Ali Raza

About

Hi - I'm Ali, an engineer from Toronto. I'm in business and tech. I enjoy building systems.

Lately that's meant shipping with AI, watching tech Twitter go bonkers, and giving back to the communities I love. Outside of building, I spent years in sales (my natural talent), which taught me to listen and articulate.

Education

B.Eng. - Computer Engineering & Management

Hamilton, ON

Jun 2026

Experience

- Building Famzy, a mobile family OS with calendars, locations, storage, lists, and more.
- Shipped Ella, an in-app AI assistant that drives every feature through natural language.
- Launched on the App Store in July 2026 after a TestFlight beta.
Self-employed · Mississauga, ON · RemoteApp Store famzy.ai
- Closed 13 residential solar contracts in 45 days through door-to-door outreach across Houston, knocking 100+ doors daily.
- Ran the full sales cycle independently - prospecting, discovery, utility bill analysis, proposal, objection handling, and contract execution.
- Coordinated with site survey and operations teams to ensure a clean handoff from sale to install scheduling and permitting.
Contract Full-time · Houston, TX · On-site
- Primary point of contact for end-user IT support, escalating server and networking issues to the infrastructure team.
- Managed software licensing and owned the employee onboarding and offboarding workflow across departments.
- Co-led the UniFlow deployment, rolling out a unified print management system across offices in France, Canada, and the US.
- Supported the MFA and ZTNA rollouts and maintained Power BI dashboards tracking IT performance metrics.
Internship · Cambridge, ON · Hybrid
- Managed financial records for 30+ business clients and presented account analysis to the team.
- Built a Python script that automated bank statement reconciliation, processing ~1,000 transactions per week at >99% accuracy.
- Contributed to the migration onto a new SQL database system for cleaner data organization.
- Led development of a full-stack payroll tool that replaced manual data entry and standardized inflow and export.
Internship · Mississauga, ON · Hybrid
- Secured 4 workforce-solutions contracts worth $100k+ each, outperforming team benchmarks.
- Led a team of 3 marketing reps, setting sales strategy and coaching day-to-day approach.
- Ran client meetings with HR managers at company warehouses across Ontario, traveling extensively to close deals on site.
Contract Part-time · GTA, ON · Hybrid
- Sold 68 TELUS smart-home security systems in a single summer, a ~2% conversion over ~3,400 door-knocks.
- Engaged 100+ prospects per day door-to-door, generating qualified leads from roughly 10% of them.
- Handled the full pitch for TELUS smart-home security and mobile plans, matching products to homeowner needs.
Contract Full-time · GTA, ON · On-site
- Delivered on-the-spot quotes for residential window-cleaning jobs through door-to-door canvassing.
- Assessed home type, size, and access to price services accurately on first visit.
- Sharpened negotiation and objection-handling skills through direct homeowner interactions.
Contract Part-time · GTA, ON · On-site
- Retail floor sales and customer service at a Puma outlet location.
Permanent Part-time · Milton, ON · On-site

Selected Work

Rocket League esports has a huge following but no official app, and no public API for its pro data. Polsa is two clients over one Cloudflare Workers backend: a native iOS app (Expo / React Native) with schedules, live brackets, standings, rosters, and pro VODs, plus a friends feed - and a Windows overlay, written in Rust, that links your account through the official Rocket League stats API and broadcasts your live match stats to the world in real time, turning solo play into a lightweight social feed. All the pro data is stitched together from four unofficial sources (start.gg, blast.tv, Twitch, Liquipedia).
- Built a matching layer in D1 so the same team or player from different sources maps to one profile and logo, even when each source spells the name differently.
- Reconstructed full double-elimination brackets from a flat list of matches, then drew them as a Liquipedia-style connector view without any SVG library.
- Routed every external call through the Worker, so the app ships no API keys. Tokens are minted server-side and responses are edge-cached to stay fast and within rate limits.
- Built the Windows overlay in Rust as a small workspace of crates - session stats, the on-screen panel, and a clip engine - linking your account through the official Rocket League stats API and broadcasting your live match to the world in real time.
- Kept things working when the unofficial APIs broke. When Twitch changed how clips resolve, one edge deploy fixed it for everyone with no app update.
- Shipped on Expo SDK 56 and iOS 26 with a liquid-glass UI, including a small patch to Expo native code so the cloud builds would compile.
Jan 2026 - PresentVisit Website
Ivy is my engineering capstone, an AI study platform that unifies course planning, task and deadline management, AI-assisted study workflows, and early career tooling in one system. Built as a modern web app with Next.js and TypeScript, it supports document ingestion from real course materials and maps extracted outputs into actionable academic workflows.
- Built an end-to-end AI ingestion flow that parses course documents and turns them into structured tasks and deadlines.
- Developed dashboard, course management, Pomodoro, study assistant, resume analyzer, and cover letter tooling within one platform.
- Focused on typed data models, modular components, and responsive UI to support parallel team development.
- Worked through deadline and time-handling reliability issues to improve trust in upcoming-work and schedule logic.
Sep 2025 - Apr 2026View on GitHub
Built an autonomous RC vehicle in a 3-person team by integrating Raspberry Pi sensing with PX4 flight-controller logic over MAVLink. The camera pipeline determined steering direction from obstacle geometry, while ultrasonic distance readings controlled speed for slow-down and stop behavior.
- Used OpenCV on a Raspberry Pi camera feed to infer left, forward, or right steering decisions from detected edges.
- Used an ultrasonic sensor to measure obstacle distance and map it into speed control thresholds for normal, slow, and stop states.
- Connected Python sensing logic to PX4 over MAVLink and implemented motor and servo control on the flight controller with uORB and C++.
Mar 2026 - Apr 2026View on GitHub
Franky is an AI-powered bot for Rocket League, developed using Python and RLGym. Leveraging deep reinforcement learning, Franky adapts to high-level gameplay with real-time decision-making and dynamic in-game responses.
- Implemented behavior logic for positioning, velocity management, and boost tracking.
- Encoded player, ball, and boost data into numerical formats for neural network processing.
- Designed a neural network with an LSTM model for sequential decision-making.
- Developed a reward system to encourage scoring, defense, and speed maintenance.
- Operates at 120 TPS, optimizing actions while avoiding unnecessary calculations.
Feb 2024 - Jun 2024
Full-stack application to streamline payroll management for Vanguard Financial. Separate login systems, API routes, and query permissions for accountants vs. clients.
- TypeScript backend with PostgreSQL for data storage and retrieval.
- JWT authentication and authorization for both client and accountant roles.
- Client interface for payroll upload and employee onboarding.
- Standardized API routes for accountant payroll processing.
- React.js frontend focused on intuitive, user-friendly interface.
May 2023 - Aug 2023