Distributed systems / Real-time voice
Designing and building distributed systems that handle real-time voice and media workloads. I focus on reliability, observability, scalability, and maintainable architecture.
Nazmul Alam
Senior Software Engineer, Cisco
10 years of engineering experience
Building systems. Sharing the decisions.
I work on distributed systems and real-time voice. I enjoy turning complex requirements into reliable, maintainable systems and sharing the reasoning behind the technical decisions.
Featured projects
AI Voice Platform
Real-time speech-to-speech integrations, load testing, observability, retries, and production reliability.
Developer Learning Platform
Interactive technical courses explaining architecture, implementation, and operational behavior.
Community Technology
Cloud applications and digital services built for community organizations.
Current technical focus
Exploring Agentic AI and software architecture
Deepening my understanding of agentic AI systems and modern software architecture. I’m exploring how these technologies can work together to create more capable and reliable systems.
Experience
A decade across payments, identity, healthcare data, financial workflows, and real-time voice systems.
- CiscoMay 2026 — Present
Senior Software Engineer
Speech-to-speech load-testing simulator and G.711 A-law support.
- Fidelity InvestmentsSep 2025 — Apr 2026
Senior Software Engineer (contract)
Collaborative workflow-service modernization and migration work.
- Houghton Mifflin HarcourtAug 2024 — Jul 2025
Senior Software Engineer (contract)
Led implementation of an identity-platform migration for a school district.
- CiscoJul 2023 — Apr 2024
Senior Software Engineer (contract)
Backend work on a demonstration platform.
- OptumOct 2021 — Apr 2023
Senior Software Engineer (contract)
Technical design and implementation for healthcare-data work.
- WP EngineApr 2021 — Sep 2021
Software Engineer
User portal, billing, and signup work. Cut single-page render from 7s to 2s.
- FexcoJan 2016 — Mar 2021
Software Engineer
Payments and financial services. Apache Camel work cut response times from 5 minutes to 1.5.
Technical writing
Notes on system behaviour, implementation, and the decisions behind reliable software.
Testing real-time voice orchestration under interruption
Engineering analysisA public-source engineering analysis of turn boundaries, interruption and barge-in, duplex timing, codec boundaries, backpressure, and observable failure modes.
Consistency guarantees for deprovisioning during live identity migration
Engineering analysisA generic analysis of why ordinary profile changes and security-sensitive deprovisioning need different consistency guarantees during live migration.
About
I design distributed backends for latency-sensitive and high-consequence platforms — systems that must remain correct while changing and responsive while parts fail.
I’m based in Galway, Ireland. My current interests include Agentic AI and software architecture, as I work towards principal-level engineering and architectural responsibility.
Systems are built with people, context, and trade-offs. I share the decisions as well as the implementation.
Contact
I welcome peer conversations about real-time systems, difficult migrations, and backend platforms, as well as unusually consequential technical roles.
hello@nalam.me