Riyad Yahya
Taking on new projects
I'm a fractional CTO and hands-on senior engineer, ten years in. Right now I'm building real-time voice agents with Instack AI, freight pricing software with BidSource, and a home-chef marketplace with Yalla Bites.
Most recently I led full-stack and DevOps at DataQueue, shipping a conversational AI platform on Next.js, NestJS and GKE. Before that, I spent five years as lead engineer at Coretava.
Clients and teams I've worked with
You need senior technical leadership, but not a full-time CTO yet.
I join your team part-time to own architecture decisions, review code, mentor engineers, and set up an AI-assisted workflow (Claude Code, Cursor, custom subagents) that your team can keep running.
Track record: Leading a four-engineer team at Instack AI today. At Coretava I led 6 to 10 engineers and split them into frontend and backend units: 50% fewer cross-team blockers and 25% faster sprints.
You want an assistant that can actually talk to your customers: in your app, on WhatsApp, or over the phone.
I build the whole path: LLM orchestration, real-time speech with LiveKit, Deepgram and ElevenLabs, telephony through Twilio and Asterisk, WhatsApp messaging, and the Stripe billing around it.
Track record: Cut Instack AI’s voice agent response time from 2 or 3 seconds to about one, and built DataQueue’s conversational AI platform end to end.
Deploys feel risky, the cloud bill keeps growing, or the database struggles under load.
Architecture reviews and hands-on fixes across Vercel, Supabase, AWS and GCP (GKE): Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD, message queues, and moving heavy queries off your main database.
Track record: At Coretava: 3K+ concurrent users on 40% fewer AWS resources, and analytics queries cut from 15 minutes to 30 seconds.
Instack AI
Led a sustained performance push on a multi-tenant voice agent platform built on LiveKit, Deepgram, ElevenLabs and OpenAI, cutting response latency roughly 3x so calls feel real-time. Also built its Twilio telephony layer and per-number Stripe billing.
DataQueue
Led full-stack and DevOps for the platform end to end: NestJS services on MongoDB, a Next.js product UI, Stripe subscriptions, WhatsApp messaging, and SIP telephony through LiveKit, Asterisk and Vital PBX, all running on GKE.
BidSource
Designed and shipped Opportunities, which lets forwarders combine buy rates, send batch carrier outreach and derive sell rates in one place, backed by a 4-tier lane pricing engine with AI estimates and confidence scores.
Coretava
Moved analytics off the main MongoDB database and onto BigQuery, which also became the base for big-data analysis and machine learning. Complex queries became 30× faster and load on MongoDB dropped by 70%.
Coretava
Built 15+ e-commerce integrations, including VTEX, Magento and WooCommerce, plus public REST APIs for third parties. The addressable market grew 60%.
Day-to-day stack: TypeScript, Next.js, Node.js, NestJS, Python (FastAPI), Supabase, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, Vercel, AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, Terraform, LiveKit, Twilio, OpenAI, Stripe.
AI-native workflow: Vibe coding for prototypes, Agentic coding, Claude Code, Cursor, Custom subagents, MCP servers, Context engineering.
Read the full résuméUsually one of three shapes: a fixed-scope build, such as a voice agent or a set of integrations; an architecture or infrastructure review with a written plan; or a part-time fractional CTO role. We pick the shape on the first call.
It depends on scope. After the intro call I send a short written proposal with either a fixed price or a day rate, so you know the number before any work starts.
I work remotely from Palestine (UTC+2, UTC+3 in summer). My day overlaps with European working hours and with mornings on the US East Coast.
Yes. Most of my work happens alongside in-house engineers: pairing, code review, and leaving code and docs your team can own.
Heavily, and on purpose. I vibe-code prototypes and internal tools to test ideas in hours, then switch to agentic coding for production: Claude Code, Cursor, custom subagents and MCP servers handle exploration, review and routine code, while I own the architecture and review and test every change before it ships.
Tell me what you're building and where it's stuck. If I'm not the right fit, I'll tell you on the call. Prefer writing? Email or WhatsApp works too.
Book a 30-min call (opens Google Calendar in a new tab)