👋 Hi there, I'm Zeeshan Ali Khan
- Previous Name: Zeeshan Ali
- Location: Berlin, Germany. 🇩🇪
- Nationality: Finnish. 🇫🇮
- Contact:
zeenix@gmai<guess-this-letter>.com
Summary
I'm an experienced Rust developer. I have worked on various Linux-based solutions over the past 22 years on different levels, from kernel to UI applications. I am eager to learn new technologies and a quick-learner.
In the last 5 years in (mostly) my spare time, I created and maintain a Rust crate that makes D-Bus very easy, called zbus. Through systematic performance optimization, I achieved a 95% performance improvement (presented at FOSDEM 2025), making it not only the easiest but also one of the fastest ways to do D-Bus in Rust. It's a project I'm particularly proud of.
I'm currently also working on zlink, a new Rust Varlink library designed to be async and targetting desktops, servers and even microcontrollers.
Top Skills 😎
- Rust (6 years)
- C (17 years)
- Open Source development (22 years)
- Linux/Unix Programming (22 years)
- Embedded Systems development, both bare metal & Linux-based (8 years)
Career Highlights 🚀
-
Currently working as a freelance Rust Engineer with multiple clients:
- Codethink - Ongoing contract as Consultant Software Engineer
- Meta Platforms, Inc. (through Ferrous systems GmbH) - is sponsoring twenty days of work on zlink.
- MainMatter - Contributed to porting RediSearch from C to Rust. The project involved both C and Rust development.
-
Senior Embedded Engineer at JUCR GmbH (now a part of eze.network GmbH) from May 2024 to April 2025. My team was responsible for all the software that powered the JUCR charging stations. All the code is written in Rust and involves a mix of Embedded Linux and baremetal development. We relied on frameworks like tokio and embassy.
-
Rust & FOSS specialist consultant at Mercedes-Benz Vans in the Digital Upfitter project on a 1 year contract from Dec 2022 to Dec 2023. My work included:
- Development of the Digital Upfitter platform, especially the Rust components.
- Helping various teams in the Mercedes-Benz group learn Rust and adopting the best practices around it.
- Development of busd, a D-Bus broker in Rust.
- Helping shape the future FOSS strategy of the company.
-
Senior Software Engineer at Kraken from 2021 to 2022. I worked on their web backend in Rust, enabling the transition of various services from PHP to Rust as well as creating new services for new product features.
-
Lumeo HQ from 2020 to 2021. Lumeo's mission is to create a complete, edge-to-cloud vision platform that accelerates design, deployment and monitoring of vision solutions. Most of the software is written in Rust. I worked on the component running on the edge devices.
-
Pelagicore as Software Architect from 2016 to 2017.
- Lead the development & maintenance of GENIVI Development Platform from Dec 2016 to May 2017.
- Worked on PELUX, a Linux-based Open Source platform for In-Vehicle Infotainment systems.
- Developed gps-share, a utility to share your GPS device on local network and enable support for standalone GPS devices in Geoclue. This was my first real world experience of Rust.
-
Red Hat Inc. as Senior Software Engineer from 2011 to 2016 and then from 2019 to 2020:
- GNOME Boxes, a simple but powerful virtual and remote machine manager for GNOME. Together with my awesome colleagues, I not only implemented the application but also the needed infrastructure and frameworks for it (such as, libosinfo and libvirt-glib).
- Geoclue, a D-Bus geoinformation service that makes creating location-aware applications as simple as possible. I single-handedly re-wrote the entire project in 2013.
- Maps, a map application for GNOME.
- In my last year at Red Hat, I was part of the team that makes it possible to deploy Openshift clusters on desktop machines for easy testing and development.
-
Nokia Corporation as SW Design Engineer from 2006 to 2007 and as Lead-Developer/Architect from 2008 to 2011. At Nokia, I worked at MeeGo (formerly Maemo) group, developing Linux-based mobile products. I worked on development of N800, N810, N900 and N9. I was behind the following successful open source projects:
- Created and maintained Rygel, a collection of UPnP/DLNA services for GNOME (Mobile). Rygel is readily available in/for all major Linux distributions, was shipped as part of Nokia N9 and was deployed in In-Vehicle Infotainment systems.
- Co-developed and co-maintained GUPnP, an elegant, object-oriented open source framework for creating UPnP devices and control points. GUPnP was integral part of Nokia N900 and N9. Rygel is heavily dependent on GUPnP so all products that use Rygel, also use GUPnP. Raumfeld uses GUPnP for their multi-room music solution.
- MAFW (Media Application Framework) is a framework that makes writing multimedia applications, easy. It also abstracts low-level technologies, such as GStreamer and GUPnP. The project was later renamed to Grilo.
-
Aerocar Engineering as Software Developer from 2004 to 2005. Aerocar was mainly a consulting company but also worked on a few products of their own. My job was design and implementation of most parts of their ATM (Automated Teller Machine) project. My work mainly involved development of the user-interface and device drivers for the ATM peripherals. The company no longer exists.
-
North West Research as Software Developer from 2002 to 2004. It is a small company that develops various small consumer and enterprise products, mainly for local markets. Two of my main projects were:
- An open-source video-wall solution based on GStreamer, called video-whale. The effort was highly appreciated in the open-source community slashdot.org, The Linux Magazine (March 2003), etc.
- ENAS (Ethernet Network Access Server). ENAS was a RADIUS-compatible network access and bandwidth control box, that restricted users' access and bandwidth on the network based on their systems' MAC and IP addresses. The core of the system was a Linux kernel module.
Other projects/achievements 🏆
-
Presented at various conferences: Rust Linz Feb 2022, foss-north (2019, 2021 & 2023), Oxidize Global 2020, RustFest 2019, All Systems Go (2017 & 2024), GENIVI AMM 2017, GUADEC (2008, 2009-2014), FOSDEM (2008-2013, 2017, 2018, 2020 & 2025), Maemo Summit 2009, GStreamer Conference 2010, DLNA summit 2008 and several Rust&Tell Berlin meetups.
-
Member of Rust Embedded Libraries team, which is responsible for development and maintenance of embedded device libraries, such as heapless.
-
Alumni member of Rust Async Foundations working group.
-
Conducted a "Rust for Beginners" employee training workshop at 1000shapes GmbH on Nov 16, 2023.
-
Participated as a mentor in Google Summer of Code in 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016.
-
Interviewed by Rustacean Station Podcast in 2022, which lead to me arranging and co-hosting some of the episodes:
Education 🎓
Bachelor of Computer Science from University of Peshawar, Pakistan.
Hobbies 🎸
🚁 🛩 🖖🏼