HELLO, WORLD! I'M

Abu Jafar
Saifullah

M.Sc. in Software Engineering · IIT, University of Dhaka. PhD Applicant · Fall 2027. Software Engineer II at Optimizely

I'm a software engineering researcher working on web accessibility. I did my M.Sc. in Software Engineering at IIT, University of Dhaka, and I'm applying to PhD programs for Fall 2027. I also work as a full-stack software engineer at Optimizely Bangladesh, building features for the Content Marketing Platform (CMP) team.

Curriculum Vitae
1
Peer-Reviewed Paper
3.92
M.Sc. CGPA
2+ yrs
Optimizely
300+
PRs Reviewed
Abu Jafar Saifullah

ACADEMIC

Research

RESEARCH INTERESTS

AI for Software EngineeringSoftware EngineeringAI & Machine LearningWeb Accessibility

Research Affiliations

DSSE Research Group, IIT, University of Dhaka

Graduate Researcher · Dr. Zerina Begum & Dr. Kazi Sakib

Apr 2025 – Present

M.Sc. thesis: “Detecting and Repairing Keyboard Focus-Behavior Violations through Dynamic Analysis.” Built NavA11y to detect these violations (published at ENASE 2026) and RepairA11y to repair them.

SEMERU Lab, William & Mary

Research Intern · Dr. Denys Poshyvanyk

Aug 2023 – Dec 2023

Built a programming language-specific tokenizer to improve NLP model predictions for software engineering tasks.

PEER-REVIEWED

Publications

2026 · FULL PAPER · PRESENTED IN PERSON, MAY 2026

NavA11y: A Dynamic Analysis Approach for WCAG 2.4 Focus-Behavior Evaluation

Abu Jafar Saifullah, Tasmia Zerin, Zerina Begum, Kazi Sakib

In Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE 2026), Vol. 2, pp. 1019–1030. SCITEPRESS. Benidorm, Spain

DOI: 10.5220/0015045700004015

METHOD

Drives a real browser through each page's keyboard tab order and, at every focus stop, checks that focus lands where expected, is visibly indicated, and is not hidden behind other content.

RESULTS

  • 100% precision and recall on a 22-page labeled dataset (32 SC-level assertions)
  • 2,947 violations detected across 26 production websites; 90% precision validated by two independent expert raters
  • First tool to cover all five WCAG 2.4 focus-behavior success criteria

LATEST

News & Activities

  • 📣

    Applying to PhD programs for Fall 2027.

  • 🎤

    Presented my first-author full paper, NavA11y, in person at ENASE 2026 in Benidorm, Spain.

  • 🏆

    Received the ICT Division Fellowship from the Government of Bangladesh, funding my M.Sc. thesis research.

  • 💼

    Promoted to Software Engineer II at Optimizely.

  • 🏆

    Won the Optimizely Global Hackathon 2025. Our team built Spotlight, a Cmd+K global search that later shipped to production.

  • 🎓

    Started my M.Sc. in Software Engineering at the University of Dhaka, advised by Dr. Kazi Sakib and Zerina Begum.

ACADEMICS

Education

University of Dhaka

M.Sc. in Software Engineering

Apr 2025 – Sep 2026

3.92/ 4.00

University of Dhaka

B.Sc. in Software Engineering

Jan 2019 – Dec 2023

3.89/ 4.00

Notre Dame College

Higher Secondary Certificate

Jun 2016 – Jun 2018

5.00/ 5.00

RESEARCH & WORK

Projects

Research2023
★ ICSE SCORE 2023 · Top 6

Clippy

Smart PDF Reader for Researchers

Smart PDF reader with knowledge graph extraction, citation network visualization, and paper recommendation. Top 6 finalist at ICSE SCORE 2023, the Student Contest on Software Engineering.

AS
Research2025
★ M.Sc. Coursework

ML Bug Mining (SZZ)

Mining Software Repositories

Mined ML-related bugs across 9 open-source repositories using the SZZ algorithm.

AI2023
★ Published on PyPI

BPE Tokenizer

Byte Pair Encoding from Scratch

Byte Pair Encoding tokenizer implemented from scratch and published as python-bpe-tokenizer on PyPI. Includes a Flask web interface for training on custom corpora.

AI2025
★ Shipped at Optimizely

AI Platform Integration

AI SDK Integration + Block-based Document UI

End-to-end integration of an AI SDK across the platform: service migration, internal publishing pipeline, instrumentation, and a block-based AI document UI.

MCPLLM
AI2023
★ BUET Hackathon · Best UI/UX

API Miners GPT

GPT-Powered PDF Chatbot

GPT-powered PDF chatbot with voice input, OCR, and Stable Diffusion image generation.

OPE
AI2023
★ NASA Space Apps 2023

EmitXplorer

Greenhouse Gas Visualization

Gamified greenhouse gas visualization platform using SCISAT satellite data and ML-based CO₂ concentration prediction.

Open Source2024–2026
★ Production at Optimizely

Axiom Migration

Platform Migration to @optiaxiom/react

Multi-year migration from a legacy design library to Axiom: adapter components, component migrations, and dark-mode theming.

MF
Full Stack2025–Present
★ Lead Developer

Blueberry Auto

Vehicle Auction & Marketplace Platform

Vehicle auction and marketplace platform for the Bangladesh market. Leading the end-to-end build as the contracted developer.

Full Stack2025
★ Lead Developer

GCMAF

Medical Product & Research Site

Marketing and research site for a medical product line; led design and build.

Full Stack2025
★ Lead Developer

DBH Services

Corporate / Holding Company Website

Corporate website for a holding company covering home, services, allied businesses, and admin contact submissions.

REC
Full Stack2024
★ Optimizely Retreat 2024

Opti Retreat Voting System

Internal Voting App for Optimizely Retreat

Internal voting application built for Optimizely's annual company retreat; React + TypeScript SPA used by the Bangladesh office.

Full Stack2023
★ JavaFest 2023 (Therap)

Mr. Bin

Recycling Marketplace + ML Classification

Full-stack recycling and exchange marketplace with ML-based object detection for item classification.

MERMAP
Distributed Systems2022

MiniFacebook

Monolith → Microservices

Demonstrated monolith-to-microservices decomposition: split a Node.js app into User, Story, and Status services behind an NGINX reverse proxy.

CAREER

Experience

Optimizely · Content Marketing Platform

Software Engineer II(promoted from SE I, Apr 2026)CURRENT

Dhaka, Bangladesh

Apr 2024 – Present

Part of CMP's platform team, contributing to AI feature development, design-system migrations, client bug triage, and feature requests alongside the broader platform.

Design SystemsAI IntegrationPlatform Quality
Design System Migration

Accelerated the platform's multi-year migration from a legacy design library to Axiom (@optiaxiom/react, Optimizely's open-source design system) by landing 26 merged PRs upstream (V1→V2 component conversions plus net-new Aside, SubNav, Range, and FileUpload-preview components) and 10+ adapter components in the product, and by writing the Migration Guide and Icon Contribution Guide that other product teams adopted.

Axiom V3 Brand Refresh

Rolled out the Axiom V3 token/color refresh across the product and eliminated duplicate React-context errors across micro-frontends by fixing the module-federation singleton configuration.

AI SDK Integration

Delivered end-to-end integration of an internal AI SDK by migrating its backing service from Express to Hono, setting up the AWS CodeArtifact publishing pipeline, and building the permissions layer and test suite.

SEMERU Lab, William & Mary

Research Intern(supervised by Dr. Denys Poshyvanyk)

Remote

Aug 2023 – Dec 2023

Worked under Dr. Denys Poshyvanyk on intelligent software tools, building NLP infrastructure for SE-specific code understanding.

NLP for SETokenizationResearch
PL-Specific Tokenizer

Built a programming language-specific tokenizer to improve NLP model predictions for software engineering tasks, contributing to the lab's research on intelligent software tools.

Orion Informatics Ltd.

Software Engineer

Dhaka, Bangladesh

Jul 2023 – Mar 2024

Full-stack engineering on internal tooling and an automated trading integration.

.NETAzureData Visualization
Attendance Management System

Built custom graphs and advanced data filters to enhance reporting capabilities.

Automated Trading Integration

Built a two-service ASP.NET Core webhook relay that ingests TradeStation alerts, validates request integrity, and routes by trade type to a file-based queue consumed by an automated trading bot; deployed on Azure App Service.

TECHNICAL

Skills

RESEARCH METHODS

Dynamic Program AnalysisMining Software Repositories (SZZ)Statistical Evaluation (Kendall τ, Cohen's κ, PABAK)Inter-rater Agreement

LANGUAGES

TypeScript
TypeScript
Python
Python
C++
C++

FRONTEND

React
React
Tailwind CSS
Tailwind CSS
shadcn/ui
shadcn/ui
Radix UI
Radix UI
Storybook
Storybook

BACKEND

Node.js
Node.js
Hono
Hono
Express
Express
FastAPI
FastAPI

TESTING

Playwright
Playwright
Vitest
Vitest
Mocha
Mocha

DATABASES

MongoDB
MongoDB
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL
SQL Server
SQL Server
Supabase
Supabase

DEVOPS / CLOUD

Docker
Docker
GitHub Actions
GitHub Actions
Cloudflare Workers
Cloudflare Workers

RECOGNITION

Awards & Achievements

★

ICT Division Fellowship

Government of Bangladesh

Research funding for my M.Sc. thesis (Grant No. 56.00.0000.052.33.002.24-61)

2026
★

Winner, Optimizely Global Hackathon 2025

Optimizely

Company-wide international hackathon win. The team built Spotlight, which then shipped to CMP.

2025
★

Top 6, ICSE SCORE 2023

International undergraduate SE competition

2023
★

Champion, Refactoring Competition

2023
★

Best UI/UX, BUET Hackathon

2023
★

Champion, Project Showcasing

First place at departmental project showcasing event

2022
★

Runners-up, Project Showcasing

Second place at departmental project showcasing event

2021
★

LeetCode Practice

LeetCode

Practice problems regularly, focusing on problem-solving patterns, not competitive rankings.

REACH OUT

Let's Talk

AVAILABLE · PHD APPLICATIONS · COLLABS

The fastest way to reach me is email.

Research collaborations, PhD program inquiries, or engineering opportunities. I read everything and reply within 48 hours.

Send an email
jafarmahin107@gmail.com
LOCATION
Dhaka, Bangladesh
TIMEZONE
GMT+6 (BST)
PHONE
+880 1717 743519
RESPONSE
< 48 hours