Hello DEV! From Gujrat to Hackathon Finals: My Journey as a Secure Software Engineer 👋

Hi DEV Community! 👋

I'm Raqeeba Yasin, a Computer Science graduate from Gujrat, Pakistan. This is my first post here, and I wanted to introduce myself properly.

Who I am

I build full-stack web and mobile apps, and I'm especially interested in AI and cybersecurity. I graduated this year (August 2026) with a BS in Computer Science from the University of the Punjab, and I've spent the last few years learning by building real things.

What I've been working on

🏥 Smart Polio Record & Monitoring Portal (my final year project)
A bilingual (Urdu/English) public health platform that replaces paper-based polio vaccination records with a real-time system. I designed it for field health workers in low-connectivity areas. It uses React and React Native on the front end, Flask and PostgreSQL on the back end, an in-app chatbot for vaccinators, and district dashboards so supervisors can spot coverage gaps.

⚖️ QanoonSathi AI (National Gen AI Hackathon finalist)
An AI legal-literacy platform that makes Pakistani law easier to understand through a conversational interface grounded in verified legal sources. I led the front end and the team's repository organization in a 6-member team. We reached the national finals (HEC Pakistan × Pak Angels).

🔐 AI-Based Intrusion Detection System (research preprint)
Under the supervision of Dr. Muhammad Adeel, I wrote a preprint on using machine learning to classify network threats and detect anomalies in real time. Version 1 is published on SSRN, Zenodo, GitHub and Academia.edu, and I'm now working on version 2 with more models, more datasets and deeper benchmarking.

A few more highlights

• 🏆 Competed in 4 hackathons (3 international, 1 national) and peaked at #52 on the lablab.ai global leaderboard
• 📊 Scored 80.6% on Pakistan's National IT Skill Competency Test (HEC/MoITT)
• 🛠️ Led AUREX, a 10+ member student software house, from idea to delivery
• 👥 Led a 1,000+ student community as a Senior Wing Leader
• 📚 Published a book, The Amaya Principle: By the Time You See It, It Has Already Begun, available on Amazon

My tech stack

React, Next.js, React Native, Node.js, Python (Flask), Kotlin, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Docker, Jenkins and CI/CD.

What I learned so far

1. Build for the real user. Designing for field workers with weak internet changed how I think about performance and simplicity.
2. Teamwork beats solo talent. Hackathons and leading AUREX taught me that clear communication and organized repos matter as much as code.
3. Security should come early. Researching intrusion detection made me see how much better systems get when you think about threats from day one.

What I'll share here

I plan to write about my projects and the mistakes I made building them, beginner-friendly explanations of AI and cybersecurity topics, DevOps basics (Docker, CI/CD), and my hackathon experiences.

Let's connect! 🤝

I'm open to internships, collaborations and relocation opportunities, and I'd love to learn from this community.

💬 I'd love to hear from you:

• What's one piece of advice you'd give a fresh graduate in tech?
• Which topic should I write about first: my intrusion detection research, building the polio portal, or hackathon lessons?

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to connecting with you all! 🚀

You can find me on GitHub and LinkedIn.