Syed Ali

Vice President of Software Engineering

Happy Health

Jan 2026 - Current (8 months)

Continue to stay close to the technical foundations of the platform while expanding scope to organizational leadership and external collaboration. Lead technical strategy and execution for partnerships and joint initiatives, working directly with external partners as Happy Health scales. Balance hands-on architectural oversight with systems-level leadership to ensure the platform remains reliable, secure, and extensible.

Principal Software Architect

Happy Health

Jun 2022 - Feb 2026 (3 years 9 months)

Stepped away from people management to focus on deep technical execution and system architecture. Led a major rewrite of the mobile Bluetooth stack to improve ring synchronization, reliability, and scalability. Shifted focus toward platform architecture and distributed systems, leading the design and evolution of backend infrastructure including REST APIs, data ingestion and processing pipelines, and synchronization with external services. Work centered on async Python (FastAPI), event-driven architectures (SNS, SQS, pub/sub), Dockerized services, and AWS infrastructure defined via CDK and deployed on Lambda. Established engineering standards and best practices across domains, including code quality, CI/CD, testing, and deployment workfl

Director Of Software

Happy Health

Dec 2019 - Jun 2022 (2 years 7 months)

Joined Happy Health as a hands-on builder responsible for establishing the initial technical foundation across mobile, firmware integration, and backend systems. Principal author and long-term maintainer of the iOS applications and core frameworks, including multiple generations of the consumer apps and the Bluetooth framework used for all hardware communication. Wrote shared C libraries used across multiple systems and partnered closely with the firmware team to design and iterate on transport and encoding layers for ring-device communication. Built early internal and external web applications to support dashboards, tooling, and operational workflows as the company transitioned from research to early consumer products.

Mobile Audio Contractor

Filmic inc

Jan 2017 - Dec 2019 (3 years)

During my time at Filmic Pro I worked on: - Creating a new reliable, extendable audio pipeline in the video recording app as a standalone framework written in Swift, Objective-C, C++, and C. - Creating a variety of custom audio related UI elements written in Swift and Objective-C (Objective-C++ to interact with C++ code). - Custom hardware integrations in the video recording app. - Breaking up the code base into stand alone frameworks that were integrated into multiple Filmic products via Cocoapods and/or git subtrees. - Special audio-related project that will be coming out Fall 2019.

Head of Mobile

Skycatch

Aug 2015 - Sep 2016 (1 year 2 months)

During my time as Head of Mobile Engineering for Skycatch I: - Created the Mobile C++ SDK, which is used in many of Skycatch's mobile, desktop, and web applications. - Created the Skycatch Flight App for iOS for controlling DJI drones and uploading drone aerial data to Skycatch's photogrammetry pipeline. - Architected and worked on the Skycatch Flight App for Android. - Built out the mobile team (interviewing candidates, high level app organization and architecture, distributing and assign JIRA tasks). See full details: https://www.syedharisali.com/skycatch/

Freelance Software Developer

Detourcom

Oct 2014 - Apr 2015 (7 months)

For Detour I created a shared audio engine used by the iOS and Mac applications to perform dynamic-location based audio playback with multi-effect and multi-track (up to 32 simultaneously) support. It was built on top of my EZAudio framework and extended to conform to location triggers. In addition, I wrote the Mac application, Descript, used by the content team to create and simulate Detours in a movie-script like fashion with the ability to drop in location triggers, music, voice overs, sound effects, images, and comments. It also features a git-like version control tool to allow authors the ability to check out remote Detours and collaborate simultaneously. I also helped with the iOS app to smoothly integrate Descript bundles and exten

Freelance Software Engineer

Sosh

May 2014 - Aug 2014 (4 months)

Worked on the new Sosh iOS application (currently available in the App Store). The app was featured in the App Store's Best New Apps. App Store Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sosh-city-guide/id457297757?mt=8 Implemented Sosh Concierge and a native checkout flow for the iOS application. "Sosh Concierge gives diners same-day access to the hardest-to-book places – which they'd otherwise have to plan ahead 30 to 60 days in advance to visit. It reduces all the planning, booking, and paying into a couple taps on your phone's screen." - Business Insider Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/sosh-concierge-san-francisco-2014-8#ixzz3AaUIRto6

Freelance Software Engineer

Beats Music

Mar 2014

Wrote a macOS audio player application to demo the new Beats Music Developer API. This served as one of the official example projects for the Beats Music Developer API and was premiered at the Beats Music tent at the South By Southwest Conference (SXSW) in Austin, Texas 2014. The project is currently live and still used by developers around the world learning how to use the Beats Music Developer API to developer native Mac and iOS applications. Github: https://github.com/Beats-Music/mac-miniplayer

Freelance Software Engineer

Beats Music

Feb 2014 - Mar 2014 (2 months)

Wrote a Mac application to provide a dashboard for viewing real-time metrics for the Beats Music platform. This was used by various members of the team including Dr. Dre, Ian Rogers, and Jimmy Iovine. Worked with the analytics team to simultaneously create a new backend to provide new real-time data for the application to consume. The application provided a dynamic layout to accommodate various screen sizes from 13" Macbook Airs to 60" displays and included all custom Beats Music branded UI elements.

Senior Software Engineer

Pulselocker

Dec 2011 - Nov 2013 (2 years)

Wrote the client for the Pulselocker prototype in 2011 and co-developed the software architecture (backend) in its early state. In the past year I've led the development for the production client of Pulselocker, coded the audio engine driving the application's player, and spec'd out and coded the application navigation (view switching), information loading using a multithreaded, delegate-based architecture, and UI customization (everything from buttons to the source list, to the audio waveform slider).

Signal and Acoustics Research

Johns Hopkins University

Aug 2010 - Jan 2011 (6 months)

Working under James E. West (Codeveloper of the foil electret microphone) at the Johns Hopkins University, used an eigenmike and beamforming algorithms to help program an accelerometer to a pair of headphones in C++ that could accurately reproduce the spatial acoustics of a room that are lost with single microphone recordings. In long distance business meetings one would be able to experience the same spatial acoustics as any person witnessing the meeting in person.

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