Hi, I’m Ali.

Senior Developer Advocate
Pieces

I teach APIs and AI, and build tools of my own.

I began as a freelance trainer, teaching in college classrooms and company workshops. That work led me to developer education at Postman and now Pieces, where I help developers put AI to work.

Mumbai is home.
San Francisco is a second base.

My teaching background
Illustrated portrait of Ali Mustufa Shaikh holding a terracotta microphone.

2015–2021

Freelance training

Starting with teaching

As a freelance trainer, I travelled to teach at 180 colleges across 38 cities, in India and beyond.

I also delivered Google Cloud training for engineers at companies including Rakuten, Infosys, Deloitte, Intel and Booking.com. Those sessions shaped how I teach: people learn more when they have something to try, time to work through it and room to ask questions.

Ali Mustufa Shaikh delivering the IEEE Day keynote at Pillai College, gesturing in front of a projected slide.
IEEE Day · Pillai College

IEEE Day keynote

An early keynote at Pillai College, during my years travelling between college halls and training rooms.

Dec 2020–Oct 2024

Postman

API education at Postman

I joined Postman as a founding member of the Student Programs team. Together, we grew the program to 200,000 registered developers. I also founded the Postman Student Leader Program, which went on to develop 420+ Student Leaders worldwide.

I delivered 318 API sessions for enterprises and universities, and my Postman Academy courses received more than a million views. I travelled across the US to Houston, New York City, Detroit, San Francisco and San Jose to train enterprise clients and deliver workshops on advanced API courses and PostBot, Postman’s AI agent.

I wrote the API 101 Kit so community leaders could run their own sessions and keep the program going without depending on me. More than 500 events used it over two years.

I also conceptualised API Day <city> and enabled community leaders to deliver the events in 15+ cities worldwide, directly impacting thousands of developers.

Ali Mustufa Shaikh leading an API workshop at POST/CON 2024 in San Francisco, with workshop attendees pictured below.
POST/CON · San Francisco

An API workshop at POST/CON

A workshop in San Francisco, helping people put APIs into practice. An editor, a question and something to work through together.

Oct 2024–present

Pieces

Working with AI at Pieces

As Senior Developer Advocate at Pieces, I work on GenAI 101 and the Pieces AI Summit. I also started the Pieces of Memory webinar series, which generated high-quality leads.

I’ve delivered 80+ virtual and in-person AI workshops at conferences, covering GenAI in depth. Over 10,000 developers have been taught through GenAI 101. In these sessions, everyone opens an editor, works through the material and has time for questions, including the ones they might hesitate to ask.

I’ve represented Pieces at conferences and workshops in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, Morocco, Las Vegas and Nigeria.

My initiatives brought companies including Disney and Nationwide into Pieces’ enterprise pipeline.

Ali Mustufa Shaikh presenting Mirror with a microphone and laptop on a wood-panelled stage in Istanbul.
Agents & APIs · IstanbulMore recently

Building Mirror

Sharing how I built Mirror with Pieces, Codex and Claude. A personal project became a conversation with other developers.

Read the story about Agents & APIs · Istanbul (opens on LinkedIn in a new tab)

Mumbai’s developer communities

I helped found TensorFlow User Group Mumbai in 2018 and continue as a founding organiser. The community has held more than 50 events. I was also a founding organiser of GDG Cloud Mumbai from 2018 to 2024.

From 2017 to 2019, I worked on Google Crowdsource machine-learning data campaigns across 22 countries. I later spoke about that work in my TEDx talk on crowdsourcing data for machine learning.

Ali Mustufa Shaikh giving the Google Cloud Community Day Mumbai keynote, with community photos behind him.
Google Cloud Community Day · Mumbai

Opening keynote in Mumbai

Delivering the opening keynote in my home city, with the community and the people behind it on the screen.

Workshops & conferences

Speaking & workshops
Ali Mustufa Shaikh holding his mentor trophy at Agentic AI Day in Bengaluru.
Agentic AI Day · Bengaluru

Mentoring at Agentic AI Day

Thirty hours of mentoring: working through Gemini, APIs and agent workflows with teams building something they could demonstrate.

Read the story about Agentic AI Day · Bengaluru (opens on LinkedIn in a new tab)
DevFest Ranchi collage showing the audience, Ali Mustufa Shaikh’s stage selfie and a side-stage view.
DevFest Ranchi · BIT Mesra

Artificial Memory at DevFest

A keynote on Artificial Memory: exploring context, MCP and a voice layer. Then the conversations that happen after the slides end.

Read the story about DevFest Ranchi · BIT Mesra (opens on LinkedIn in a new tab)

Mumbai is home.

San Francisco is a second base. Teaching and community work have taken me to places including Singapore, Seoul, Colombo, New York, Seattle, Istanbul, Dubai and Barcelona.

I tend to remember the people I meet on these trips. The products I build outside work often start with a practical problem I keep coming back to.

Explore my projects

Teaching & recognition

  • IEEE MGA Larry K. Wilson Regional Student Volunteer Award
  • Code in Place Section Leader, teaching Stanford’s introductory programming curriculum
  • Intel Software Innovator
  • Gemini Certified Educator
  • LinkedIn Top Voice
Research on Google Scholar (opens in a new tab)

Colleagues

“A founding member of the Postman Student Programs team and a driving force behind the community taking root at scale. He knows how to hustle smartly to achieve seemingly impossible goals.”

Claire FroelichStudent Programs Manager, Postman

“An amazing community builder. His passion for inclusion in Machine Learning reflected in his talks about Google Crowdsource, from college auditoriums to the TEDx stage.”

Anurag BatraGroup Product Manager, Google

“Ali and his team believed in the brand and took up projects as their own babies. I appreciated their hard work building the community from ground zero.”

Reshma SanghviCommunity Manager, Google