Vadi Taslim

Senior Software Engineer · Sydney, Australia

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Experience

August 2021 - Present

Millions of users across 30+ countries · 30+ countries

Senior Fullstack Engineer at Vervio

▹Cut JS bundle by ~50%, measurably improving Core Web Vitals
▹Unblocked SEO issues that had been stuck across non-US locales
▹Stabilized content delivery on a high-traffic platform that was failing intermittently

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▹Hands-on fullstack for global client properties — millions of users, 30+ countries, multiple platforms.
▹Cut JS bundle size by 50% through code splitting and i18n optimization.
▹Built async rendering to keep the UI responsive when backend responses were slow.
▹Migrated legacy CMS stack to Next.js — unblocked SEO issues that had been stuck for months across non-US locales.
▹Set up ESLint, Prettier, and pre-commit hooks; ran code reviews until the team stopped making the same mistakes.

Next.js·React·TypeScript·Node.js·Python·AEM

August 2020 - Present

100k+ Discord bot users

Senior Frontend Engineer (Part-time) at Toptal

▹Discord bot grew to 100k+ active community members
▹SSR retrofit improved SEO and initial page load by 40%
▹Built accessible email templates with screen reader and OS theme support

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▹Built a Discord bot from scratch — now serving 100k+ active users with Node.js, Redis, and PostgreSQL.
▹Retrofitted SSR onto an existing React/Redux app without breaking CSS Modules, routing, or state hydration.
▹Set up CI/CD with GitHub Actions and Docker deployments to S3.
▹Owned frontend architecture across multiple codebases; ran daily code reviews.

React·TypeScript·Redux·Node.js·Redis·PostgreSQL

November 2018 - July 2020

Frontend Engineer at Wallethub

▹Automated CVE vulnerability detection, replacing manual security review
▹Patched confirmed vulnerabilities from bug bounty programs
▹First test suite — no regressions shipped after it was in place

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▹Picked up OWASP ZAP security automation in the first week and owned it from there.
▹Automated OWASP Top 10 vulnerability scanning — replacing what had been manual review.
▹Triaged bug bounty reports from Bugcrowd and HackerOne, patched confirmed vulnerabilities in PHP and Angular.
▹Shipped the first test suite with Mocha for regression prevention.

Angular·TypeScript·Node.js·PHP·OWASP ZAP·Redis

Earlier experience (2012–2019)

Frontend Engineer (3D/WebXR)atAwe2017–2019

▹Core 3D rendering engine used across all client projects
▹Eliminated memory leaks that were causing session crashes
▹Maintained cross-browser WebGL/VR/AR compatibility

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▹Built and maintained the 3D rendering engine that all client projects ran on.
▹Learned the underlying math — matrices, trigonometry, linear algebra — and built the engine from first principles.
▹Shipped interactive Three.js plugins and tracked cross-browser WebGL/XR compatibility.
▹Profiled and fixed memory leaks that were crashing long-running sessions.

Three.js·WebGL·WebXR·JavaScript·Gamepad API

Frontend EngineeratDominopos2016–2017

▹Established testing culture with Selenium/Nightwatch automation
▹Won 2nd place in company hackathon
▹Built the first test suite for existing projects using Selenium and Nightwatch.

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▹Won 2nd place at the company hackathon — built an Angular/Node app in 48 hours.

Angular·TypeScript·Laravel·MongoDB·Elasticsearch

Fullstack EngineeratLCA2015–2016

▹No production regressions shipped during my time — test coverage from day one
▹Built backend features with unit and integration tests from the start — not retrofitted.
▹Removed deprecated code paths and measured the performance improvement.

PHP·Symfony·Python·PHPUnit·Selenium

Software DeveloperatPowergen2012–2015

▹Shipped biometric identity system deployed for enterprise clients
▹Built a facial recognition and fingerprint identification desktop application.
▹Integrated DigitalPersona and Neurotech biometric SDKs.

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▹Debugged production failures on-site — hardware integration and biometric matching issues.

C#·.NET·MSSQL·DigitalPersona·Neurotech

Projects

I build what I can't stop thinking about — usually because I want the thing to exist and nobody else has built it yet.

Vargos.ai

AI agents have no memory of their environment between runs and can't change their own setup.

AI agent that manages its own environment — provisioning, executing, and modifying infrastructure via tool calls.

Learnings:

▹LLM orchestration at system level
▹Vector search for semantic function discovery

TypeScriptNestJSLangChainQdrantPostgreSQL

Chans.ai

Adding voice to AI agents requires stitching together STT, TTS, and WebRTC from scratch.

Open-source voice AI infrastructure — plug real-time voice into any existing LLM system.

Learnings:

▹Real-time audio streaming with LiveKit and WebRTC
▹Hybrid RAG search (vector + BM25) with line-level citations

PythonFastAPILiveKitNext.jspgvector

Archived

Ingra.ai

Platform where you define functions and expose them to LLMs as callable tools.

Tic Tac Toe

An unbeatable Tic-Tac-Toe opponent using minimax algorithm.

URL Shortener

Personal link shortener for quick cross-device sharing.

Writing

View all

Writing about the decisions behind the systems — why something was built that way, and what went wrong first.

engineering·Feb 2026·5 min

My Phone Is a Dev Environment. Here's How.

Termux, a Cloudflare tunnel, tmux, and Claude CLI. How I turned an Android phone into a real development environment connected to my home server.

engineering·Dec 2025·5 min

I Spent Weeks Researching NAS Devices. Then I Just Installed TrueNAS.

70 messages, $3,000 in my cart, and weeks of comparing QNAP vs Synology. Then I remembered I was already building a server.

engineering·Dec 2025·6 min

Why I Built a Voice AI Platform Nobody Asked For

No pitch deck. No customers. Just a hunch that voice AI shouldn't require stitching five services together. This is how Chans.ai started — in a car, singing along to a Japanese pop song with my kids.

About

Based in Sydney, I started in game design, which taught me to think in systems — how pieces interact, where they break, what the user never sees. I've since built biometric identity platforms, 3D rendering engines from trigonometry up, and checkout flows serving millions across 30+ countries.

I care as much about how systems fail as how they're supposed to work. That's why I run a homelab, operate my own AI infrastructure, and write custom OWASP ZAP rules instead of trusting defaults. 15 years in — the right call still requires knowing the trade-offs, not just the defaults.

Technologies

Frontend

Interfaces that load fast, rank, and handle real traffic

TypeScriptPrimary language

React10+ years

Next.jsApp Router, SSR, ISR

Tailwind CSSDesign systems

Backend

APIs, data pipelines, and automation

Node.jsProduction services

PythonAI/ML, automation

PostgreSQLPrimary datastore

RedisCaching, queues

Infrastructure

Hardware I own, operate, and repair

DockerContainer orchestration

ProxmoxVMs, LXCs, GPU passthrough

CloudflareDNS, tunnels, edge

LinuxDaily driver

AI & ML

Local inference, speech, and image generation

OllamaLocal LLM serving

llama.cppQuantized models

WhisperSpeech-to-text

Stable DiffusionImage generation

LiveKitReal-time voice AI

Infrastructure

Cloud abstractions hide how systems actually behave. I self-host to see what gets hidden.

Intentional boundaries: Compete with hyperscalers · Replace managed services at scale · Build infra without operational purpose

What self-hosting taught me

▹Every abstraction leaks; knowing when matters more than avoiding them
▹Cold starts, IO contention, and memory pressure define real performance
▹Don't pick GPU specs until you know your actual workload
▹VRAM is the real GPU bottleneck — not compute
▹The bug is almost always in the network. It just looks like your app.
▹Disk and memory constraints surface before CPU saturation
▹Backups are useless until restores are tested
▹Observability beats intuition
▹Infra that isn't automated will eventually drift

Mobile dev environment

Mobile terminal

Termux (Android)cloudflaredtmuxClaude CLI

Full development environment from a phone — tunneled into my server, persistent sessions, agentic coding with Claude.

AI agent via chat

WhatsAppVargosHome server

Message my AI agent on WhatsApp to execute tasks directly on my infrastructure.

Details

Machines

HYDRA

Primary Workstation · Windows 11 + WSL2

Intel Core i9-12900K

128GB DDR5 4400MHz

NVIDIA RTX 5080 (16GB)

2TB NVMe + 2x1TB NVMe

▹All-purpose development workstation
▹Local ML experimentation
▹GPU-bound workloads and tooling

HYDRA09

Primary Server Node · Proxmox VE

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X

192GB DDR5 4000MHz

NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Max-Q

2x2TB NVMe + 4TB NVMe + 2x18TB HDD RAID 1 ZFS-backed bulk storage

▹Virtualization (VMs & LXCs)
▹LLM and Stable Diffusion inference workloads
▹Self-hosted services (DNS, tunnels, media, databases)

Beelink SER9 Pro

Edge / Utility Node · Proxmox VE

AMD Ryzen 9-class mobile CPU

32GB DDR5

1TB NVMe

▹Edge services
▹Lightweight containers
▹Auxiliary workloads and testing

LEGION-S7

Mobile Control & Development Node · Ubuntu

AMD Ryzen 7 5800H

32GB DDR4

NVIDIA RTX 3060 (Laptop)

1TB NVMe

▹Primary mobile workstation for development

Networking

MikroTik RouterOS

▹Subnet and bridge isolation
▹NAT and firewall rule ownership
▹WireGuard VPN for secure remote access
▹Cloudflare-based DNS and ingress control

Platforms & Tooling

AI & ML Tooling

Local LLM runtimes (llama.cpp, Ollama)Model experimentation and benchmarkingGPU utilization and performance analysis

Virtualization & Containers

Proxmox VE (VMs and LXCs)PCIe device passthrough (GPU, storage, networking)DockerDocker ComposeContainerized services on Proxmox LXCs

Networking & Access

MikroTik RouterOSWireGuard VPNCloudflare DNS and Tunnel-based ingressReverse proxy and internal routing

Data & Storage

ZFS (datasets, snapshots)NFS mounts between nodesNAS-backed persistent volumesPostgreSQLRedisMariaDBVector databases (Qdrant)

Media & Real-Time

Plex media streamingPhotoPrism photo indexingLiveKit real-time audio/video

Observability & Ops

Service health monitoringLog inspection and debuggingBackup orchestration and restore testing

Get in touch

Tell me what you're building.

[email protected]