This week was my last week at Zain.

Signing off after 3.5 years feels strange. I joined as a mobile engineer, and left having shaped teams, systems, and culture. The impact went far beyond platforms or titles.

It’s been intense, humbling, and incredibly fulfilling.

We built systems for millions, shipped revenue-driving features, embraced new technologies long before they were mainstream, and mentored a new generation of engineers, all while pushing boundaries simply because we believed we could.

Highlights That Defined My Time at Zain

I helped grow Zain Android app into a stable, scalable, and accessible while supporting cross-platform teams with mentorship and knowledge-sharing.

Some highlights of what we accomplished:

✅ Led the Android team since year one, setting the tone for a high-impact, low-ego engineering culture
✅ Engineered performance gains that slashed screen load times from 60+ seconds to under 5 seconds with proper caching layer
✅ Shipped revenue-generating features used across a massive active base. Mainly focused on payment revamps, Mokafaa Alrajhi loyalty points, and entertainment vouchers!
✅ Mentored 25+ teammates, including 15+ engineers across teams, with 500+ hours of training. Good engineers build great things. Great engineers build people
✅ Modernized the codebase: from legacy to Kotlin-first, Jetpack Compose UI, and declarative architecture, turning chaos into clean code and clear ownership
✅ Advocated for tech inclusivity by helping make Zain App more accessible, and volunteering in Zain Group initiatives like Be My Eyes to support blind and low-vision people, and Zain’s Women in Tech to help women graduates kickstart their careers in tech
✅ Zain App currently has +99% crash-free rate, and zero unresolved Play Store issues, and 100% platforms compliance
✅ Introduced foundational code health tools: SonarQube (A+ score), Ktlint (0 formatting violations), and Firebase App Tester integrated with CI/CD.
✅ Cross-store builds with Google and Huawei services (GMS + HMS). This is helpful espcially in the MENA and Europe markets where both services are supported.
✅ Created a culture of humor, learning, and empathy through memes channel, digital academy channel, virtual coffees, engineering-wide talks, birthday bots, and team lovely rituals
✅ Built a powerful Flutter-native integration via platform channels, bridging two ecosystems to provide seamless entry points from the app to another standalone project with smooth experiences.

We also turned around the app’s reputation. When I joined, it had a 2.3 rating on the Play Store in 2021. Today, it’s sitting at 4.5+, with strong parity across App Gallery. This didn’t happen overnight, it was the result of careful UX improvements, performance fixes, accessible design, and constant user feedback loops.

Beyond Android Development

Though I was the Tech Lead for the Android team, I collaborated closely with iOS, web, backend, QA, and product teams. I led shared business logic sessions, architecture designs, jumped on cross-platform production bugs even if it meant jumping on a call at odd hours.

We normalized knowledge-sharing. We built a culture of curiosity, empathy, and mutual respect.

What people don’t see

Let’s be real, this journey came with many challenges.

Zain isn’t remote-first culture, and I wasn’t always at HQ as I worked from another city. I missed hallway chats, shoutouts, and sometimes visibility. But I found a way to make my impact impossible to ignore.

There were challenges: burnout, personal loss, long nights, and health issues. Some growth paths were harder to access. But I kept building, kept mentoring, kept showing up, and I’m proud of the engineering culture and the code we created.

What I’m Taking With Me

• A deeper understanding of how to scale systems and people.
• Experience delivering at pace with real constraints. Time constraints, people constraints, and foggy requirements.
• The confidence that leadership isn’t a title, it’s responsibility in action.
• Appreciation for the humans behind the code. Their needs and how to motivate them into creating more impact.
• Prioritize technical debts and how to translate it into understandable terms for non-technical decision makers.

To everyone I worked with: thank you. I learned something from each of you.
And to the engineers continuing the mission: keep going. You’re capable of more than you know.

What’s next?

After 3.5 years of growing beyond the role, it felt like the right moment to step into something more ambitious.

A new chapter. Bigger impact. More responsibility. And a product that truly matters.

I’m proud of what we built. I’m even more excited about what’s next.

💛