Shahbaz Atta Awan
Senior AI & Data Architect
20+ years building real-time mapping, routing, IoT and AI-driven data platforms — including three production systems for Hajj crowd and traffic management, and three years on-site in Makkah, Saudi Arabia.
Where geospatial engineering meets a million moving people.
I design and ship large-scale mapping, routing, IoT and real-time spatial analytics platforms. Most of that work has been done under real pressure — millions of GPS and IoT signals a day, and crowds measured in the millions rather than the thousands.
Three years on-site in Makkah gave me a direct hand in Geo-Where, Masar IoT and Traffixity — production systems that compute real-time density heatmaps and reroute pilgrims away from congestion before it becomes dangerous. That work is written up in three peer-reviewed IEEE / IIT publications, and it's the reason Hajj and crowd-management problems still interest me more than almost anything else in this field.
Since leaving Makkah I've carried the same PostGIS-and-streaming instincts into telecom, fleet, insurance and now AI-driven location intelligence — architecting the data lake and the routing layer, then handing the analyst or the end-user a map they can actually trust.
AT A GLANCE
- Languages
- English, Urdu, Arabic (basic)
- KSA Experience
- 10+ years, incl. 3 yrs on-site Makkah
- Current Role
- GIS Data Architect, First City AI
Seven roles, one thread: data on a map, moving in real time.
From Symbian call-routing to multi-tenant streaming platforms handling millions of events a day.
GIS Data Architect
- Own end-to-end big-data and GIS architectural design, technology selection and engineering delivery for mapping, routing and location-intelligence products.
- Selected and implemented the Graphhopper + MapBox + GeoServer stack for the public-facing layer, and designed an Apache NiFi + Spark + MongoDB pipeline for the geospatial data lake.
Assistant Vice President — Data Analytics
- Led big-data architectural design and technology selection across the enterprise analytics practice.
- Architected a predictive insurance-claim platform on Databricks + Delta Lake + Snowflake, designing feature pipelines, Spark Streaming ingestion and the analyst-facing reporting layer.
Big Data Architect
- Architected and shipped Mi-Stream, a multi-tenant real-time geospatial streaming platform handling millions of events a day for telecom, fleet and IoT customers.
- Designed the geospatial subsystem on PostGIS + pgRouting + GeoServer with REST-based tile-serving and routing APIs, cutting ingest latency significantly.
Software Architect / Senior Researcher
- Led architecture and development of Geo-Where, Masar IoT and Traffixity — three production geospatial platforms for Hajj traffic and crowd-density management at the holy sites.
- Designed a PostGIS + pgRouting backend ingesting GPS / IoT signals from wearable devices to compute real-time density heatmaps and reroute pilgrims away from congestion.
- Integrated Eclipse Kura on edge devices for IoT data acquisition, and built the GeoServer + OpenLayers visualisation layer adopted by traffic-control teams.
- Authored 3 IEEE / IIT peer-reviewed publications (PerCom 2016, IEEE Big Data 2016, IIT 2016).
Team Lead — Mobile Applications
- Designed and developed interactive children's learning and gamified Android applications, working in Agile / Scrum.
Senior Software Development Engineer
- Contributed to R&D and development of the Inflexion Platform UI Designer for Nucleus OS.
- Owned product integration, scripting and build management, and produced analysis reports for Nucleus OS components.
Software Engineer
- Designed and developed the Vopium call-redirector application on Symbian C++ and J2ME for cost-effective international voice calls.
The geospatial stack now runs on machine learning, not just PostGIS.
Over the last few years the same real-time pipelines I built for Hajj crowds and telecom fleets have moved into predictive and AI-driven territory.
Applied ML in production
At Systems Limited I architected a predictive insurance-claim platform on Databricks and Delta Lake, building the feature pipelines and Spark Streaming ingestion that feed the model layer. At First City AI, that same discipline now goes into AI-driven location-intelligence products — routing and mapping systems where the data lake feeds prediction, not just visualisation.
Formal grounding
Machine learning for data science and analytics, scalable machine learning, and MIT's work on big data and social physics, completed through edX and MIT's open courses — the theory behind the predictive pipelines I've since shipped.
Crowd analytics as an ML problem
The Hajj platforms — Geo-Where, Masar IoT and Traffixity — were early real-time, sensor-driven prediction systems in their own right: GPS and IoT signals in, density forecasts and rerouting decisions out. That's the same shape of problem AI-driven crowd and traffic modelling takes today.
Where this is heading
ML / predictive modelling now sits alongside GIS and streaming as a core competency — the natural next layer on top of 20 years of real-time spatial data, and squarely aligned with where Vision 2030 smart-city and Hajj-modernisation programmes are investing.
The stack, by layer.
Geospatial / GIS
Big Data & Streaming
Cloud Platforms
Languages & Frameworks
DevOps & Tooling
Domain & Leadership
IEEE / IIT — Hajj & smart transport.
Awan, S. A., et al. — "A Software Platform for Smart Data-driven Intelligent Transport Applications."
Awan, S. A., et al. — "Spatial-Crowd: A Big Data Framework for Efficient Data Visualization."
Awan, S. A., et al. — "iCrowd — A Framework for Monitoring of (Identifiable) Crowd."
Where 20 years of this work lines up with what's being built now.
NEOM / The Line / Oxagon / Trojena
Smart-city architectures need real-time geospatial data lakes, routing engines, IoT ingestion and visualisation — the exact stack behind Mi-Stream and the Hajj platforms.
Riyadh Metro / Roshn / Diriyah / Qiddiya
Location-intelligence and crowd / traffic modelling transfer directly from the Hajj crowd-density and rerouting systems built at Wadi Makkah.
Ministry of Hajj & Umrah Modernisation
Three production platforms shipped, and three peer-reviewed publications, in exactly this domain.
Aramco / SABIC / Ma'aden
Upstream and asset geospatial digitisation aligns with the PostGIS + GeoServer + Spark stack led for 10+ years.
Formal degree, continuous top-up.
Open to Hajj, smart-city and geospatial roles across KSA & the GCC.
Open to opportunities across KSA and the wider GCC. Married, with an Omani Property Investor Visa currently in progress.
- EMAILshahbaz.atta@gmail.com
- PHONE+92 335 0414031
- LINKEDINlinkedin.com/in/shahbazatta
- STATUSOpen to relocate — GCC
- VISAOman Property Investor Visa — in progress
- LANGUAGESEnglish (fluent) · Urdu (native) · Arabic (basic)
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