Ahmed Najiub · Software Engineer @ Willow Labs
Engineering thoughtful products at the intersection of software & AI.
Full-stack engineer at Willow Labs, shipping AI-powered health coaching used by thousands — Next.js & TypeScript up front, Java & Quarkus microservices underneath.
About
I'm Ahmed — a full-stack software engineer with a Master's in Software Engineering from UC Irvine and degrees in Computer Science & Mathematics from Pepperdine.
I've spent the past several years building web apps, AI-powered products, analytics platforms, and the backend services that keep them fast — most recently in health tech, where reliability isn't optional.
Beyond the day job: 10,000+ lines contributed to the open-source JSON-Java library, a couple of hackathon wins, and two years teaching weekly workshops as president of Pepperdine's CS club. This site keeps the original hand-built personality, now organized as a reusable Next.js, React, and Tailwind codebase.
- Now
- Software Engineer @ Willow Labs
- Base
- Irvine, California
- Education
- MSE — UC Irvine · BS CS & Math — Pepperdine
- Focus
- Next.js · Quarkus · Applied AI
Experience
2022 — presentSoftware Engineer
Willow LabsAug 2025 — Present- Lead development of Nutu's Coach Dashboard — Next.js + Quarkus — unifying chat, health analytics, and habit insights for coaches managing thousands of members.
- Shipped an AI-powered habit-identification feature that turns member activity into personalized coaching advice.
- Re-architected chat into an event-driven pipeline broadcasting across Quarkus microservices, cutting data inconsistencies platform-wide.
Next.jsTypeScriptJavaQuarkusEvent-drivenSoftware Engineer
IEHP CareNow (Afya)Mar 2024 — May 2025- Owned 20+ Express & Python microservices and 30+ React components across a distributed healthcare platform serving billion-dollar clients.
- Drove adoption of open-source analytics on GCP (~$100K saved annually) and built the geospatial map used to analyze a 15,000-physician network.
- Automated HIPAA-compliant client provisioning — from 30 minutes of manual setup to under 30 seconds.
ReactExpressPythonGCPPostgreSQLSoftware Engineer
UCI Health (Repronet)Sep 2024 — Dec 2024- Built 10+ React components and UX improvements that lifted site traffic by 25% and navigation speed by 50%.
ReactJavaScriptUXSoftware Engineering Intern
Pepperdine UniversitySep 2022 — May 2023- Extended the Bonobo Git Server (ASP.NET, C#, Entity Framework) used across campus — dynamic service-account tracking, an SQL redesign, and expanded automated tests.
C#ASP.NETSQL
Selected projects
All on GitHub ↗Clinical AI Chatbot
Winner at Afya Hacks: a HIPAA-minded clinical agent, built with a team of three, that helps doctors with patient management and diagnosis — LangChain over a FastAPI backend, Dockerized with CI/CD on Cloud Run.
Aven Support
AI customer support platform for the fintech company Aven — a 3D talking avatar named Dave answers questions over voice or text, backed by Pinecone semantic search and GPT-4, and validated by a 50+ case evaluation harness.
Echo
Turns audio, video, or text lectures into clean notes, transcripts, and Q&A sets — cutting manual note-taking by roughly 60%.
CHRS iRain
Modernized a NASA-satellite rainfall visualization platform from legacy PHP to a PERN stack — 35% faster, with a rebuilt mapping UI.
JSON-Java contribution
10,000+ lines contributed to the JSON.org Java library — functional, streaming, and async APIs for a 14% efficiency gain.
BlackWidow-Chess Testing
A JUnit test suite reaching 90%+ coverage on BlackWidow-Chess, a 200,000-line Java engine — partition testing for piece movement, plus GitHub Actions CI.
Anaphora
HackDavis build: a smartwatch simulation that helps dementia patients answer personal questions and flags repetitions for caregivers.
Ahmed Mail
A full-stack email client that speaks SMTP and IMAP directly — React + TypeScript up front, an Express server underneath, with built-in contact tracking.
PepperPlan
Academic planning platform with a prerequisite checker and a generator that produced 100+ personalized degree plans.