The Lore
I started coding at 9. I've been the first engineer at 3 startups.
My name is Anosh Malik. I've spent 15+ years building complex systems — from RuneScape private servers to scaling platforms for the Bank of England.
Years Building Systems
Startups as First Engineer
Team Members at Scale
Funding Raised
I taught myself to code at age 9, running RuneScape private servers and gold-farming bots. I scaled this into managing large communities for SAMP, ArmA, Minecraft, and Garry's Mod.
At 15, I architected a multi-part GTA 4 mod using a C# application, a core game mod, a MySQL database, and a linked phpBB forum.
At 17, I cold-called my way into my first professional role at CANDDi.
My entire career has been a continuation of this pattern: joining high-risk, early-stage startups as the first hire and scaling their "move-fast" MVP code into secure, enterprise-grade platforms.
RuneScape Private Servers
Taught myself to code running private servers and gold-farming bots.
Multi-part GTA 4 Mod
Architected a C# application, core game mod, MySQL database, and linked phpBB forum.
CANDDi (First Job)
Cold-called my way into my first professional engineering role.
Tessian (#11)
First client-side engineer. Scaled to 200+ employees. Deployed to Bank of England.
BUMP (YC W18)
First engineer. Migrated single-file monolith to CQRS event-driven system.
Nossa Data
First hire. Built 2-week MVP. Led ISO27001 refactor that secured Series A.
The First Engineer Pattern
Each time, I joined when the code was "move-fast" and left when it was "enterprise-grade."
Tessian
Employee #11
Joined when the company was <15 people. Helped scale to 200+ employees (Sequoia, Accel, Balderton backed). Deployed to Bank of England and Dentons. Led migration of flagship Outlook Add-in from VB.NET to modern C#. Co-engineered high-throughput MTA with Concourse CI/CD.
BUMP
YC W18 | First Engineer
Hired by CTO to rebuild the backend. Entire system was a single-file Parse.js app. Migrated to NestJS + GraphQL. Architected CQRS-based event-driven order system for StockX-like marketplace handling millions in transactions.
Nossa Data
First Hire → Head of Engineering
Delivered 2-week MVP (FastAPI, React, Next.js, AWS) for Toyota and Vodafone pilots. Scaled to 170+ companies in 6 weeks. Led full ISO27001 security refactor: multi-account AWS org, SSO, Teleport for database access, Pulumi IaC.
Haraka SMTP
I'm a core maintainer of Haraka, a high-performance open-source SMTP server written in Node.js. I'm responsible for code review, architecture, and security of the core networking and email-parsing engine.
When I audit your code, I review it with the same standards I apply to production email infrastructure used by companies worldwide.
shuto.app
An "AllTrails for Drivers" iOS-native app built from scratch in Swift. I'm architecting a Supabase backend for auth, database, and storage. Self-hosting a custom routing server on Hetzner with OSM data. Developing a Python-based recommendation engine.
I'm also available for technical audits and select consulting engagements.
Let's work together
Whether you need a complete build or a Week-Zero Audit, let's discuss how I can help transform your startup.