, RTL-aware
Node.js
Express
EJS
SQLite
bcrypt
Sessions
HMAC
Multer
REST
Live
Python / Telegram / SaaS
Anti‑Spam Shield
Sole developer
A subscription bot that moderates Arabic-language Telegram groups. Arabic spam is a
genuinely awkward detection problem — attackers stretch letters, swap ه for ة, inject
diacritics and split words with zero-width characters. So detection runs in stages:
normalise the text, match it against root and pattern rules, score it against patterns
learned from other groups, and only then hand the genuinely ambiguous cases to an LLM.
Cheap where it can be, expensive only where it has to be.
Groups share what they learn, so a spammer caught in one community is flagged across the
rest. Around it sits the unglamorous business plumbing: subscription tiers, trials,
manual bank-transfer approval, expiry reminders and a Flask admin panel. A second module
answers HAVAL Jolion maintenance questions from parsed service catalogues.
8.8kLines of Python
39Modules
24Test suites
4Detection passes
Python 3
python-telegram-bot
asyncio
aiosqlite
Flask
OpenAI API
pytest
systemd
03 Now
Not shipped yet. This is what my evenings currently look like — listed here because
half-built work says more about someone than a finished portfolio does.
In progress AI / Construction
A construction model that runs on my own hardware
Every working week I answer the same questions about specifications, controller
configurations and commissioning steps. So I am building a local AI model and training it
on construction and building-automation material — drawings, submittals, equipment
schedules, standards — so the answers do not depend on me being reachable.
Local by design. Project documents do not leave the machine, which is the only version of
this a contractor would ever agree to use.
Local inference
Dataset preparation
Fine-tuning
Domain evaluation
Python
In progress AI / Tooling
A personal assistant with no cloud in it
A private assistant built on Qwen and Hermes models,
running entirely on local hardware. It handles the day-to-day: drafting, summarising,
searching my own notes and code, and answering without a subscription or an API key in the
loop.
It doubles as the test bed for the construction model — same serving stack, smaller
appetite for risk.
Qwen
Hermes
Local LLM serving
Prompt & eval tooling
Python
Next Mobile / iOS & Android
An app for the city of Homs
A new idea, not a port of an old one. I am studying how to build a citizen services app
for Homs Municipality — the city council — so residents can handle what
currently needs a queue and a paper form: reporting a fault in the street, following up on
a request, paying a fee, reading an announcement that actually reaches them.
Built for iPhone and Android from the start, in Arabic first. I am
researching the scope now: what a municipality can realistically operate, what data it
holds, and what a citizen needs on the first screen.
iOS
Android
Arabic-first UX
Civic tech
Public services
04 Experience
Retail IT, then mechanical engineering, with software running underneath the whole time.
2025 — Present
Founder & Developer — Kafo Team
Custom software for GWM and HAVAL head units, sold across the Gulf through a dealer
channel. I do all of it: reverse-engineering the OEM platform, the Android app, the
licensing backend, the dealer accounts, the theme design and the support tickets.
Built alongside my engineering role.
Past 1,000 customers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain, with dealer
agreements in progress for Qatar, the UAE and Oman.
Kotlin
Android
Node.js
Reverse engineering
Product
2023 — Present
Mechanical Engineer — Majarrah Global
Construction and building automation across MEP scopes. I configure and commission
Siemens Desigo controllers with the ABT toolchain, build BACnet MS/TP networks over
RS‑485, and set up and balance VAV terminal units — including work on an airport
project in Jeddah running to thousands of device points. This is where I learned to
work inside vendor systems that ship with no documentation and no margin for error.
Siemens Desigo / ABT
BACnet MS/TP
RS-485
VAV commissioning
HVAC controls
2021 — 2023
IT Support Specialist — ORANGE Bed & Bath, Jeddah
The whole IT function for the group, on my own: 60 retail stores, the
head office and the e‑commerce store. Point-of-sale, network, hardware, user
support and the systems tying them together.
The work I am proudest of there is the ZATCA integration — when Saudi
e‑invoicing came in, I built the connection between our system and ZATCA and
implemented compliant QR codes on invoices across every site. No vendor, no
consultant: I read the specification and made our system produce what the regulator
required.
ZATCA e-invoicing
POS systems
E-commerce
Networking
Multi-site support
Education
Mechatronics Engineering — Istanbul Bilgi University
Mechanical systems, electronics, control theory and embedded programming. The degree
that makes a CAN bus, a PID loop and a control valve feel like the same kind of
problem.
Four years in Istanbul also left me fluent in Turkish, which is how I
read half the automotive forums I learn from.
Control systems
Embedded
Electronics
Sensors & actuators
Turkish
05 Stack
Tools I have shipped something real with.
Mobile
Kotlin
Java
Android SDK
Coroutines
Custom Canvas views
Accessibility Services
Foreground & bound services
Gradle / KTS
Glide
OkHttp
Backend & Web
Node.js
Express
Python
Flask
SQLite
REST API design
HMAC request signing
bcrypt & sessions
EJS
HTML, CSS, JavaScript
RTL / bilingual UI
AI & local models
Qwen
Hermes
Local LLM serving
Dataset preparation
Fine-tuning
Domain evaluation
OpenAI API
Vehicle & RE
APK analysis / jadx
Smali patching
OEM head-unit internals
GWM vehicle APIs
VIN & signal mapping
ADB & logcat forensics
Engineering
Siemens Desigo / ABT
BACnet MS/TP
RS-485 networks
VAV commissioning
MEP coordination
Control loops
Sensors & actuators
Electrical schematics
Ops & IT
Linux
systemd
Shell scripting
Git
VPS deployment
cPanel / LiteSpeed
ZATCA e-invoicing
POS & retail IT
06 Contact
If you have a stubborn system that needs to do something new — that is the work I like.
Freelance projects, product collaboration, or anything involving vehicles, embedded
hardware, local AI, or a backend that has to be dependable. I read Arabic, English and Turkish.
Kafo Themes
