Talabatk

Food-delivery platform in Palestine: about 100k authenticated requests a day, 80k+ orders to date, 6 cities.

Software EngineerContract, part-timeRemoteFeb 2026 - Present

Highlights

Own the Express and Sequelize API on MySQL 8 (241 endpoints) and the React admin dashboard as the sole engineer, plus the DigitalOcean infrastructure, staging, migrations and database operations.
Moved OTP generation from the mobile app to the server (hashed single-use codes with expiry, WhatsApp and SMS channels) behind a config-switch cutover, then added proxy-aware rate limits after an SMS flood.
Rolled out authorization across 193 endpoints after a defacement incident: shipped in shadow mode, then enforced wave by wave once logs showed no legitimate traffic would be rejected.
Added rotating refresh tokens with reuse detection and cut the hot-path session lookup from 163 ms to 41 ms per request, verified by a test that asserts the MySQL query plan.
Built driver and vendor wallets with row locking, idempotency keys and one reconcile path after a double-spend; replaced three free-delivery mechanisms with one offers engine and redemption log.
Started the test suite from zero (680+ cases with a real-MySQL integration harness) and rewrote logging into structured events shipped to OpenSearch with retention policies and dashboards.