Assumed Audience: Business and Technology Leaders in the UAE and Wider MENA region

1. The Beginning

“You’ve spent decades in software development and engineering leadership before founding Hypersequent in 2023. What was the turning point that made you want to build your own company, and what problem were you seeing that you couldn’t walk past?”

I have spent most of my career building software at scale, first as an engineer and then as an engineering leader. Over time, one pattern kept repeating: teams would get better tools for writing and shipping code, but quality operations stayed fragmented and underpowered. Reliability was still treated as something you checked at the end instead of something you designed into the system from the start.

The turning point was realizing that this was no longer a side problem. Software now carries core business operations, customer trust, and brand risk. When reliability breaks, the cost is not just a bug report. It shows up in delayed releases, support load, internal friction, and sometimes direct revenue impact. I started Hypersequent in 2023 because I felt that gap had become too important to ignore. I wanted to build a company around a problem I had seen firsthand for years: helping teams move faster without normalizing uncertainty as the price of speed.

2. Building from Dubai

“You chose to headquarter Hypersequent in Dubai as a DMCC entity, rather than a traditional tech hub like San Francisco or London. What drew you to the UAE as the base for a global software company, and how has being here shaped the business?”

Choosing Dubai was very deliberate. The UAE has built a business environment that is fast, international, and focused on making it easier for companies to operate globally. DMCC gave us a practical and reliable base, but the larger reason was that Dubai sits naturally between regions. From here, it was easy to think globally from day one rather than design the company around a single narrow market.

Being based here has also shaped how we operate. The talent mix is international, the customer conversations are cross-border by default, and you quickly learn to avoid narrow assumptions. You build with efficiency and clarity because you are constantly dealing with multiple markets, operating environments, and expectations.

I also think something important is happening in the UAE more broadly: founders here are increasingly building real software businesses, not just local versions of ideas that worked elsewhere. That ambition matters, and it is part of why this felt like the right place to build.

3. The Reliability Problem

“Hypersequent’s stated mission is to ‘make the world’s software more reliable.’ That’s a bold framing at a time when software is being written faster – and increasingly, by AI. From where you sit, how serious is the software reliability problem today, and what’s actually driving it?”

It is very serious, and in many organizations it is understated because the symptoms get normalized. Teams talk about flaky tests, release fire drills, hotfixes, or growing QA backlogs as if those are just part of modern engineering. They are not. They are signs that the organization is losing visibility into risk.

What is driving it is a speed mismatch. We are producing software faster than ever, with more services, more dependencies, and more change moving through the system every day. AI is accelerating that further by lowering the cost of code production. But faster code production does not automatically produce better architecture, better test strategy, or better operational discipline. In many teams, the volume of change has increased faster than the quality system around it. That is why reliability has become a leadership issue, not just a QA issue. The organizations that handle it well are the ones that treat testing, observability, ownership, and release discipline as one operating system rather than separate functions.

4. AI in Quality Assurance

“AI is being bolted onto almost every workflow right now, including testing. But there’s a tension: the same AI that accelerates test creation can also hallucinate, miss edge cases, or give teams false confidence. How is QA Sphere approaching AI differently, and what’s your view on the right way for engineering leaders to adopt AI in quality assurance?”

The mistake is to treat AI as an answer engine. In quality assurance, AI is most useful when it accelerates a good process rather than pretending to replace it. Our approach is to use AI where it removes repetitive work: drafting test cases from requirements, identifying likely coverage gaps, turning messy failure output into clearer bug reports, and helping teams maintain test assets as the product changes. Those are valuable uses because they save time without removing human accountability.

Where teams get into trouble is when they let AI create false confidence. A generated test is not the same as a reliable test. A model can miss an edge case, misunderstand the intended behavior, or produce something that looks credible but is poorly targeted. So the right adoption model is controlled, measurable, and review-driven. Start in areas where volume is high and judgment is still easy to verify. Keep humans responsible for approval. Measure outcomes that matter, like defect escape patterns, time to triage, and signal quality in the test suite. AI should help teams think faster and operate with more discipline. It should not be asked to stand in for engineering judgment.

5. Lessons from a Career in Engineering Leadership

“You’ve spent years leading engineering teams and shipping products used by millions globally. What has that experience taught you about building software that people can genuinely rely on, and how are you applying those lessons at Hypersequent?”

The biggest lesson is that reliable software is never the result of one heroic team at the end of the process. It comes from aligned decisions all the way through: product choices, architecture, development practices, testing strategy, release discipline, and ownership after launch. When any one of those breaks down, quality becomes expensive and unpredictable.

Leading products used by millions taught me that users do not experience your org chart. They experience the whole system as one thing. They do not care whether a failure came from a backend service, a mobile release process, or a weak testing practice. They just know whether the product is dependable. That pushes you toward a more integrated view of quality. At Hypersequent, I apply that lesson by staying very focused on feedback loops. We try to make risk more visible, decision-making faster, and responsibility clearer. In my experience, teams build trustworthy software when they can see what changed, understand what is risky, and respond before problems become customer-facing.

6. The Road Ahead for Software Testing

“Where do you see software testing heading over the next three to five years? What will modern QA teams look like, and what capabilities will separate the engineering organizations that ship reliable software from the ones that don’t?”

Over the next three to five years, QA will become more technical, more risk-focused, and more integrated with the rest of engineering. A lot of the routine work around writing first drafts of tests, maintaining repetitive test assets, and summarizing results will increasingly be assisted by AI. That will change the role of QA teams, but it will not make them less important. It will make good judgment more valuable.

Modern QA teams will spend less time acting as a manual checkpoint and more time shaping quality strategy. That means deciding what deserves durable protection, improving traceability from requirements to risk, building strong contract and integration coverage, watching production signals, and helping the organization distinguish coverage from confidence. The teams that ship reliably will be the ones that combine fast feedback with disciplined quality signals. They will keep flake rates low, use production data intelligently, and share ownership of quality across engineering rather than isolating it in one department. The ones that struggle will still be measuring activity while missing actual risk.

7. Leadership Evolution

“You’ve gone from leading engineering at scale to founding and running your own company. How has your leadership style evolved through that shift, and what principles guide how you build and lead teams at Hypersequent?”

The shift from engineering leader to founder changed my job in a very practical way. In a larger organization, a lot of leadership is about scale: building structure, creating alignment across teams, and improving execution across a broad surface area. As a founder, the challenge is sharper. You have to decide what matters now, what can wait, and what the company should ignore entirely. Focus becomes a leadership skill, not just a strategic slogan.

My style has become more explicit in three areas. First, I communicate priorities more narrowly because early teams do better with clarity than with optionality. Second, I spend more time listening to customers and the market because that feedback has to shape the company directly, not filter through layers. Third, I care even more about building a team that is calm, candid, and highly accountable. Startups do not have the luxury of confusion. At Hypersequent, I try to lead with a mix of high standards and low drama. People do their best work when the mission is clear, the feedback is honest, and quality is reflected in how the team operates, not just in what the product claims.

8. Message for Aspiring Founders and Engineers

“For aspiring tech entrepreneurs and engineers – particularly those based in the UAE and wider MENA region who are considering building globally – what’s your advice on choosing the right problem to solve and building a company that lasts?”

My advice is to choose a problem you understand deeply enough to recognize bad answers. A lot of founders start with a fashionable market and then go looking for a problem inside it. That usually leads to shallow products and short-lived conviction. It is better to start with a recurring frustration that serious people already feel and would pay to solve if someone addressed it well.

For founders in the UAE and wider MENA region, the opportunity is real, but you still have to build at a global standard. Geography is no longer the excuse people think it is. You can build from here, hire internationally, sell globally, and operate with real ambition. But location is not a strategy. The companies that last are the ones that stay close to customer pain, avoid vanity, manage capital carefully, and build credibility step by step. If you do that, being based in the UAE can be an advantage because you are operating from a market that is outward-looking, fast-moving, and increasingly confident about building for the world.