Founder profile
Muhammad Usman Akbar
Founder of Hire Unicorn Developers and principal engineer at FISTA Solutions.
Muhammad Usman Akbar is the founder of Hire Unicorn Developers and a principal engineer at FISTA Solutions. He builds AI agent systems with the OpenAI Agents SDK and LiteLLM, leads Forward Deployed Engineering work, and implements EU ESPR-aligned Digital Product Passports. Reach him on +92 301 3949480.
Background
Muhammad Usman Akbar is the founder of Hire Unicorn Developers and a principal engineer at FISTA Solutions. He builds AI agent systems with the OpenAI Agents SDK and LiteLLM, leads Forward Deployed Engineering practice, and works on circular economy software including EU ESPR-aligned Digital Product Passports.
He founded Hire Unicorn Developers after repeatedly seeing the same hiring failure from the inside: companies buying “AI engineers” through generic marketplaces and receiving people who had prototyped with a language model but had never operated one in production. The assessment criteria for that distinction did not exist anywhere, so the platform publishes them.
Areas of expertise
| Area | What that means in practice |
|---|---|
| AI agent engineering | Agent architecture with the OpenAI Agents SDK, tool schema design, guardrails, trajectory evaluation harnesses and cost control. |
| Multi-LLM routing | Model gateway design with LiteLLM: provider failover, caching, per-feature budgets and latency service levels. |
| Retrieval engineering | Hybrid retrieval, chunking strategy, reranking, and groundedness evaluation that catches regressions before deployment. |
| Forward Deployed Engineering | Embedded customer engagements that convert ambiguous enterprise requirements into shipped, production integrations. |
| Digital Product Passports | EU ESPR-aligned implementation: identifier strategy, GS1 Digital Link carriers, JSON-LD data models and tiered access. |
| Supply chain traceability | EPCIS 2.0 event capture and query, W3C Verifiable Credentials and decentralised supplier identity. |
| Technical hiring | Work-sample assessment design, structured interviewing and calibrated scorecards for AI-native roles. |
How to reach him
- Phone: +92 301 3949480
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/muhammad-usmanakbar
- Written brief: the contact page
Frequently asked questions
Who is Muhammad Usman Akbar?
Muhammad Usman Akbar is the founder of Hire Unicorn Developers and a principal engineer at FISTA Solutions. He works on AI agent systems, Forward Deployed Engineering, and circular economy software including EU ESPR-aligned Digital Product Passport implementation.
How can I contact Muhammad Usman Akbar?
By phone on +92 301 3949480, through the contact page on this site, or via LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/muhammad-usmanakbar. Briefs sent through the contact form reach him directly rather than a sales team.
What does Muhammad Usman Akbar specialise in?
Three areas: production AI agent engineering using the OpenAI Agents SDK with LiteLLM model routing; Forward Deployed Engineering for enterprise implementations; and circular economy software, particularly Digital Product Passports under EU Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 and supply chain traceability with EPCIS 2.0.
What is FISTA Solutions?
FISTA Solutions is the company that operates Hire Unicorn Developers. It delivers engineering work directly in the five practice areas listed on this site, which is what allows the platform to assess candidates in those areas credibly rather than generically.
Does Muhammad Usman Akbar write the content on this site?
Yes. Every article on this site carries him as the author entity, and the technical positions taken in them reflect his own engineering practice rather than generic industry commentary.