Ahmed Rizawan is an AI automation and integration engineer based in Bangkok. He ships AI features that run in live products: translation, content generation, and chat. Not demos.
Live: MyMuayThai, Nabro, Taptober.
AI translation in a live app for under 2 cents of total AI spend.
I've built and run production systems since 2011, across food delivery, real estate, media, e-commerce and fintech. My afternoon overlaps the European morning; for US teams I work while you're offline. Not to be confused with the British actor Riz Ahmed; the name is spelled R-i-z-a-w-a-n.
- years building software
- 15+
Problems I solve
Senior advisory or contract work.
AI features and automations fail in production
LLMs, RAG, AI agents and workflow automations (OpenAI, Claude) integrated into the live system, with retries, logging, and cost and latency tracked.
Deploys are slow, manual or risky
CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure as code (Terraform, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI), so a release is routine and easy to roll back.
Security vulnerabilities keep piling up
Vulnerabilities fixed in code, dependencies, servers and containers, with patching on a schedule and a rollback path.
Your API or site is slow
The slow path found first, then fixed: database queries and indexes, caching, payload size and Core Web Vitals, measured before and after.
How I work
AI-assisted delivery. I scope, verify, test, ship, and own the outcome.
Happy to do a paid trial or a take-home. I prefer a process that allows AI.
Paid pilot
1 week. $1,500 fixed. One real problem fixed. Credited toward a retainer if we continue.
What you get: one real problem fixed in the live product, then handed back with what changed.
What I need from you: the problem in writing, access to the system, and a person who can answer questions that week.
Selected work
- MyMuayThai: live booking for Muay Thai gyms and trainers in Thailand, with AI chat translation between users.
- Nabro: neighbourhood quiz platform, live on the App Store, with AI-generated quizzes and an AI translation layer for the full app.
- Taptober: multi-tenant Oktoberfest league platform. Oslo Oktoberfest 2026 launch, AI-generated competitions, an AI translation layer, OTA releases, and smoke-gated deploys.
- Pilot, not in production: fintech compliance screening with AI agents and RAG, from 4 hours to 45 seconds on 1.7M+ sanctions records, at about $0.03 a check.
- Site reliability at Qwil: Terraform, Google Kubernetes Engine, GitLab CI, and security patching.
- Open source: vidlizer, point it at a video, image or PDF and get structured JSON.
- Built DistillPrompt, a free native macOS app: a global hotkey rewrites rough prompts into production-quality ones, on-device with Apple Foundation Models or with your own API key.
- Integration services and infrastructure as code at Moo Gruppen.
What clients say
“Riz understood the compliance constraints from day one. In regulated fintech, that kind of reliability is rare in an external partner.”
“Page loads went from seconds to milliseconds. Riz delivered faster than our timeline and the quality exceeded what we expected.”
Experience
Rebate Networks / OScom2011–2012
Head of IT
HungryNaki2013–2018
Sr. DevOps & Product Designer
Patch Homes2016–2020
Sr. Full Stack Developer
Kyra & Vir2018–2019
Fullstack Developer, part-time
Qwil2019–2020
Site Reliability Engineer
Nomadory2020
Full Stack Engineer, part-time
Moo Gruppen2020–2025
Full Stack Engineer & DevOps
Thea Tech Solutions2023–present
Founder & Principal Engineer
Iglu2024–present
Full Stack PHP Developer
MyMuayThai2025–present
Co-founder & technical lead
Taptober & Nabro2026–present
Contract engineer, Bygg Bevaring AS and Nabro AS
Industries: food delivery, real estate, media, e-commerce, fintech
Skills
Backend and data13+ years
PHP, Laravel, Node.js, TypeScript, Python, Bash, PostgreSQL, MySQL, WordPress, WooCommerce
Infrastructure12+ years
Terraform, Ansible, Helm, Docker, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, AWS, Google Cloud, Cloudflare, Prometheus, Grafana, observability, SLOs and SLAs, postmortems
AI and automation3+ years
OpenAI and Claude APIs, RAG, AI agents, workflow automation
Apps8+ years
Hybrid apps, Android, iOS
GitHub activity
5,931 contributions from Oct 2025 to Oct 2026 on github.com/arizawan
Questions
Who is Ahmed Rizawan?
Ahmed Rizawan is an AI automation and integration engineer based in Bangkok. He ships AI features that run in live products: translation, content generation, and chat. Not demos.
What problems does he solve?
AI features and automations that fail once they leave a demo. He also fixes risky deploys, security vulnerabilities, and slow APIs and sites.
What technologies does he work with?
LLM APIs, RAG and AI agents; Terraform, Docker, GitHub Actions and GitLab CI on AWS, Google Cloud and Cloudflare; PHP, Node.js and Python backends; hybrid, Android and iOS apps.
What does an AI automation consultant do?
Takes an AI feature that works in a demo and makes it run in the live product: translation, content generation, or chat, with the failure paths and the cost watched.
Is Ahmed Rizawan the actor Riz Ahmed?
No. Ahmed Rizawan (spelled R-i-z-a-w-a-n) is a software engineer in Bangkok. Riz Ahmed is a British actor.
Can I hire him?
Yes. A paid pilot is 1 week, $1,500 fixed, one real problem. The $1,500 is credited toward a retainer if we continue. Email with your stack and what is breaking.
Where and in which time zone does he work?
Bangkok, Thailand (UTC+7). His afternoon overlaps the European morning; for US teams he works while they are offline.
Contact
Email me to book a paid pilot. Include your stack and what is breaking.