From dotfiles to declarative desktops
How a Linux workstation evolved from shell scripts to NixOS, with agentic tooling and defence-in-depth security.
All writingM. Usman Akram
Lead Engineer & Product · Frankfurt
The code teaches patience.
The road teaches wonder.
Both ask you to look again.
Who I am
Engineer.
Engineer.
Builder.
Wanderer.
I lead at Ginmon — building the quiet financial infrastructure behind people's investments. Microservices, distributed systems, the kind of software that works without being noticed.
Research shaped how I think. Years at the University of Trento studying time series taught me to look for patterns in noise. Working across fintech in Italy and Germany taught me that the hardest problems are rarely technical.
When I'm not building systems, I'm usually somewhere with a camera — not looking for anything in particular, which is usually when you find the best things.
Islamabad · Lahore · Trento · Frankfurt
Experience
A decade building
A decade building
financial software.
Custodian bank integrations, AML, KYC, SWIFT, ETF order routing, portfolio evaluation and reporting — the critical infrastructure of modern investing.
2017 — present
Lead Engineer & Product · Ginmon, Frankfurt
Custodian integrations, ETF routing, portfolio infrastructure
2015 — 2017
Senior Engineer · Previnet S.p.A., Italy
Insurance & pension platform engineering
2012 — 2014
Data Scientist · University of Trento
Time series research, pattern analysis in noisy data
2008 — 2011
Engineer · Elixir Technologies & LUMS
Enterprise document automation
