Charef Bahria
Charef Bahria Berlin

I build the infrastructure
behind great products.

Senior Full Stack Engineer with 5+ years building auth infrastructure, developer tooling, and LLM-powered automation. I own products end to end, from API design and TypeScript SDKs to React dashboards and production infrastructure. Based in Berlin, immediately available on Chancenkarte.

About

Full Stack Engineer with 5+ years shipping end-to-end SaaS and API products. At ThatAPICompany, I owned delivery across multiple products: theauthapi.com (multi-tenant auth platform), thecatapi-website-v2 (multilingual marketing site), thedogapi_middleware (image processing pipeline), plus two enterprise client APIs (AI contract redlining for legal tech, inventory/order integration for automotive distributor).

Before that, I worked at GMD on an e-commerce platform, building GraphQL APIs and production Python pipelines in a cross-functional team.

Known for owning technical decisions independently, managing ambiguous briefs end-to-end, and mentoring teams. LangChainJS open source contributor (PR #7421).

Based in Berlin on Chancenkarte. Open to senior full stack and backend roles where I can ship end-to-end.

Languages

  • Arabic Native
  • English C1
  • French B1
  • German A2+

Where I've worked

Apr 2022 - May 2025

3 years

ThatAPICompany

Senior Full Stack Software Engineer

  • Led end-to-end delivery of theauthapi.com: backend, frontend (Next.js), infrastructure, TypeScript SDKs, and developer documentation
  • Built LLM-powered contract-processing pipeline using LangChainJS and OnlyOffice Document Builder, automating clause redlining for a client engagement
  • Engineered event-driven backend services in PHP and TypeScript with Sentry and CloudWatch observability for production reliability
  • Developed TypeScript SDKs for external clients integrating authentication APIs, reducing integration time by 40%
  • Designed API analytics platform on BigQuery with a real-time event ingestion pipeline
  • Maintained comprehensive Jest test suites (unit and E2E) ensuring reliability of the multi-tenant authentication platform
Node.jsNestJSTypeScriptPHPReactBigQueryDockerLangChainJS

May 2021 - Mar 2022

10 months

GMD

Full Stack Software Engineer

  • Built and maintained backend APIs using TypeScript, Apollo and GraphQL, optimizing data retrieval for a product catalogue of hundreds of SKUs
  • Developed OCR pipeline in Python to automate invoice data extraction, reducing manual entry time by over 70%
  • Built client-side image compression solution reducing upload sizes by approximately 60%, improving upload speed for on-site staff
  • Worked within a cross-functional team of six developers, a PM, and stakeholders to scope, review, and ship features on schedule
TypeScriptApolloGraphQLPythonMySQLPostgreSQLREST APIs

Things I've shipped

TheAuthAPI

Multi-tenant auth SaaS platform

Production

Built multi-tenant auth infrastructure SaaS end-to-end (backend, frontend, SDKs, infra). Handles account hierarchies (multi-tenancy), API key management, rate limiting, and real-time analytics. TypeScript SDKs reduced client integration time by 40%.

NestJSTypeScriptReactPostgreSQLRedisGCPBigQueryFirebase Auth
View

TheCatAPI / TheDogAPI Sites

Marketing site with interactive API demos

Shipped

Shipped multilingual (EN/ES) marketing site in SvelteKit with interactive API demos, pricing, signup flow. Implemented i18n with slug-based translation keys for easy content updates. Static generation to Vercel. Adapted design for both cat and dog API branding.

SvelteKitTypeScriptTailwind CSSViteVercelHighlight.js
View

TheDogAPI Middleware

Pet photography session orchestration

Production

Designed and built two decoupled NestJS services orchestrating a multi-stage processing pipeline. First service handles session management, 5-image uploads to GCS, and state persistence. Second service subscribes to Pub/Sub events for async portrait generation and breed analysis. Implemented retry logic with dead letter queue for visibility; status tracking with error messages so failures are diagnosable, not silent.

NestJSTypeScriptPostgreSQLPrismaGCP Cloud RunPub/SubGCSDocker

LLM Contract Redlining

AI-powered contract analysis

Production

Built LLM contract redlining backend using LangChain + Gemini. Implements RAG with prompt chaining for iterative clause analysis. LangSmith integration for production observability. OnlyOffice loader bug fix merged upstream as LangChainJS PR #7421.

NestJSTypeScriptLangChainGemini APILangSmithOnlyOfficeSentry

Distributor Integration API

Salesforce integration for order management

Production

Built REST API connecting distributors to Salesforce. CQRS architecture cleanly separates inventory/pricing queries from order creation and tracking. JWT auth via TheAuthAPI. API versioning for multiple customer deployments. GCP Cloud Run with GitHub Actions CI/CD.

Node.js 22NestJS 11TypeScriptSalesforceTheAuthAPIDockerGCP Cloud RunGitHub Actions

Breed & Health Data Enrichment

Animal API integration service

Module

Service enriches pet photography output with breed data and health tips from TheDogAPI/TheCatAPI. Robust fallback strategies ensure API failures don't degrade user experience. Personalizes results alongside portrait images.

TypeScriptNode.jsTheDogAPITheCatAPIGCP Cloud Storage

LangChainJS PR #7421

Open source contribution

Merged

Fixed OnlyOffice document loader bug in official LangChainJS library. Loader wasn't returning metadata, breaking downstream RAG filtering. Fix was reviewed and merged by maintainers, improving library for all users.

TypeScriptLangChainJSOpen Source
View

Stack

Backend

TypeScriptNode.jsNestJSPHP (Laravel)Python

Frontend

ReactNext.jsTailwindSvelte

Infrastructure

GCPAWS (S3 and Lambda)AzureDockerCI/CDVercelPostgreSQLMySQLBigQueryRedis

Architecture and APIs

MicroservicesEvent-drivenDDDCQRSRESTGraphQLWebhooksSDKsJestTDD

What colleagues say

I worked closely with Charef for four years at That API Company and watched him grow from a strong individual contributor into one of our most trusted senior engineers. Over that time, he took on full technical ownership of complex work — on our legal-contract redlining AI project, he owned the scope, stakeholder management, and delivery, moving from executing defined tasks to making the architecture and trade-off decisions the rest of the team depended on. On client work, he operated end-to-end: he led our Salesforce integration from scoping through build, communicating directly with the client throughout. He also raised the bar on code quality across the team and was a genuine mentor — his code reviews made the engineers around him, myself included, better. His seniority is well earned: he handles ambiguity independently and consistently lifts the people around him. I'd gladly work with him again.

Technical writing

I write about systems-level engineering: the kind of implementation details that most tutorials skip over. These are deep dives into topics I found genuinely confusing, written so they don't have to be.

Let's talk.

I am open to senior full stack and backend engineering roles in Berlin and remotely. If you are building something technically interesting and want someone who ships end to end, get in touch.

charafbahria@gmail.com