A Dealer Network Multiplies a Sale. It Can't Create One.
For 3 years I was the seam between an IoT hardware product, 70+ dealers, and the clients. Booth to training to commissioning to support call.
I ship complex technology into the real world.
I'm Waheed Zarif — a PMP-certified engineer-operator with 14 years turning hardware-meets-software products into deployed, adopted, dependable reality. I work where most people don't: the seam between the physical (IoT, sensors, building systems), the digital (cloud, SaaS, and hands-on AI), and the customer.
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For 3 years I was the seam between an IoT hardware product, 70+ dealers, and the clients. Booth to training to commissioning to support call.
The customer's sign-off tells you what they intend. Their infrastructure tells you what's true. Build for the second one.
I spent the past year building an AI tool for compliance and risk teams — largely solo, from the AWS infrastructure to the retrieval pipeline.
In the age of AI and geopolitical instability (tariffs), traditional risk management needs to evolve and adopt agile processes.

My career started at the intersection of hard science and commercial reality. At Celdara Medical, a biotech incubator, I learned to translate complex, high-stakes concepts — CAR-T immunotherapy, CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing — into viable products inside a tightly regulated R&D environment, including authoring the risk framework for a $490M partnership.
That discipline became the foundation for the rest of my career: taking complex, integrated systems from concept all the way to the field. Over a decade at Delos Living, I did exactly that for a portfolio of wellness IoT and PropTech products — designing sensor systems, commissioning them across thousands of real installations, enabling a national dealer channel, and ultimately guiding a product line through a disciplined end-of-life transition. I've deployed technology everywhere from luxury homes to 100 public school districts to US military housing — usually where failure isn't an option.
More recently, I went hands-on with the modern stack. I built and launched Egret AI — a RAG-powered compliance SaaS — entirely myself: AWS infrastructure as code, a full-stack application, and integrations across 20+ language-model APIs. I did it to stay genuinely fluent in the technology I lead, not just fluent about it.
What I do best: make the hard, last-mile part of technology actually work — the deployment, the integration, the customer adoption, the enablement that turns a product into something people rely on and pay for. I'm equally at home owning a field rollout, running a technical sale, or whiteboarding a system architecture.
I'm drawn to IoT and PropTech, applied AI (especially for regulated industries), and mission-critical and defense technology — domains where reliability, rigor, and the ability to bridge the digital and physical actually matter.
My core expertise lies in:
Vice President — Wellness Technology, Deployment & Lifecycle
Delos Living LLC, Los Angeles, CA
2020 - Present
I lead the technical last mile across Delos's IoT/PropTech portfolio. I directed the deployment of 2,400+ networked sensors across 100 school districts and on-site programs for US military housing, served as technical-sales lead for a 70+ dealer channel, and executed a product line's end-of-life transition with zero critical customer escalations. I helped manage a ~$4M program portfolio and coordinated distributed engineering teams across the US and India.
Senior Director & Director — Program Management & Deployment
Delos Living LLC, New York, NY
2015 - 2020
I progressed through roles of increasing scope: driving development of the DARWIN™ integrated hardware/software platform, building a global hardware supply chain (China, Canada, Netherlands), commissioning the platform across 40+ properties with Crestron and Lutron integrations, and mentoring a team that grew from 3 to 10.
Founder & Lead Technical Architect
Egret AI, Los Angeles, CA
2025 - Present
I solo-built and launched a B2B SaaS platform delivering RAG-powered compliance advisory for regulated industries — architecting a secure multi-tenant AWS environment via Terraform, a Next.js + Django full stack, and a retrieval pipeline integrating 20+ LLM APIs with zero model-training data exposure.
Co-Founder & Principal
Nexis Management, Los Angeles, CA
2024 - Present
I provide product-discovery and program-architecture services — including leading 0-to-1 discovery for an international client's enterprise SaaS platform, authoring the PRD and navigating cross-border data-sovereignty compliance.
Research Scientist
Celdara Medical, Lebanon, NH
2012 - 2015
I conducted hands-on R&D in a highly regulated biotech environment — advancing CAR-T and CRISPR/Cas9 therapeutic work, authoring the risk-monitoring framework for a $490M partnership, and running due diligence on 20+ early-stage assets.
Bachelor of Engineering, Biotech Engineering
Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College
2011 - 2012
Bachelor of Arts, Engineering Sciences
Dartmouth College
2007 - 2011
International Baccalaureate
UWC - USA
2005 - 2007
Certifications
PMP (Project Management Institute, 2024)
DevOps Deployment Automation: Terraform/AWS/Docker (2022)
Python for Data Science (2019)
WELL AP (2017)
Lean Six Sigma Green Belt (2012)
Large-scale, regulated deployments from design through commissioning, integration, and adoption.
AWS, Terraform, full-stack (Next.js/Django), applied AI (RAG/LLMs), IoT & systems integration.
Turning complex technology into value for customers, channel partners, and executives.
Working across product, engineering, operations, and deployment teams.
PMP-certified; complex, cross-border, full-lifecycle delivery with a risk-first mindset.
Cultivating and negotiating with partners, vendors, and corporate clients
I write about the things I work in and think about — applied AI and machine learning, program and risk management, and the occasional bit of math I find beautiful. It's where I keep my hands (and head) in the technical details.
For 3 years I was the seam between an IoT hardware product, 70+ dealers, and the clients. Booth to training to commissioning to support call.
The customer's sign-off tells you what they intend. Their infrastructure tells you what's true. Build for the second one.
I spent the past year building an AI tool for compliance and risk teams — largely solo, from the AWS infrastructure to the retrieval pipeline.
In the age of AI and geopolitical instability (tariffs), traditional risk management needs to evolve and adopt agile processes.