Fahim Montasir — Technical Product Manager & AI Developer in Dhaka

What I do

I work as a Technical Product Manager and AI Developer for clients who need someone who can both write the PRD and ship the code. Most engagements fall into one of three buckets: fractional Technical PM for early-stage SaaS startups that need senior product leadership without a full-time hire; rapid MVP development for founders who want a working product in front of users in two to four weeks; and AI integration engineering for established teams adding LLM features to existing products.

The combination is unusual. Most Technical PMs stop at the PRD. Most AI developers stop at the API call. I do both because I have to — early-stage products move too fast for clean handoffs, and the founders I work with need partners, not specialists.

On the engineering side I default to Python with FastAPI for backends, React and Next.js for frontends, PostgreSQL for data, and Gemini, OpenAI, or Claude for any AI work. The stack is opinionated and battle-tested across thirty-plus shipped projects.

How I got here

My background is industrial engineering — not computer science. I graduated from the Military Institute of Science and Technology (MIST) in Dhaka, where the curriculum focused on systems thinking, process optimisation, and operations research rather than software development. That foundation turned out to be a quiet advantage.

Industrial engineers are trained to look at a problem and ask "what is the bottleneck?" before writing a single line of code. That mindset translates directly to product management — most product problems are systems problems, not feature problems. When a SaaS dashboard is slow to use, it is rarely a UI bug; it is usually a data pipeline issue, a notification flow that does not match user behaviour, or a workflow that fights the user instead of supporting them.

I picked up software development on the side — first Python for analytics, then React, then full-stack work as the projects demanded it. By the time I joined CTFN, a US-based mergers-and-acquisitions intelligence firm, I was already running data pipelines and building internal tools alongside the analyst work. The PM role grew naturally from there: someone had to own the roadmap, write the specs, and translate between business stakeholders and engineering. I did, and I have not stopped since.

Today I split my time between the CTFN engagement, fractional PM work for international agencies, and full-stack delivery for selected B2B SaaS founders. Recent projects include the RideX Cumilla dealership platform, a Bangladesh income tax calculator, the Apex OS HealthTech MVP, and a Streamlit-based warehouse digital twin.

Who I work with

Most of my engagements come from three audiences. The first is early-stage SaaS founders who have raised pre-seed or seed funding and need senior product leadership before they can justify a full-time PM hire. They typically have a strong technical co-founder and a fuzzy product vision; my job is to convert the vision into a roadmap, run delivery, and keep engineering velocity high without burning the team out.

The second audience is international agencies — typically US, UK, or EU-based — that win client work faster than they can staff it. They engage me to act as the embedded PM and senior technical lead for a specific client account. The work is fast-paced and varied, and the bar is high because the agency's reputation is on the line.

The third is established B2B teams adding AI features for the first time. They have a product, customers, and revenue, but no in-house AI experience. I help them scope the feature, pick the right model, build the integration, and ship it without breaking the rest of the product.

How I work

I am based in Dhaka, Bangladesh (GMT+6) and work remotely with clients across the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, and APAC. The time-zone overlap with US clients runs from early morning my time, EU clients from late morning to early evening, and APAC clients across most of the working day. I keep flexible hours and run weekly sync windows that cover most major time zones.

Engagements are scoped per outcome rather than per hour. Fractional Technical PM retainers run 10 to 20 hours per week with a 3-month minimum. MVP delivery projects are quoted as fixed-fee deliverables — a working product at a public URL, scoped to ship in 2 to 6 weeks. AI integration engagements are typically 6 to 12 weeks depending on complexity.

The first 30 minutes is always free. We get on a call, you describe what you are building or stuck on, and we figure out together whether the engagement makes sense before any money changes hands.

The Bangladesh tech context

Bangladesh has a deep, often-overlooked pool of senior product and engineering talent. The country graduates tens of thousands of engineers every year from MIST, BUET, NSU, and other strong programs, and a meaningful slice of them have spent the last decade working remotely for US and EU clients on serious software. The combination of strong technical training, English fluency, and a workable time-zone overlap with both EU and APAC makes Bangladesh-based PMs a strong fit for distributed teams.

The local product ecosystem is also growing fast — Pathao, ShopUp, Chaldal, and others have produced senior PMs and engineers who now consult globally. I am part of that broader shift, and I work hard to represent it well.

What I value

I care about products that get used, not products that look good in slide decks. Most of the work in this job is unglamorous — writing specs that engineers can actually act on, sitting in calls until a stakeholder commits to a decision, removing scope before adding it, and keeping the team focused on the next two weeks instead of the next twelve months.

If you want a partner who will write your PRDs, ship your MVP, integrate your AI features, and tell you the truth about what is actually working — I am probably your person.