Sajjad leads engineering and growth at Development Seed. He plays a cross-functional role across engineering, partnerships, and strategic operations to develop technical vision for our partners, build geospatial data tools, and support our team. Sajjad cares deeply about the impact open tools and data have on governance and development.

Sajjad has been a key contributor to Development Seed’s most innovative projects. He has led the development of tools like PEARL, a human-in-the-loop AI application for land cover mapping, and collaborated with partners to explore downstream applications for geospatial foundation models. His expertise has also shaped the technical vision behind eoAPI and advanced the use of Jupyter for geospatial data science. Over the years, Sajjad has built strong relationships with long-standing partners such as The Nature Conservancy and World Bank, reinforcing his commitment to creating open, impactful solutions. His dedication to open data is also evident in his active involvement in OpenStreetMap and Overture.

Previously Sajjad helped build Mapbox's data team and led products for mapping and validation. Sajjad has experience building platforms for natural resources monitoring and data infrastructure for large scale accountability initiatives.

He is based in Bangalore and is actively involved in the open data movement in India. He helped with initiatives like DataMeet, and GeoBLR to grow the local community. In his free time, Sajjad is usually testing a new coffee recipe or hosting a popup.