Sajjad Ahmed

Junior Android Engineer

Dealing with complications has always been something I have undertaken with courage, be it the hurdles that my health complications cast in the way of my academic goals, or just the day-to-day work-related tangles one has to resolve at work.

Always willing to meet my challenges head-on, the process of resolving issues is something that harbors a sense of encouragement for me.

I come from a small village near District Bahawalpur, Tehsil Khairpur Tamewali. Since childhood, I have found the odds stacked against me. In my infancy, my mother passed away. I harbor only a fleeting image of her, put together by what I’ve seen in photos. Soon after her passing, my father remarried, and I went to live with my grandparents. As a child, I sustained a leak in the right wall of the heart as a consequence of the fits of whooping cough that I used to have. Having spent my childhood in a village, every morning used to start off with a bike ride to Multan Road, which was 4 kilometers away from the village. From there, it was a journey spanning over 15 kilometers to school. However, in pursuit of the academic goals I had set for myself, with the foundational support of my family allowing me to stand taller and stronger, I refused to simply become a by-product of my circumstances, and instead strived to make the most out of them. In 2007, I underwent open heart surgery at the age of 12 at the Punjab Institute of Cardiology in Lahore, the post-surgical implications of which are generally strenuous to bear. As a result, I skipped the 6th and 7th grades after my surgery, reentering the education system in the 8th grade.

In all my struggles, my paternal uncle helped me a lot and always encouraged me to do my best regardless, and so I made my way into COMSATS, Vehari Campus, pursuing a bachelor’s in Computer Sciences. At the time, Android development was catching onto the market, and being an Android user myself, I looked over my options and decided that it would be viable to pursue a degree on this engineering front.

After my degree, I moved to Islamabad in search of job opportunities and landed one soon enough. I worked there for 2 years, and eventually got an offer from another organization. I found the working environment at the company not best suited to what I was looking for, and hence, when I was approached by Emerald Labs, I jumped at the chance for a change of pace for the better. It was an added bonus that my uncle, who had been very supportive of my academic pursuits, also happened to live in Lahore. With all these factors combined, I accepted the offer from Emerald Labs, hoping to find a better fit for myself here, and am happy to say that I did.

I have been here for 7 months and see a reflection of the support and encouragement my family gave me throughout my academic tenure in the attitude of my colleagues at Emerald Labs.