Sound on
A Danish renaissance castle mirrored in still water under a high white moon and quiet clouds.

Story

The full story, with the CV at the end.

Johan Christian Dahl, Frederiksborg Castle by Moonlight, 1817. Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Khaled Waleed
Khaled Waleed, hung here since August 2026.

At fourteen I was behind a supermarket checkout in Al-Harithiya, Baghdad, scanning groceries and counting change. My father had died in 2014, and I was the eldest son in a family of five, so someone had to provide. I've been working ever since, the register first, then design, then code, now systems that millions of people depend on. And providing ever since, too. This page is the long version.

Design came before code. At seventeen, still in school, I spent a summer making posters for surgeons and beauty brands at a small Baghdad studio, and I kept wishing the designs could actually do something, so I taught myself to build them. By the end of 2021 I was designing and building websites for a studio in Amsterdam, under the same title I use today (design engineer), and I'd founded Vitex, my own studio, with the motto it still carries: software, pretty and perfect.

Then the work turned serious. At eighteen I was building government systems, the Iraqi Electronic Passport's public website and booking flow, systems for the ports, an ERP behind the intercity-taxi garages of every governorate, and I led a team of nine while doing it. Building software in Iraq is an advantage: the constraints are real, the stakes are rarely abstract, and you learn early what holds up when the thing simply has to work. In those years the Ishtar Center, a democracy NGO, made me its director of AI and technology, where I apply AI models to research alongside some of Iraq's top researchers.

Today I lead frontend at Enjaz, the e-government arm of Qi, Iraq's largest e-payment company, which I joined as the youngest of its 3,000+ employees and the only frontend engineer on seven government platforms. Within a year I'd rebuilt and redesigned all seven, then I recruited and trained the three engineers who now run them with me. The portfolio serves more than four million people, one platform alone reaches three million families. And still, the part I care about most is the part nobody audits: sounds, motion, the small courtesies of an interface, shipped in business dashboards nobody expected to enjoy. I never accepted that “it works” and “it feels right” should be different standards. Vitex, meanwhile, grew up with me, four people now, with products of its own out in the world. There's a title for all of this, design engineer, but it's the same instinct that started with the posters.

Away from the screen I read, watch films, and walk the older parts of cities. The questions I care about never stay answered: why people suffer, where taste comes from, what makes a life worthwhile. I write occasionally, mostly because some thoughts become annoying if you leave them alone for too long, and I've found that most things become more bearable once they become interesting, software included. If some of that overlaps with your world, let's talk.

The name in Arabic is خالد وليد: Khaled Waleed in English, sometimes spelled Khalid Waleed or Khaled Walid.

Where I’ve worked

  1. since Jan 2025 · Full-time, Baghdad, on-site

    Enjaz

    Frontend Lead

    • Hired as the sole frontend engineer for seven government platforms; rebuilt and redesigned every app to modern Vue/Nuxt standards within a year.
    • Built the frontend team: scouted all three hires from the market, ran their interviews and trial tasks, then trained and onboarded them; now lead the four, owning code review, standards, and release quality.
    • Portfolio serves 4+ million users, including Oil Coupon, Super Qi’s most-used miniapp (3+ million families), and the systems managing the state OPDC’s oil-product distribution to gas stations, bakeries, generators, and farms nationwide.
    • Designed and built Enjaz’s own corporate website, enjaz.tech.
  2. since Feb 2024 · Part-time, Baghdad, hybrid

    Ishtar Center for Democracy Support

    Director of AI & Technology

    • Center member of an Iraqi NGO advancing democracy and human rights; own all of its technology.
    • Work with Iraq’s top researchers, applying advanced AI models to the center’s research.
    • Built and operate ishtarcenter.com, a bilingual Nuxt site with a self-hosted backend, and the center’s conference website.
  3. since Oct 2021 · Self-employed, Baghdad, remote

    Vitex

    Founder & Lead Engineer

    • Run a four-person design-engineering studio (“Software, pretty and perfect”) building web platforms and mobile apps for Iraqi enterprises and NGOs.
    • Built Risha end to end (mobile app, dashboard, website): e-learning connecting Iraq’s sixth-preparatory students with elite private tutors. 25K+ downloads, custom cross-device DRM; led all design and frontend.
    • Built and operate Auction Key, a car-auction brokerage platform with built-in ERP and white-label apps, powering Al-Nejoum Al-Zahera’s operations: 1,000+ cars and $3M+ in transactions monthly.
    • Rocca Menu, a multi-tenant QR-menu SaaS for restaurants, is live in 20+ venues.
    • Shipped platforms for the Afaq Al-Obaidi subsidiaries (Smartic for employment, National Foodstuff, Auto Zone, Golden Lube) and an archiving system for the Al-Amal Association.
    • Operate 20+ production client deployments (Cloudflare Pages + self-hosted VPS backends).
  4. Feb 2024 to Dec 2024 · Part-time, Baghdad, hybrid

    Morshed

    Senior Software Engineer

    • Built Morshed’s website, accounting ERP, and internal workflow systems, then shipped websites and ERPs for its clients.
    • Owned the whole digital transformation of the business-development & PR firm.
  5. Oct 2022 to Dec 2024 · Full-time, Baghdad, on-site

    Digital Logic

    Frontend Engineer

    • Built the Iraqi Electronic Passport platform’s public website and appointment-booking flow, plus Vue.js frontends for the General Company for Ports of Iraq and the Shipping Agencies systems.
    • Led a team of nine developing The Garage System, an ERP managing the intercity-taxi garages of every Iraqi governorate; set code conventions and reviewed all frontend work.
    • Mentored three interns through their first production features.
  6. Oct 2021 to Oct 2022 · Part-time, Amsterdam, remote

    Speetu

    Design Engineer

    • Designed and built websites for Dutch brands, Inflexio among them, plus Speetu’s own site, logo, and brand identity.
  7. Jun 2021 to Oct 2021 · Full-time, Baghdad, on-site

    The Town Studio

    Graphic Designer

    • Produced print and digital brand assets (brochures, posters, social-media sets, web graphics), mostly for beauty and organic brands, doctors, and surgeons.
  8. Apr 2019 to Jun 2021 · Full-time, Baghdad, on-site

    Nakhlat Baghdad

    Cashier & Store Assistant

    • First job ever, in a mid-sized Al-Harithiya supermarket: checkout, inventory, and restocking, learning to handle impatient adults before having a high-school ID.

The same history on LinkedIn, or as a two-page PDF.

View the CV

If you want to talk, about work or anything else, I am easy to reach.

Talk to me Home