Hi everyone, First of all, apologies for the long post, but it's required for context.

I am posting this to seek guidance and help regarding my career. I was born and raised in Saudi Arabia and went to Pakistan (my homeland) for bachelor's degree. I am a software engineer (I did my bachelor’s in software engineering) and have around 8-9 years of experience since I left university and started my first job. However, I feel this experience might not be useful or relevant, as I didn’t grow the way one should have in 8 years of work.

Here is some background so you can better understand where I messed up, how I might fix/improve things, and understand who I am, where I should be, and what I should be doing.

I started my first job right after my final year project (I actually got the job before leaving university). I was really good at SQL, databases, Python, and math. My knowledge was fresh, and I was really curious about software and IT, so I self-taught a lot of things (I even learned networking, programming in VB.NET, GW-BASIC/QBasic, and CS & IT concepts before high school). I always enjoyed technical things and was the top student of my university batch, graduating with 93%.

After university, I was offered a job as an ETL/BI developer. It was a great company (now a multinational Data/AI firm) and they offered me a good salary at time when all my colleagues were desperately finding jobs or doing unpaid internships. I learned a lot and was really enjoying the work, but due to my mother's health, I had to leave the job after a few months.

My family (financially stable background) was traveling back and forth between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and then permanently migrated to Pakistan. After a few months, when I was able to work again, I couldn’t get a job, so I started freelancing in data scraping/processing, ETL, Python scripts, bots, etc. I liked Python and developed some skills in it, but since it was just freelancing, I never learned the industry standards, best practices, or how to properly handle things. Still, I was working, delivering and earning well being a beginner.

Then, I got a really big client that needed a custom ERP. I proposed a huge amount and a 1-year timeline (after discussing it with my colleagues), and somehow I was awarded that project. That became the reason I started my own small software house/startup. I hired a team, including senior devs who suggested React.js and .NET as the tech stack. I was not familiar with either, but we started working. The client paid on a weekly basis, so all was good. I was handling resources, finances, servers/DevOps, managing the team, handling new and old client meetings for requirements/deliveries, and trying to get more freelance projects. I got a few more (small custom ERPs, ERPNext/Odoo for small businesses) and we expanded the team to 10 members. I also did some certifications like Agile Project Management and Google Scrum Master because I wanted to improve how I handled projects, clients, teams, and resources.

Long story short, the senior dev handling the project left us in the middle without a notice period, and we didn’t have any documentation. I didn’t have experience in the languages used, so we got a new senior dev who didn’t know what had been done. We were progressing, but not as we should have because we didn’t have the proper corporate flows a software company should follow, mostly because I didn't have prior corporate leadership experience.

Then COVID came, we started working from home, and everything slowly declined and stopped. After around 2.5 years, due to a shortage of funds and clients, I had to close my startup. This covered the first 3-4 years of my career (2018/2019 to early 2022). I worked on multiple languages and technologies like C#/.NET, React.js, and Python (mostly for data/automation), and did some courses from DataCamp/Coursera in Python, SQL, and Data Engineering/Science basics.

After that, I freelanced again for a few months while continuously applying for jobs, and eventually got a remote job at a startup as a Scrum Master (likely due to my project management experience and certifications). I never enjoyed that job because it was a purely non-technical, managerial role—creating tasks in Jira, making presentations, handling Scrum ceremonies, etc. I quit that job after a few months in the middle of 2023.

Again, I was in the same position: no job and no freelance projects. I was newly married and spending few months of vacation. Then, I traveled to Saudi Arabia on a visit visa with my wife and tried to job hunt as well. Luckily, I found a Saudi CEO (non-technical) of a software house looking for someone technical to outsource/handle a big ERPNext project. We had a meeting and shared similar experiences; his startup had also closed during COVID, his tech team left, and he wanted to restart to handle new and ongoing/old projects. Since I wanted to come back to Saudi and it was also a startup and business opportunity, we agreed to start a partnership to build a team and complete the project that I would manage. We were just 2 people when I joined.

It was a hybrid role, and we never agreed on a fixed salary; it was a partnership, but I took whatever he gave me monthly for expenses. I started by handling one project and team, then took on whatever new projects we got (WordPress, custom websites, ERPNext/Odoo implementations, etc.). I was doing multiple things just like in my own startup: I became the technical right-hand of the CEO. He shared all the projects with me so I could give him suggestions, provide solutions for client queries, manage teams/tasks/projects, learn ERPNext for customizations, handle bug fixes/support, develop WordPress sites, and eventually did all the work myself to reduce outsourcing costs.

After 1.5 years, I never got any percentage of the profits, just the expense amount he gave me, because the main project wasn't delivered. We never had a formal written agreement and had become friends. I talked to the CEO about financial improvement, so he fixed a small monthly amount (equivalent to minimum wage). He said the financial situation wasn't good, and I didn't push back because we expected to close some good projects soon (which we never closed). I learned even more during this time: I migrated all their projects from third-party servers to our own in-house servers (self-hosted PaaS), developed multiple MVPs from scratch (some using vibe coding) to deployments with proper CI/CD, GitHub Actions workflows including edge functions, db migrations etc., and set up demo/staging/prod environments for projects I developed. I also successfully managed complex ZATCA Phase 2 E-Invoicing integrations, improving code and resolving few issues made me an Official Contributor to the Frappe/ERPNext core GitHub repository.

Now, after 2.5 years, I talked to him again for a financial promotion, but he still refused. He says he understands my situation but can't afford more, though "things will be better in 4-6 months." Meanwhile, I brought my wife to Saudi a year ago, we now have kids, and it is very difficult to survive on this amount.

Now, I’ve been looking for jobs for months, but nothing feels relevant due to AI, etc. I feel like I’m very far behind today's standards. The things I used to work on do not seem to be worthy and fruitful now. My colleagues that I used to tutor are in very good roles (I'm happy for them) but it brings up a very lost feeling for me. I don’t know which position or role to target (Software Engineer, Tech/Project Manager, Scrum Master, Developer, Data/AI). I don’t know what or who I am anymore or what I should do next. Because I worked on lots of different things, I’m not excellent at any single one. I’m really stuck, confused, and desperately need a job. It’s been really long since my last stable job, and I want a role I can stay in for a long time for my mental health.

As experienced professionals, I am asking for a favor: please guide me and suggest which role I should move towards that is most relevant to me (demanding, high-paying, etc.). This way, I can prepare specifically for that instead of targeting many roles and being generic. I’m still willing to learn for any role. I know how to do things practically but often don't know the specific corporate/technical/buzz terms, names, or processes. I searched for roles I might fit into, but honestly, I don’t understand them. I can't differentiate them or know what the actual responsibilities are (like Sr/Mid Software Engineer, Solutions Architect, DevOps, Systems Engineer, Data/AI Engineer, etc.) or any other Role.

Open and willing to answer any questions in comments, private chat, calls, etc.

To give a better idea, here is what I have used/worked with all that time:

ERP & Business Systems: ERPNext/Frappe (Upgrade, Migration, Custom Apps Development, Customization, Server Setup, Multi-Tenant Deployments, ZATCA E-Invoicing, 3rd Party Integrations, Official Core GitHub Contributor), Odoo ERP, Custom ERPs.

Project Management & Agile: Scrum Master, Agile/Scrum, Kanban, Sprints, Retrospectives, Backlog Refinement/Management, User Story Writing, Stakeholder Management, Resource Allocation, Conflict Resolution, Technical/Client Consultation, Cross-Functional Team Coordination/Leadership, Requirements Engineering, Budget Management, Scrum/Agile, Kanban, Azure, Jira, Trello, Zoho, ClickUp, Confluence

Programming Languages & Frameworks: Python, Frappe, JavaScript, TypeScript, C#/.NET Core, HTML/CSS, PHP, WordPress, Java, React/Angular/Next.js, Flutter.

Databases: DBeaver, MS SSMS, SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, NoSQL, REST APIs, Putty, Swagger.

Data/Python: ETL/BI, Data Pipelines, OCR, OpenCV, Talend, Matplotlib, BeautifulSoup, Scrapy, Pandas, NumPy, TextBlob.

IDEs & AI Tools: VS Code, Cursor, Anti Gravity, Visual Studio, Android Studio, Sublime, PyCharm, Jupyter, OpenAI, Google AI Studio, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Ollama, n8n.

Code/Versioning & DevOps: GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, SourceTree, Linux Server Management, Nginx, Gunicorn, CI/CD, Docker, CapRover, Webmin, cPanel, Coolify, HestiaCP.

Others: Slack, Discord, Figma, Adobe XD, InVision, Balsamiq, SEO, SEA (Google Ads), SMA (Facebook/Instagram Ads).

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Any advice is deeply appreciated.