About
Five years of shipping web products. Now building the AI layer on top.
I'm Muhammad Afzaal Afzal, an AI engineer and full-stack developer based in Heilbronn, Germany. I'm completing an M.Sc. in Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics at Hochschule Neu-Ulm and, alongside it, the software engineering program at 42 Heilbronn.
My path was full-stack first: five years and 180+ client orders across Fiverr, Upwork, and startup teams: e-commerce, SaaS dashboards, LMS platforms, Web3 frontends. That work taught me the part of software that AI demos skip: authentication, payments, edge cases, deadlines, and clients who need the thing to work on Monday.
Now I apply that production mindset to AI systems. A privacy-first LLM pipeline that won its hackathon track. A support agent whose write path a human controls, with the approval surviving a redeploy. Retrieval with citations and a refusal when the context is not there. AI automation with n8n for everything that does not deserve custom code. The common thread: AI products that can be trusted, measured, and operated, not just demoed.
I work in English, ship with Next.js, TypeScript, FastAPI, and PostgreSQL, and document everything. Every important repo gets a real README with architecture notes and eval results.
“AI is a multiplier. If you multiply by zero, you get zero.”
The engineering fundamentals are the number being multiplied. That is why I spent five years on them first.
Stack
The toolset behind the work
What I build with, grouped for a quick scan. Each one shows up in a project or is detailed, with the reasoning, on the uses page.
- AI & LLM
- RAG with citations
- LLM agents & tool calling
- LangGraph
- MCP
- Human-in-the-loop
- PII masking (Presidio)
- LiteLLM routing
- Evals & security tests
- n8n automation
- PyTorch (coursework)
- Languages
- TypeScript
- Python
- JavaScript
- SQL
- Backend
- FastAPI
- Node.js
- Express
- Prisma
- Frontend
- Next.js
- React
- Tailwind CSS
- shadcn/ui
- Material UI
- Data
- PostgreSQL
- pgvector
- Supabase
- MongoDB
- Chroma
- Infra & ops
- Docker
- Vercel
- Render
- GitHub & CI
- AWS Lambda
- Stripe
- Resend
- Clerk
- AI dev tools
- Cursor
- Claude Code
- Codex
- GitHub Copilot
Timeline
Where the five years went
2026
Hackathons and programs
1st place in the Raumdeuter AI track at the Campus Founders AI Hackathon (Heilbronn, May). Technical Lead for PostSign in Campus Founders AI Start Batch 5, first in two rounds and a finalist (March). AI & Robotics track at the EuroTech x HKTE Hackathon in Munich (June).
2026 - present
Software Engineering · 42 Heilbronn, Germany
Peer-to-peer, project-based program taken alongside the master’s. Piscine in January and February 2026, then the C and Unix core: Libft, ft_printf, get_next_line, push_swap.
2024 - present
M.Sc. AI & Data Analytics · Hochschule Neu-Ulm, Germany
Machine learning, LLMs, advanced NLP, deep learning with PyTorch, and enterprise application engineering. Expected graduation early 2027.
2026 - present
Selected client engagements · TMF Backstage, AK-GAL Designs
Sole developer on the Tour Music Fest artist portal (live, Italy) and sole engineer for the AK-GAL Designs subscription platform (live, USA). Both documented with links on the projects page.
2023 - 2024
Full Stack Developer · Rigrex
Engineered a production LMS with Next.js, TypeScript, Prisma, and PostgreSQL: course creation flows, instructor dashboards, progress tracking, and integration tests for signup, purchase, and content access.
2022 - 2023
Full Stack Developer · WeMakeApp
Frontend features for European startup MVPs with React, Next.js, TypeScript, and Material UI, translating Figma into production interfaces under startup deadlines.
2019 - 2024
Freelance · Fiverr & Upwork
Full-time freelancing until the move to Germany: 181 orders on Fiverr as a Level 2 seller, 134 five-star reviews out of 136, 16 Upwork engagements, clients in 11 countries. E-commerce, Web3 frontends, dashboards, admin panels, and full-stack apps.
2019 - 2023
B.S. Software Engineering · UET Taxila, Pakistan
Software engineering fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, OOP, cloud computing, and web technologies. Started the same year I topped the Dera Ghazi Khan intermediate board with 1025 of 1100, a Government of Punjab gold medal.