Portrait of Maaz Shaikh

Open to Forward Deployed Engineer roles

Maaz Shaikh

Forward Deployed Engineer

I

Customer-embedded engineer with 12+ years shipping production software inside enterprise client teams across Retail, Banking and Insurance. I lead technical discovery with VP and CTO sponsors, then code, debug and ship alongside client engineers, from prototype to production launch and handoff. My recent work builds agentic AI systems: multi-model agents with tool calling, structured output, evaluation suites and human-in-the-loop approval, optimized for cost-per-request.

LinkedInGitHubmaaz.shaikh.pro@gmail.com

Chicago, IL

enterprise clients
14
launches & replatforms
35+
page load time
−58%
infrastructure cost
−34%
partner spend
−45%

AI Lab

AI you can try right now

Six working projects that run in your browser. Nothing you play, draw or train is sent to a server.

Live: the chess AI playing itself.

AI Chess

Play a full game of chess against an engine built from scratch, at three levels.

Alpha-beta game tree search

  • Connect Four

    An opponent with no strategy written in. It simulates thousands of games and learns which moves win.

    Monte Carlo tree search

  • Minesweeper

    Clear the minefield yourself, ask for a hint, or watch an AI reason through it one deduction at a time.

    Constraint solving and probability

  • Neural Playground

    Train a neural network live and watch it learn to separate a spiral, one step at a time.

    Backpropagation from scratch

  • Digit Reader

    Draw a number and a trained model reads it instantly, without sending your drawing anywhere.

    Trained neural network

  • Pathfinder

    Watch A*, Dijkstra, breadth-first and greedy search race through a maze you can redraw.

    A* and classic search

Skillset

What I build with

50 skills across 8 areas. Filter by area or search for a specific tool.

AI & Agents9

  • LLM agents
  • Tool calling
  • Structured output (Zod)
  • Multi-model routing
  • Evaluation pipelines
  • Human-in-the-loop
  • Cost-per-request optimization
  • Vercel AI SDK
  • AI Gateway

Languages4

  • TypeScript
  • JavaScript
  • Node.js
  • C# / .NET

Integration & APIs6

  • REST
  • GraphQL
  • Webhooks
  • Middleware
  • Customer-data platforms
  • Commerce, search & CRM integration

Cloud & DevOps7

  • Vercel
  • Edge Config
  • Rolling releases
  • Instant rollback
  • CDN & caching
  • GitHub Actions
  • Turborepo

Observability5

  • Datadog
  • Log drains
  • Alerting
  • Core Web Vitals
  • Latency monitoring

Security7

  • OAuth
  • JWT
  • Sessions
  • CSP
  • CORS
  • XSS/CSRF protection
  • Secrets management

Web Platform5

  • Next.js
  • React
  • Server Components
  • SSR / SSG / ISR
  • Streaming

Enterprise Platforms7

  • Sitecore XP / XM Cloud
  • Sitecore CDP & Personalize
  • Content Hub (DAM)
  • AEM
  • Drupal
  • WordPress
  • Kentico

Experience

Embedded with client teams

Roles and the client engagements inside them. Open an engagement to see what shipped and what it moved.

  1. Lead Sitecore Architect · Slalom

    Jan 2022 – Present · Chicago, IL

    Customer-embedded technical lead for 14 enterprise clients across Retail, Banking and Insurance, owning delivery from technical discovery through production launch and handoff.

    • Led technical discovery sessions and executive readouts for VP and CTO sponsors; ranked findings by business impact to set build priorities.
    • Architected and coded integrations between headless front ends and legacy enterprise systems, wiring publish webhooks to event-driven cache revalidation.
    • Built observability with log drains to Datadog and revalidation alerts, cutting time to detect content issues from hours to under 5 minutes.
    • Built DAM-backed image pipelines that cut median page weight by 46%.
    • Mentored 9 engineers and turned repeated delivery patterns into reusable components, runbooks and onboarding standards.

  2. Senior CMS Developer · Bitwise

    Jul 2014 – Dec 2021

    • Delivered 22 site launches and replatforms on AEM, Drupal, WordPress and Kentico, including content and data migration, redirect mapping and SEO preservation.
    • Built JavaScript front ends integrated with commerce, search and CRM systems through REST APIs.
    • Produced onboarding and integration maps that became team standards.

AI Projects

Things I've built

Featured work, plus AI projects pulled live from my GitHub.

Featured

Content-Ops Agent

Multi-model agent that audits headless CMS pages for missing alt text, broken links and weak metadata, then drafts fixes for human approval.

  • $1.90 per 100 pages
  • 40% cheaper than single-model
  • Human-in-the-loop approval
  • AI SDK
  • AI Gateway
  • Zod
  • Evals
  • Multi-model

From GitHub

AI repositories will appear here once they're public on github.com/maazshaikhpro.

Credentials

Certifications & education

Certifications

  • Sitecore XM Cloud Developer, 2024
  • Sitecore CDP & Personalize, 2023
  • Sitecore 10 .NET Developer, 2021

Education

Bachelor of Engineering in Information Technology, Solapur University, 2010