How I got here
Life is non-linear.
Baghdad — 1995-2012
Born. War. School. Drama. Learning to be a normal person, and a bit of a nerd.
Baghdad — 2012 to 2016
I started as a mechanical engineer who spent his evenings in 3D software.
Engineering school by day, building imaginary buildings and game assets by night. I didn’t think of it as a career — I just couldn’t stop doing it. That obsession with making things look and feel right never really left me; it just slowly migrated from polygons to code.
Baghdad — 2016 to 2017
My first real job was at a FinTech startup during a difficult time in Iraq.
ZainCash was moving fast and I wore a lot of hats. The work I remember most is a UN-partnered project that used the platform to distribute cash aid to people displaced by various conflicts. Some things stick with you and recalibrate what “important” means.
Växjö — 2017 to 2019
I moved to Sweden for a master’s degree and stayed for the winters. Somehow.
Linnaeus University, Mechanical Engineering. Focused on interdisciplinary projects, Product Development, and research. I also published a couple of papers during this time — my thesis on polymer aging in heavy-duty vehicles. I am now mostly recovered from writing them. I grew an interest in simulation and the finite element method. Which built on my former interest in 3D modeling and rendering.
Växjö — 2019 to 2023
A detour through sales that turned out not to be a detour at all.
During the time I was studying the Swedish language, I ran sales and marketing at a medical company, managing over 50 client contracts and building their digital platform from scratch. I learned more about how to communicate, negotiate, and build things people actually use than I ever did in a classroom. I’d recommend it to any engineer who thinks those things don’t matter.
Lund — 2021 to now
I started my own company, a passion I had for a while.
Mirage is a small company with big dreams. It was created initially to handle one big project I took, then another, and another. I take on interesting software problems, handle everything end-to-end, and keep the scope sane. Being accountable for the whole thing — from the first conversation to the last commit — has made me a much better engineer.
Lund — 2023 to now
Now I develop the systems that evaluate audio hardware at scale.
At Axis Communications I architect and build production test systems for audio devices. That means designing test frameworks from scratch, implementing signal processing algorithms, and spending a lot of time with hardware and firmware engineers to ensure our platforms measure reality accurately. Since late 2025 I’ve been leading the team technically — less time running tests, more time designing the systems that run them.