Abdullah Hanif
Full-Stack Developer & Founder
Full-Stack Developer & Founder
Founder — Xero Sphere AI
I architected and shipped a production ERP powering 200+ restaurant and pharmacy locations across Pakistan — solo-led v1 in under 5 months.
About
I'm Abdullah Hanif - I build production software for Pakistani businesses. I left formal studies to focus entirely on technical work. No CS degree, no classroom time - every hour goes into coding, debugging, benchmarking, and shipping real systems.
I founded Xero Sphere AI because restaurants and pharmacies here were stuck using 4-5 separate tools for POS, stock, delivery, and FBR. I wanted one system that actually runs 24/7 in production - and it does, at 200+ locations today.
I architected the whole platform myself, delivered the core ERP in under five months, and now lead a small team of 3-4 developers. I use Cursor and modern tooling to move faster, but every architecture call, database decision, and production fix is mine.
I don't talk about performance without measuring it - 1 million products, 5 cashiers searching in parallel, p95 at 50ms on a 1 vCPU VPS. The benchmark report below is real data from my own tests.
I designed the full ERP stack - database schema to deployment - before scaling the team.
200+ live locations across restaurants and pharmacies. Not a demo - a running business platform.
1M product database, 5 parallel cashiers, p95 50ms search - benchmarked and passed on 1 vCPU VPS.
My Path
I stopped formal studies to go all-in on technical work. That wasn't a gamble - it's the same bet Google, Apple, Tesla, and Pakistan's top software houses are already making.
My bet: A live ERP at 200+ locations, benchmarked at 1M products, beats any transcript. I didn't wait for permission from a degree - I shipped proof.
Founders and senior leadership have stated publicly that a college degree is not required for hiring.
Policy: Google's Grow with Google program treats a 6-month professional certificate plus a strong portfolio as equivalent to a 4-year degree for many roles.
CEO Tim Cook stated that roughly 50% of Apple's US workforce does not hold a 4-year degree.
Policy: Cook has said universities don't teach the coding skills Apple actually needs - they hire for ability, portfolio, and problem-solving, not paper credentials.
Founder Elon Musk has said openly: "There is no need even to have a college degree& not even high school. All that matters is exceptional ability."
Policy: Tesla hires software engineers based on real-world projects, live portfolios, and coding assessments - not diploma requirements.
Both companies have removed the "degree required" filter from a large share of job postings - IBM through its "new collar" hiring model, Meta through skills-first technical screening for engineering roles.
One of Pakistan's fastest-growing software houses.
Policy: Founder and management consistently hire on coding ability - if you pass their technical assessment, you can get direct entry without a degree.
Works with international clients and runs its own structured hiring pipeline.
Policy: Their Arbisoft Assessment Test evaluates coding and logic. Clear the test, and they don't ask for a degree certificate.
Modern, fast-paced shops building AI and cutting-edge web products.
Policy: Both actively hire developers with real GitHub projects and production portfolios - whether or not they've ever enrolled in university.
I'm not applying with a degree. I'm applying with Xero Sphere AI - a production ERP, live benchmarks, and 200+ paying business locations. That's the portfolio these companies say they want.
Journey
A career arc built on shipping real software - not tutorials. Every phase led to the next product decision.
Age 16 · Foundation
I started exploring digital skills on my own - computer basics, HTML, design tools. I tried freelancing early and quickly learned that without real product depth, you're just competing on price.
Automation Phase
I built heavy n8n workflows - WhatsApp bots, booking agents, calling pipelines. Then I hit the wall: if a JSON node drops at 2 AM, everything stops. That's when I committed to writing my own code.
First Software
My first real app was a custom admin panel with multimodal client handling. After that, I stopped using n8n completely and focused on production-grade web systems.
Client Discovery
A client found me on LinkedIn and asked for a unique ERP - not another off-the-shelf POS. I spent a week researching what Pakistani pharmacies and restaurants actually need, got the project funded, and started building.
Solo-Led Build · Under 5 Months
I built the ERP module by module: POS with OCR Inventory Attendance Rider Tracking FBR Public Order Panel. Each piece was designed for real shop floors, not demo screenshots.
March 2025
Delivered live in March. Fixed early production bugs, stabilised the system, and ran my own benchmarks - 1M products, 5 parallel cashiers, p95 50ms, zero HTTP errors.
Post-Launch
I built the WhatsApp order engine on Android - notification listener, voice STT, Order Mode, parallel chats. Not a chatbot script; a full order-taking stack that runs on real shop phones.
June 2025
Launched publicly at xero-sphere-ai.com. 20+ businesses in the first month. Today the platform runs at 200+ restaurant and pharmacy locations across Pakistan.
2025-2026
Scaled to 200+ locations, hired 3-4 developers, and onboarded them with full codebase knowledge. My role moved from solo backend dev to Founder & Technical Lead - still hands-on every day.
Selected Work
A unified ERP platform built for Pakistani restaurants and pharmacies - from POS to delivery to compliance.
Pakistan's complete AI ERP - POS, Public Order Panel, FBR compliance, rider tracking, and WhatsApp order automation in one platform.
Pakistani restaurants and pharmacies run on fragmented tools - separate POS, inventory, delivery, and compliance systems that don't talk to each other.
Unified ERP with industry-specific modules, FBR integration, rider GPS tracking, public order panels, and WhatsApp order automation - all in one platform.
Founding developer & technical lead. I architected and solo-built v1 in under 5 months. Now I lead a team of 3-4 developers.
Node.js, Express, SQLite (WAL mode), custom web frontend, Android (WhatsApp engine, NDK), VPS deployment, performance benchmarking with Playwright.
Engineering Proof
I don't claim speed - I measure it. This is my own load test on Xero Sphere AI: 1 million products, 5 parallel cashiers, 1 vCPU VPS.
Can 4-5 cashiers on one 1 vCPU VPS search 1 million products with consistent speed?
Answer: Yes - 5 parallel users measured, cold search p95 50ms (gate d100ms). User spread 1.88× (gate d2×). Zero errors.
Sawal: Kya 4-5 cashiers ek hi 1 vCPU VPS par 1 million products par search karte waqt speed consistent rahegi?
Jawab: Haan - 5 parallel users measure kiye, cold search p95 50ms (gate d100ms). User-to-user spread 1.88× (gate d2×).
| User | Samples | p50 | p95 | max |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cashier 1 | 25 | 1ms | 44ms | 58ms |
| Cashier 2 | 25 | 1ms | 47ms | 47ms |
| Cashier 3 | 25 | 2ms | 75ms | 77ms |
| Cashier 4 | 25 | 2ms | 55ms | 69ms |
| Cashier 5 | 25 | 2ms | 40ms | 50ms |
| Aggregate | - | 2ms | 50ms | 77ms |
5 background inventory writes while 5 cashiers search simultaneously.
Playwright test on app.xero-sphere-ai.com - branch REAL-1M-901.
| Query | Server ms | Engine | Rows | POS-safe? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
pndl | 56ms | none | 0 | Yes |
pnadl | 2ms | none | 0 | Yes |
pandl | 1ms | none | 0 | Yes |
pandol | 3ms | fts | 20 | Yes |
POS uses prefix (d2 chars) + FTS trigram (e3 chars) only. Heavy Levenshtein is isolated to AI/OCR - not on the POS hot path.
| Config | pan DB p95 |
|---|---|
| Production 64MB cache | 87.54ms |
| Stress 2MB cache | 54ms (0.62× slower) |
Production PRAGMA cache_size = -64000 (~64MB) on ~946.5MB DB avoids disk thrash. We ship correct pragmas in database.js.
Skills
Technologies I actually use in production - not tutorial exercises.
Contact
I'm open to software engineering roles, collaborations, and product discussions. Reach out directly.
Whether you're hiring, partnering, or just want to talk about building production software - I'd like to hear from you.