Shahid Shaikh

Hey, I’m Shahid

I build production-grade distributed systems and AI developer tools for engineering teams.

My work focuses on high-performance data infrastructure, agent platforms, and practical tooling for engineers. Outside of work, I write, research, and build projects around the parts of software that have to keep working when the easy assumptions break.

  • Distributed systems and data platforms
  • Low-latency databases and backend infrastructure
  • AI agents, LLM tooling, and developer workflows
  • Technical books, long-form writing, and open-source experiments

This site is where I document what I’m learning and building: system design notes, database internals, practical AI experiments, and code you can run yourself.

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  • Principal Software Architect
  • Author of 4 technical books
  • Building databases, AI tools, and developer systems
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Shahid speaking at a conference
Speaker on distributed systems, developer tooling, and applied AI.
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Featured work

Featured project

Redistill

Redis-compatible key-value infrastructure for latency-sensitive production workloads.

  • Protocol-compatible direction for Redis-style workloads
  • Focused on predictable latency and production ergonomics
  • Designed as infrastructure, not a toy database
View GitHub ⟶ See projects ⟶
AI tooling

MemX

A local-first AI memory layer for engineers working across Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, and other agents.

  • SQLite-backed local memory with summarized facts
  • Ollama-powered extraction and retrieval flow
  • MCP integration for agent workflows
View repo ⟶ Read write-up ⟶
What I write about
Distributed systems

Databases, caching, backend architecture, performance, and reliability.

AI agents

Agentic systems, local-first memory, CLI interfaces, and practical LLM tooling.

Developer tools

Command-line products, API ergonomics, automation, and engineering workflows.

Start here

All writing ⟶

Latest notes

Full archive ⟶