Saif Shines

Saif Ali Shaik

Two time founding developer advocate and developer tools builder with 7+ years of experience shipping CLIs, plugins, API workflows, documentation systems, and automation for developers.

saif.shines@hey.com linkedin.com/in/saif-shines world.hey.com/saif.shines

Experience

Founding Developer Advocate

Jul 2024 – Present
Scalekit · Bengaluru
  • Primary owner of docs.scalekit.com end-to-end — auth, infrastructure, content, and deployment cycles. Built on Astro Starlight + Netlify.
  • Stay in sync with product managers to ensure docs reflect the most up-to-date features. Observe, measure, and act through PostHog analytics.
  • Act as a consultant to engineering on taxonomy, terminology, and API interfaces including request/response structure design.
  • Consultant to marketing — bridge semi-technical activities such as building pages, devising illustrations, listing Scalekit on repositories, and authoring content for inbound and bottom-up efforts.
  • Build and maintain developer tools: CLI tools and AI agent plugins (Scalekit marketplace plugin for Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, and Cursor).
  • Authored the Scalekit CLI and thoughtfully authored tools for the Scalekit MCP Server — paying attention to developer journey rather than simply wrapping the OpenAPI spec.
  • Build ecosystem presence with open-source repos and 3rd-party integrations, e.g. Scalekit on Astro Docs.

Senior Developer Advocate

Apr 2023 – Jul 2024
Freshworks · Bengaluru
  • Architected a modular approach for Global Apps, enabling developers to author code once and deploy across multiple Freshworks ecosystem products.
  • Designed and implemented modular code interfaces in JavaScript to enable developers to test locally and deploy seamlessly to production.
  • Coordinated with technical writing, engineering, design, and marketing to unify developer documentation and streamline platform UX on developers.freshworks.com.
  • Published technical insights and practical examples through blog posts, driving adoption of genAI libraries in JavaScript projects.

Senior Developer Advocate

Apr 2021 – Apr 2023
Freshworks · Bengaluru
  • Designed and launched a new serverless event for Freshworks Developers, simplifying app lifecycle management based on insights from 8 user research interviews.
  • Upgraded Freshworks SDK with new UX features to CLI, ensuring 90%+ code coverage. Released to the community via Jenkins CI as v8.0.
  • Built integrations between Orbit, Discourse, Calendly, and internal ticketing systems to measure developer engagement and monthly active developers.
  • Hired and mentored 3 new advocates. Set up an internal advocacy program with a translation layer to product and engineering teams.
  • Devised self-serve certification programs, certifying 40 developers in 6 weeks. Reduced 35 support tickets monthly by automating ticket routing across 3 business units.

Founding Developer Advocate

Jan 2019 – Apr 2021
Freshworks · Chennai
  • Established community.freshworks.dev, growing organically to 3,500+ developers in 3 years.
  • Attracted attention to Freshworks' OSS story via Hacktoberfest — 25 contributors in 2019, 64 in 2020, 43 PRs closed.
  • Reimagined sample app discovery, revising 35+ apps. Authored 18 tutorials and 10 Wiki articles to scale 1-to-many enablement.
  • Dedicated 60 minutes daily to the community, closing 35+ topics monthly. Migrated top 15 apps from Freshsales Classic to Suite with critical migration guides.
  • Conducted internal hackathons (Appathons) engaging 45+ teams each time to build and publish apps to Freshworks Marketplace.

Student Experience Intern

Sep 2018 – Dec 2018
Udacity · New Delhi
  • Led the Google India Scholars Community for 1,000+ students, achieving a 50% graduation rate through scalable event strategies and data metrics.
  • Championed a scalable mentorship initiative, pairing students with industry professionals.

Involvement

Creator of Hacksmith CLI

Sep 2025 – Nov 2025
Scalekit
  • Accelerated engineering productivity by automating complex setup and integration tasks through guided workflows called blueprints.
  • Evolved the blueprint concept into plugins for Claude Code, Cursor, and Copilot CLIs.
  • Published as open-source on npm. Won 3rd place at the You.com Agentic Hackathon 2025.

Lead, Google Developer Student Clubs

Aug 2017 – Dec 2018
Sathyabama University · Chennai
  • Trained 550+ students in Android Studio through hands-on workshops.
  • Enabled the college to be selected as one of 185 clubs from 2,000+ student clubs across India.

Student Partner

Aug 2017 – Dec 2018
Microsoft
  • Developed session materials and coordinated campus workshops focused on emerging software platforms.

Dell Campassador

Oct 2017 – Jun 2018
Dell
  • Ranked All India Top #4 across all competing colleges in the Dell Campus Ambassador program.

Education

Bachelor of Engineering: Computer Science

Sathyabama Institute of Science & Technology, Chennai · 2015 – 2019 · Grade: 85%

Accomplishments

  • Distinguished Alumni Awardee (2023), Sathyabama University
  • Certificate of Achievement for Outstanding Team Collaboration & Agility through accountability with ownership, Freshworks
  • Star of Excellence Awardee (2015–2019), Sathyabama University
  • Dell Campus Ambassador Program — All India Rank #4

Skills

JavaScriptNode.jsTypeScriptPythonBuilding CLIsAstroAuth & SSOAPI DocumentationClaude Code PluginsDeveloper ToolsGitBunYarnPostHog