clawkit (opens in a new tab)
700+ image pullsA Docker and AI tooling wrapper for OpenClaw, published to GHCR through automated CI/CD.
Docker
GitHub Actions
CI/CD
OpenClaw
Open to Remote or Relocation
Ashok Barua
Senior Full-Stack Engineer — Fintech, Business Platforms & Agentic AI Workflows
I build production-ready systems with PHP, Laravel, TypeScript, and Vue, from backend architecture and APIs to deployment and operations.
- Experience
- 7+ yrs
- In productionShipping to production
- Domain
- Payments
- SiPay · HSMSiPay · HSM · PCI-DSS
- Timezone
- UTC+6
- ChattogramChattogram
About
Who I Am
How I work and what I'm looking for next.
Senior Full-Stack Engineer with 7+ years building payment systems and business platforms in Laravel, PHP 8, Vue 3 and TypeScript. Led a team of six engineers on SiPay, a licensed e-money platform in Türkiye, where I built HSM-backed saved-card storage and drove the PHP 7.4 to 8.2 upgrade. Since 2023 I have been the senior engineer at Grow More Gaze, owning its platforms, servers and security end to end. I work agent-first, designing agentic development workflows with Coding Agents(Claude Code, OpenCode, Pi etc), MCP and custom review agents, and I review every change that touches money, data or auth myself. I enjoy helping people grow. A classmate I mentored through problem solving, Git and best practices now leads a team himself.
How I work
I plan before I build, give every issue its own branch and environment, let my review agent check the code first, and then review it myself line by line. Anything touching money, data or auth gets the slowest read. My agents work from curated project context (rules files, MCP tools and Laravel Boost guidelines), which keeps their output accurate and their token use low.
Open source
Laravel and DevOps tooling I maintain on GitHub and under @thesoftpulze, plus merged contributions to Inertia.js and Raycast. See the full timeline of my open-source work.
Skills
My Toolbox
Core tools and technologies I work with, plus technologies I’m familiar with.
Languages
PHPPythonTypeScriptJavaScriptSQLHTMLCSS
Familiar with: React, Next.js, Redux, NodeJS, Go, Rust
Frameworks
LaravelVue.jsNuxt.jsInertia.jsTailwind CSSLivewireAlpine.js
Backend & Architecture
REST API DesignSystem DesignQueues & HorizonWebhooksIdempotencyPCI-DSS-Aligned SystemsObservabilityLegacy Upgrades
Databases
MySQLPostgreSQLSQLiteRedisMongoDB
Practices
Testing (PHPUnit, Pest)Code ReviewMentoring and Team LeadershipHiring InterviewsAgile
DevOps & Tools
LinuxNginxDockerGitGitHub ActionsCI/CDElasticsearchGraylogMQTTDeployer
AI & Agent Engineering
Agentic WorkflowsContext EngineeringMulti-Agent Code ReviewHuman-in-the-Loop ReviewClaude CodeOpenCodePi Coding AgentOpenClawMCPLLM APIs
Work
What I've Built
A selection of production systems, platforms, and tools I've built and maintained.
Flagship projects
SiPay
Team lead (final 4 mo)2021 — 2023
A licensed e-money and payment platform in Türkiye, built and supported by Softrobotics — mobile banking, merchant banking, payment gateways, and HSM-backed saved cards.
Core payments engineer, promoted to team lead for the final four months.
Laravel
Fintech
Microservices
Elasticsearch
Graylog
HSM
PHP
(opens in a new tab) Product
Grow More Gaze
Senior engineer2023 — Present
The operations platform powering an international link-building agency — service ordering, invoicing, multi-gateway payments, email campaigns, HRM, and payroll.
Senior engineer — own all of its technology, from architecture and code to servers, security and deployments.
Laravel
Vue.js
TypeScript
MySQL
CI/CD
PHP
(opens in a new tab) Product
Stellar BD — HRM & Payroll System
2019 — 2021
An HRM system handling attendance, full payroll, and shift management for a large, multi-site workforce.
Built the core HRM, payroll, and shift modules and integrated fingerprint hardware via MQTT.
Python
Web2py
MySQL
MQTT
IoT
Company
Supporting projects
Side projects built alongside full-time work
bizztechsz.com
A platform for worldwide bulk-order quotes and company portfolios. Freelance client, still live and maintained by me.
Laravel
Vue.js
TypeScript
Tailwind CSS
MySQL
PHP
(opens in a new tab) LaraVibe
Open-source Laravel standards I maintain: LaraVibe Standards (generators for actions, DTOs and enums, base API resources, and guidelines and skills for AI agents via Laravel Boost) and LaraVibe-Vue, a Laravel starter kit on Vue 3 and Inertia.js.
Laravel
PHP
Vue.js
Inertia.js
TypeScript
AI agents
GitHub Actions for CI/CD
Two GitHub Marketplace actions I maintain: Notify Fanout, which sends CI/CD notifications to one or many chats from a single step, and Proton Pass Secret Fetcher, which loads secrets from Proton Pass into a workflow with masking and no saved login on the runner.
GitHub Actions
CI/CD
TypeScript
Bash
Security
Case Studies
How I Approach Hard Problems
The problem, the constraints, the design I chose, and what it achieved.
Grow More Gaze · Senior Full-Stack Engineer · 2023 — Present
Duplicate-safe payment collection across 7 gateways
The agency collects payments from clients worldwide through 7 gateways with very different webhook behaviors. Retried or duplicated webhooks risked double-counting payments or leaving invoices in the wrong state, and every new gateway threatened a checkout rewrite.
Constraints
- Solo-built and operated, so the pipeline had to stay simple to debug and extend
- Gateways differ in webhook retry policies, signatures, and settlement flows
- Every invoice must reflect exactly one settled payment
Design
- A normalized payment pipeline: each gateway sits behind an adapter that feeds one internal payment state machine
- Idempotency keys and webhook deduplication make retried or double-delivered webhooks no-ops
- Signature verification and amount/currency cross-checks run before any invoice is marked paid
- Queue-based webhook processing, so a slow or unreachable gateway never blocks checkout
Trade-offs
- A gateway-agnostic core means gateway-specific features live in adapters instead of the main flow
- Async webhook settlement finalizes invoices moments after checkout rather than inline with the redirect
Results
- Duplicate webhook deliveries are absorbed without duplicate charges or corrupted invoice states
- Adding a gateway became an adapter instead of a rewrite — 7 live today, including bKash and Nagad
- Payment issues are traceable end-to-end through one pipeline instead of 7 separate integrations
LaravelMySQLRedisHorizonWebhooks
SiPay · Core payments engineer · 2021 — 2023
HSM-backed saved cards for a payment platform
Merchants needed saved cards for repeat payments, but card data could never be stored or handled in plaintext. The HSM provided the cryptography; SiPay needed a dependable way to use it on the live payment path.
Constraints
- Card numbers must never be readable in application storage or logs
- Saving and charging cards sits on the live payment path, so the integration had to be fast and reliable
- The HSM is a vendor device with its own protocol and only basic documentation
Design
- Built the SiPay-side integration that communicates with the HSM to encrypt, decrypt, and manage card data
- Merchants and other services work with card references instead of raw card numbers
- Handled the saved-card lifecycle end to end: save, list, charge, and delete
- Card data kept out of the logs shipped to Graylog
Trade-offs
- Relied on proven vendor hardware for cryptography instead of building it in software, accepting the device's protocol and limits
- Every save and charge depends on the HSM, so its availability became part of the payment path
Results
- Merchants got saved-card payments without card data ever being stored in plaintext
- Card security handled by dedicated hardware, supporting SiPay's PCI-DSS-aligned approach
LaravelHSMMicroservicesGraylog
Experience
Where I've Worked
Roles and contributions that shape how I build software.
Senior Full-Stack Engineer
Grow More Gaze (opens in a new tab)Oct 2023 — Present
The platforms that run an international link-building agency: ordering, invoicing, payments, email campaigns and HR/payroll.
- Joined to fill the company's senior engineering role; own all of its technology, from architecture and code to servers, security and deployments
- Built and run the agency's ordering portal, invoicing, payments, email campaigns and HR/payroll, plus several internal projects
- Integrated 7 payment gateways with idempotent webhook handling, so retries and duplicate callbacks never double-charge
- Run CI/CD with zero-downtime deploys, server hardening and monitoring
- Designed an agentic development workflow: plan-first on complex work, one isolated branch and environment per issue, a custom Claude Code review agent as first reviewer, then line-by-line human review, with extra care on payment and auth code.
Independent Contractor and Open Source Maintainer
Self-employedMay 2026 — Present (alongside Grow More Gaze)
- Contracted directly by the client to build bizztechsz.com, a platform for worldwide bulk-order quotes and company portfolios; built to the client's requirements and still live, and I continue to maintain and extend it
- Maintain open-source Laravel, DevOps and AI-agent tooling (LaraVibe Standards, LaraVibe-Vue, clawkit with 700+ image pulls, Notify Fanout, Proton Pass Secret Fetcher) and contribute upstream to inertia-laravel and Raycast
Senior Software Engineer, Team Lead of 6 (last 4 months)
Softrobotics Bangladesh Ltd (opens in a new tab)Sep 2021 — Sep 2023
Core payments engineer on SiPay, a licensed e-money and payment platform in Türkiye built by Softrobotics.
- Led a team of six engineers: sprint planning, code reviews, hiring interviews, and balancing workload so the team kept delivering and stayed happy
- Brought an engineer who had asked to leave another team into mine; through one-to-one support he became a fully engaged contributor, and management recognised me for it
- Developed merchant banking, mobile banking, and payment modules for a high-volume production payment platform
- Built diverse payment flows: link, P2P/B2B, QR, bill pay, POS, cash out, deposit/withdraw
- Built and maintained microservices instrumented with Elasticsearch and Graylog, making production incidents traceable across services
- Built the platform side of the HSM integration for PCI-DSS-aligned saved-card storage, encryption, and card management
- Drove core parts of the legacy upgrade from PHP 7.4 and an older Laravel release to PHP 8.2 and a modern Laravel version
Full-Stack Web Developer & Designer
Stellar BD Ltd (opens in a new tab)Oct 2019 — Aug 2021
Built HRM/payroll systems wired to IoT attendance hardware, plus client web apps.
- Built core HRM, payroll, and shift modules integrated with fingerprint scanners for a large, multi-site workforce
- Implemented real-time attendance sync via MQTT across the company's attendance devices, replacing nightly manual imports
- Maintained and extended a production Python HRM built on Web2py: new modules, bug fixes and integrations
- Built client websites and automation scripts in PHP, JavaScript, and Python
- Designed responsive UIs and managed hosting end-to-end
Full-Stack Web Developer
Multiplex Web DesignMar 2018 — Sep 2019
Delivered custom web apps for SMB clients, end-to-end.
- Owned full project lifecycles for SMB clients, from requirements through deployment
- Delivered full-stack features with PHP, JavaScript, MySQL, and responsive design
- Worked directly with clients on scoping, timelines, and delivery
Education
What I Studied
The formal groundwork behind the hands-on experience.
BSc in Computer Science (evening program, while working full-time)
East Delta University - Chattogram, Bangladesh
2018 — 2021
Diploma in Computer Science
Bangladesh Sweden Polytechnic Institute - Kaptai, Rangamati, Bangladesh
2013 — 2017
Languages
Bengali (Native)English (Fluent)
Testimonials
What Colleagues Say
Feedback from people I have built with.
“Ashok built the platform our whole agency runs on — ordering, invoicing, payments, and payroll — and he runs it on his own. He thinks about failure modes before they happen, and handles everything from architecture to servers.”
“On SiPay, Ashok owned critical payment work end to end, from saved-card security to everyday payment flows. He held a high bar for code quality, and when we needed a team lead, he stepped up and led the team through delivery.”
“Ashok and I worked side by side on SiPay's payment modules. He takes ownership of hard problems, writes code that's easy to review, and played a big part in moving our codebase to PHP 8.2.”
“When a payment flow broke in production, Ashok was one of the first people we called. He digs into the logs, finds the real cause, and explains the fix clearly — and he helps the engineers around him grow.”
Connect
Get in Touch
For roles, consulting, or project enquiries, email or LinkedIn is the best way to reach me. I usually reply within one business day.