Taking new clients · Waterloo & remote

From “which spreadsheet is right?” to one number everyone trusts

Pipelines, reporting, and AI that ship to production — plus websites and apps built to the same bar. Senior engineers you actually talk to, priced without firm markup.

Start a conversation Need a website?

15+ yrssenior engineering

Senior engineersAI-accelerated

Productionor we say don't build it

Clarity firstScope before we start

AI drafts. Seniors ship.AI drafts the routine work. A senior engineer ships it.

Continuity afterSystems you can own

Lean costNo firm markup

Diagram of sources flowing into a bronze, silver, and gold lakehouse, then out to reports, applications, and alerts. — Anonymized lakehouse path — workbooks, systems, and feeds land once; reports read gold. Not a client screenshot.Data engineering →

Two doors. One team.

Each door opens to its own page

Data systems

Pipelines, analytics, and AI on clean data. Azure · Databricks · SQL Server.

Data engineering Analytics and BI AI that ships Agentic AI — shipped Cloud and platforms

Web products

New sites, redesigns, and the speed and interface work that make them usable.

New websites Redesigns Site speed Usable UI

Who you'll work with

Syed Kaleem · Founder and Senior Data Engineer

15+ years in database engineering, data warehousing, ETL, and BI. Leads AKAF's data, analytics, and AI work end to end.

About Syed →Syed Kaleem on LinkedIn

Fit

Who we work with

Lean teams and mid-market groups that want senior engineers on a production constraint — pipelines, trusted numbers, AI that has to survive Monday — without firm markup. Investment operations, data, and product teams are typical rooms. Work usually follows the shapes below.

How we work →

Typical engagement

What working together usually looks like

Ballpark shapes — not a rate card. Duration follows the constraint. Senior-led, lean, then yours to run.

Typically 1–2 weeks

Discovery

Senior-led. We map the constraint, the systems in play, and a buildable scope. You leave with a written shape of the work — not a slide deck.

Typically weeks to a few months

Fixed-scope build

One or two seniors, AI-accelerated. We ship against the scope we agreed. A personal site is weeks; a lakehouse or app is longer. Production, or we say don't build it.

Optional, month to month

Continuity

After handover, light retainer-style support so the system stays yours: alerts, small changes, a named person. Not a bench of juniors sitting on the clock.

We quote after we understand the work. If the shape is unclear, that is the first conversation. Start a conversation →

AKAF Inc. · Analytics, Knowledge, Affordable Foundations

Quality work at a price that makes sense.

Send the site, the data problem, or the deadline. Clear next step within one business day.

Start a conversation