CTO · Tech Lead · Full-Stack Engineer

Building WordPress products, SaaS platforms, and developer tooling — at scale.

I'm Md. Mahbub Rabbani, a senior engineer based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Currently CTO at weLabs and Dokan Plugins Tech Lead at weDevs. I've spent the last decade designing systems, leading teams, and shipping products in PHP/Laravel, WordPress, TypeScript/React, and Flutter — from open-source plugins used by thousands of stores to private SaaS platforms.

634
Merged PRs across ~80 repos
282
Code reviews authored in 2025
1,300+
Lifetime commits since 2013
11
Orgs: WordPress, e-com, SaaS, health
About

A decade of building, leading, and reviewing code

From an Analytics Executive role in 2014 to a CTO seat today — by way of WordPress products, healthcare platforms, and a multivendor marketplace used worldwide.

I started my career as an analytics executive and Android developer, then moved into web engineering with Laravel and WordPress at weDevs in 2015. Over the next decade I worked across travel-tech (Shohoz.com), healthcare (Enzaime's pharmacy + HMS suite, Rx71Health), and the WordPress plugin ecosystem — eventually taking on technical leadership for the Dokan multivendor plugin and stepping into the CTO role at weLabs.

My work today centers on three threads: leading the Dokan plugin family — a multivendor WordPress ecosystem powering 60,000+ marketplaces — through major releases like V4.0, modernizing its admin/vendor panels from jQuery+Vue to React, and integrating payment gateways and analytics. Alongside that I build the cross-plugin plugin-ui component library and explore how the Model Context Protocol can bring AI agents into the WordPress world via my mcp-site-manager project.

I care about code that other engineers can extend — extensibility hooks, SOLID boundaries, schema-driven UIs, and CI that catches regressions before they ship. In 2025 alone, I authored 282 code reviews on the Dokan product line, which is the part of the job I find most rewarding.

Experience

Career timeline

From analytics executive to CTO — a decade of progressively larger technical responsibility.

Mar 2024 — Present

Dokan Plugins Tech Lead

Leading the Dokan plugin family (multivendor marketplace, 285★). Driving Tailwind v4 migration, Playwright E2E pipeline, schema-driven settings UI, and reviewer-of-record for the plugin team.

Mar 2023 — Present

Chief Technology Officer

Overall technology leadership — architecture, hiring, cloud (GCP/AWS/DO), and delivery across the agency's client and product portfolio.

Jan 2021 — Feb 2023

Team Lead

Led a cross-functional team delivering WordPress plugins, Laravel APIs, and bespoke client platforms (Studilog, Gearo Booking, ShipMyPlants, and others).

Nov 2017 — Dec 2020

Senior Software Engineer

Pharmacy management, hospital management system, and a 29-screen Flutter PMS mobile app covering auth, POS, inventory, and reports.

Mar 2017 — Oct 2017

Software Engineer

Platform upgrades, refactors, and new-feature development on Bangladesh's leading online travel service (Laravel, MySQL, Couchbase, AWS).

Jan 2015 — Feb 2017

Software Engineer

WordPress plugin engineering and Laravel product work — including Rx71Health (Slush 2016 selection from Bangladesh) and an internal Hospital Management System.

Jan 2014 — Dec 2014

Analytics Executive

Built scripting frameworks for survey workflows on Android and desktop (Java/ASP.NET/C#), kicking off the move from analytics into software engineering.

Skills

What I build with

A pragmatic stack that's grown alongside the work — favoring tools that are extensible, well-tested, and easy for a team to inherit.

Languages

PHP TypeScript JavaScript Dart Java C# C / C++ SQL

Frameworks & runtimes

Laravel WordPress WooCommerce React Vue Flutter Node.js ASP.NET Tailwind v4

Testing & tooling

Playwright PHPUnit Storybook ESLint GitHub Actions Composer npm / pnpm

Cloud & infrastructure

Google Cloud AWS DigitalOcean nginx Apache Redis Memcached

Data

MySQL PostgreSQL SQL Server SQLite Couchbase REST SOAP

Emerging interests

Model Context Protocol WordPress Abilities API Schema-driven UI AI-assisted code review
Engineering leadership

Selected Dokan case studies

Five projects that show how I lead releases, modernize legacy codebases, and ship cross-system features in the Dokan multivendor WordPress ecosystem — powering 60,000+ marketplaces.

Dokan V4.0 — Major Version Release

Release lead · 18+ modules
QA matrix · 14 modulesBackward-compatible commission

Problem. A major version bump required coordinating breaking changes, a new brand color, redesigned onboarding, refactored emails, a React-based admin/vendor panel, and full backward-compatible commission calculation — without breaking sites already live in production.

What I did.

  • Defined the release tracker, version-bump strategy, and changelog.
  • Drove the V4 manual-testing program covering Withdraw, Coupon, RMA, Staff, Store SEO, Shipping, Vendor & Product Subscription, Announcement, Admin/Vendor Analytics, Admin Onboarding, Manual Order Creation, Commission backward-compatibility, Dokan Intelligence AI, and the new brand color.
  • Maintained the V4 bug tracker and resolved release-blockers across documentation, modals, dummy-data imports, and help-center URLs.
  • Removed deprecated code paths ahead of the cut.

Impact. Shipped V4.0 to production with a coordinated test matrix across 18+ modules. The release-engineering pattern I established (sub-issues per module, "Awaiting QA" labels, parent tracker) is now reused for every minor release — including Dokan 4.2.0.

Release engineeringPHPReact/TSQA process

React Migration of a Legacy WordPress Plugin Frontend

Architect & implementer
5 vendor modules migratedDokan Data Store

Problem. Dokan's vendor and admin panels were a tangle of jQuery, Vue, and templated PHP — global mutation, inconsistent state management, slow module rollout, hard to test.

What I did.

  • Built the Dokan Data Store and a React HOC library — the foundation every subsequent module reused.
  • Established API development guidelines and frontend slot-fill / filter standards so other engineers could ship consistently.
  • Migrated five vendor-panel modules end-to-end — Announcement, Store SEO, Product Subscription, Shipping, Staff — plus Vendor Dashboard Withdraw.
  • Shipped the React-based Admin Panel Header and unified admin dashboard structure.
  • Removed global mutation by routing everything through Dokan Modal.

Impact. The vendor panel went from "every module its own jQuery snowflake" to a consistent React app with a shared data layer. Module rollout time dropped meaningfully and the patterns set here are still being followed.

ReactTypeScriptSlot-fillREST APIs

Marketplace Analytics & Admin Dashboard

Backend architect
Query optimizationAnalytics RFC

Problem. The admin dashboard was slow and the analytics reports were wrong. WooCommerce's analytics tables (wc_order_stats, wc_order_product_lookup) double-counted Dokan suborders and their refunds, inflating GMV. Marketplace operators couldn't trust the numbers.

What I did.

  • Shipped optimized queries & APIs for the new admin dashboard: Monthly Overview, TODO Section, Customer Metrics, All-Time Marketplace Stats, Top Performing Vendor, Most Reviewed Product.
  • Built the implementation plan, component layer, and WC Admin Analytics ↔ Dokan compatibility.
  • Authored a seller-analytics RFC proposing a new dokan_order_stats table that mirrors WC's schema but adds seller_id and is_suborder — cleanly separating seller earning, gateway fees, discounts, admin commission, and admin subsidy (when an admin-funded discount exceeds the commission, e.g. a $20 discount on a $100 product at 10% commission means the marketplace eats $10).

Impact. Admin dashboard load improved; the operator-facing "all-time marketplace stats" widget exists today because of this work. The seller-analytics RFC sets up the next phase of fixing analytics correctness at the data-warehouse layer.

MySQLQuery optimizationRFC / designWooCommerce

Payment Gateway Integrations — Paystack & Stripe Express

Full-stack owner
Paystack: shippedStripe ExpressVendor Subscription RFC

Problem. Marketplace payment gateways aren't just "process the card." You're splitting funds between admin and vendors, handling per-vendor onboarding, supporting refunds (which redistribute commission backward), and surviving webhook retries that must be idempotent.

What I did — Paystack (shipped end-to-end).

  • Vendor onboarding via Paystack sub-accounts.
  • Make-payment with multi-party split.
  • Refund logic that correctly reverses commission.
  • Webhook handler for async settlement events.

Stripe Express. Integration with WC Stripe; refactored emails for Stripe / Stripe Express; resolved guest-checkout PHP warnings.

Vendor Subscription module RFC (open). Designed the next-gen module covering switching (upgrade/downgrade with returnable amounts), renewal with grace periods, cancellation with trial-period handling, and extension offers — including a worked example of grace-period overlap when one subscription fails and the vendor subscribes to a different plan.

Impact. Paystack is in production powering African-market vendors. The subscription RFC codifies edge cases nobody had written down — switching, grace periods, cancellation timing — into a single design that handles credit cards as a first-class payment method.

PHPPaymentsWebhooksRFC / design

Multilingual Push Notification System

System designer · WP → Flutter via OneSignal
100K+ devices< 10s e2e latency target

Problem. The Dokan mobile app needs push notifications driven by WordPress events (new order, low stock, refund, announcement) — delivered in the user's preferred language across 100K+ devices, with reliable delivery and no synchronous coupling to the WP request lifecycle.

What I did. Authored a full feature spec broken into 6 implementation sub-issues so the team could parallelize:

  • WordPress Plugin Core — hook integration & OneSignal API client.
  • Multilingual content handling via WPML — translations resolved server-side.
  • User segmentation & targeting — role, location, content-type filters.
  • Flutter app integration — OneSignal SDK, lifecycle, deep linking.
  • Notification management & admin UI.
  • Non-functional requirements.

Notable design decisions.

  • End-to-end latency target < 10s (WP hook → device), with < 500ms WP-side budget.
  • No synchronous OneSignal calls from WP hooks — everything goes through Action Scheduler, so request threads stay fast and notifications retry independently.
  • Retry policy: exponential backoff at 1s / 4s / 16s (3 retries), then dead-letter logging.
  • Scale strategy: at 100K+ users, fan-out happens inside OneSignal segments — never iterate users in PHP.
  • Security: REST API key in a wp-config.php constant (not wp_options), HTTPS only, XSS-sanitized payloads, manage_options capability checks, rate-limited manual sends.

Impact. This is the design document the implementation team is now building from. The decomposition (6 parallelizable sub-issues with explicit interfaces) is the same pattern I use for every multi-engineer feature.

PHPFlutterOneSignalWPMLAction Scheduler

Supporting work — patterns across these case studies

Email system refactor

~20 email subsystems consolidated under one structure, including the Stripe / Stripe Express email refactor as part of the V4.0 cut.

Coupon system, 4-phase delivery

Analysis → Distribution → Refund redistribution → Test coverage → Phased rollout (Distribution / Validation / Commission / Analytics).

Vendor Support module

End-to-end ownership — DB schema + datastore, REST CRUD for tickets & replies, Action Scheduler integration, frontend, email notifications.

JWT license verification

Designed and shipped the JWT-based license check for the Dokan mobile app, with an open follow-up to harden the rotation flow.

PSR-11 service container RFC

Proposed replacing Dokan's array-based container with a real DI container — compared extending WC's ExtendedContainer, a custom Hookable-interface container, and League Container.

CI/CD & test enablement

PHP test cases enabling Dokan-lite CI/CD, plus the Playwright E2E pipeline as the default for the plugin family.

How to read these case studies

The same pattern shows up across all five:

  1. Analyze first. Every major piece starts with a written analysis or RFC issue before code is written.
  2. Decompose into independent sub-issues. Reviewers can verify scope by counting sub-issues; engineers can parallelize because the interfaces are explicit.
  3. Ship vertically. Each module gets DB → API → frontend → tests → email/notification → docs, owned by one person end-to-end.
  4. Codify the pattern. After the first one ships, the same structure becomes the template for the next release.
Other selected work

Open source, side projects, and earlier flagship work

Libraries I author, tools I build for fun, and the platforms I shipped on the way here.

getdokan/plugin-ui

Open source · Designer/Author
15 merged PRsStorybook · CI

A reusable React + TypeScript component library that powers schema-driven settings UIs across multiple WordPress plugins. Plugin teams ship admin UIs without writing UI code; the library bundles shadcn sidebar primitives, a WP Media upload field, and other WP-specific bridges.

ReactTypeScriptTailwindStorybook

getdokan/texty

Open source · Refactor lead
★ 1121 new extensibility hooks

WordPress SMS notification plugin. Deep refactor: 21 new extensibility hooks, untangled SOLID violations between gateway/formatter/dispatcher, modernized the Node/PHP toolchain, and migrated the settings UI to plugin-ui.

PHPWordPressSOLIDplugin-ui

mrabbani/mcp-site-manager

Open source · Author
MCP serverWP Plugin Check: 0/0

An MCP server that lets AI agents manage WordPress sites by speaking the official WordPress/abilities-api (209★). Contributed upstream while building the consumer; passed the WordPress.org Plugin Check with zero errors and zero warnings.

MCPWordPressPHPREST

welabs-ltd/azure-scout

Open source · Author
Laravel packageAzure AI Search driver

An open-source Laravel Scout engine for Azure AI Search — drop-in driver enabling Laravel apps to power full-text search via Azure. Implements the Scout engine contract end-to-end: indexing, search, pagination, filters.

LaravelAzureScoutPHP

Enzaime PMS Mobile

Closed source · Ship lead
29 screensFlutter

A Flutter mobile app for Enzaime's Pharmacy Management System — auth, point-of-sale, inventory, reports — built end-to-end alongside the PHP backend. Designed the offline-first data model so POS workflows survive intermittent connectivity, and set the architectural pattern (state management, repository layer) for the wider Enzaime mobile portfolio.

FlutterDartLaravelREST

virtunus — Personal Resource Planner SaaS

Closed source · Solo end-to-end
tips-api: 118 PRsapi · web · auth

A personal resource planner SaaS where I own the full stack — API, web, and auth services — across 9 repos. The auth-api / api-app / web split lets each service scale and deploy independently; tips-api is the highest-velocity codebase in my portfolio (118 merged PRs).

LaravelReactRESTSaaS

Rx71Health

Earlier · weDevs
Slush 2016 selectionLaravel · VueJS · Ionic

Bangladesh's first complete health-assistant app — selected for the Slush Event 2016 from Bangladesh. Owned database design, architecture, coding, testing, and deployment. Stack: Laravel + jQuery + VueJS + MySQL + Memcached + Redis + IonicJS.

LaravelVueJSIonicJSRedis

Shohoz.com

Earlier · Shohoj Ltd
Travel · Laravel · Couchbase · AWS

Bangladesh's premium online travel service. Platform upgrades, module refactors, and new-feature delivery during a fast-growth period. Stack: Laravel (PHP), jQuery, MySQL, Couchbase, AWS.

LaravelCouchbaseAWSMySQL
GitHub footprint

Contributions by the numbers

A snapshot of public GitHub activity across ~80 repositories and 11 organizations.

YearCommitsPRs authoredPRs reviewed
20263034239
202525668282
20241582871

Organizations I've shipped with

getdokan

Multivendor marketplace product line · primary footprint
dokan 52dokan-pro 26storegrowth 21plugin-ui 15

Tech lead role — Tailwind v4, schema-driven settings, custom-table architecture for upsell/BOGO, CI/Storybook scaffolding, Playwright E2E.

virtunus

Personal Resource Planner SaaS · end-to-end ownership
tips-api 118todo-api 27tips-web 15

API, web, and auth services for a planning SaaS — 9 repos, fully owned.

welabs-ltd

Agency & product engineering
gearo-booking 43studilog 33shipmyplants 21

WordPress plugin work, Laravel product work, and bespoke client platforms; authored azure-scout.

enzaime

Healthcare · pharmacy & HMS
pharmacy 19hms 9PMS mobile

Pharmacy management, hospital management system, and the 29-screen Flutter PMS mobile app.

wp-erp & weDevsOfficial

Early-career WordPress products
wp-erp 7erp-pro 7wp-project-manager 3

WP HRM, accounting, CRM, and project-management features in the foundational years.

Upstream & personal OSS

Selected non-org repos
mcp-site-manager 3abilities-api 1Appsero/client 2

Upstream fixes to Mozart-compat namespacing in Appsero/client; contributor + integrator on WordPress/abilities-api.

Education & programming

Where the foundations were laid

Algorithms and CS fundamentals at Rajshahi University — and a few competitive-programming detours along the way.

B.Sc. (Hons), Computer Science & Engineering

Rajshahi University · 2008 — 2012 · CGPA 3.41 / 4.00

Core CS curriculum: algorithms, OS, databases, networking, compilers. Active in inter-university programming contests.

Competitive programming

Selected highlights

Champion at the Departmental Programming Contest 2011 (Rajshahi University); participant at SUST CSE Carnival, Daffodil Pre-ACM, and the ACM Contest at North South University (all 2011).

Let's build something together

I'm always up for a conversation about WordPress products, AI-assisted developer tooling, or technical leadership. The fastest way to reach me is email.