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About
Hi, I'm Waqaar.
Senior platform engineer, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, and the person behind InaSha.
Credentials
I'm a platform engineer in Brisbane, and for the past several years I've been the sole engineer behind a SaaS company's cloud — the person who owns the AWS account, the deploy pipelines, the security posture and, unavoidably, the bill.
Sole is the operative word. When there's nobody to hand things to, you learn to build infrastructure that doesn't need babysitting: everything as code, documented as you go, alarms that only fire when something is actually wrong. You also develop strong opinions about waste, because every dollar of it is a dollar you personally failed to catch. That discipline is where the numbers on this site come from — 27% off an AWS bill, $72,000 of software nobody was using, an ISO 27001 external audit passed with no major findings.
InaSha is me doing that for companies that can't justify a full-time platform hire yet. Deliberately just me — you get the person who did the work last time, not whoever's free this sprint. A handful of clients at a time, Australian hours, and everything I build lands in your repos where it belongs.
How I work:
- In your Slack and your repos, where you can see the work
- Async-first, with a scheduled weekly working call
- Everything as code, everything documented
- If the work isn't worth your money, I'll tell you before you spend it
Good questions
The things founders ask first.
Are you offshore?
No. I'm based in Brisbane and work in Australian business hours. You get one accountable, senior person — not a rotating ticket queue.
How do you work with a small team?
Async-first, in your Slack, with a scheduled weekly call. Bigger changes like migrations are done in low-traffic windows so nothing breaks in your customers' faces.
What happens if we stop?
Everything is yours. Infrastructure lives as code in your repositories, fully documented. There's no lock-in and nothing walks out the door with me.
We're tiny / pre-revenue. Worth it?
Start with the cost audit. It's designed to find more than it costs — so it typically pays for itself in the first month or two.
How big should our AWS bill be before an audit makes sense?
Around $5k/month is where it reliably pays for itself. Below that, book the free review anyway — I'll tell you honestly if there's not enough to find.
ISO 27001 or SOC 2 — which one?
If your buyers are Australian enterprise or government, ISO 27001 is usually the ask. The good news: the ISMS I build maps to both, so the work isn't wasted either way.