IB/AL-BANDER

Hello, I'm

Ibrahim Maher
Al-Bander

Social Media Marketer · Accounts & Automation

Based in Erbil, Iraq · growth, numbers, and n8n, done properly

Get in touch See my work → More about me →

I work across three things at once: social media marketing, accounting and inventory operations, and building AI automations with n8n. Most people specialize in one of those. I have spent the last few years getting good at all three, and they feed each other more than you would expect. The reporting instincts I built doing bookkeeping made my marketing numbers sharper. The automation skills I picked up building workflows now save my own team hours every week.

500%+ Facebook page growth delivered
~100% ROI on paid campaigns
3 roles held at once, same company

Career

Experience

What I have actually been doing, day to day, for the last few years.

01

Social Media

Social Media Marketing Specialist

Help Tech Co. Ltd. · Erbil, Iraq Sep 2022 to present

This is the role I am proudest of. I took the company Facebook page from barely active to a page that actually gets people talking, growing it more than 500 percent in the process. I plan and run paid campaigns myself, and the last batch landed close to 100 percent ROI, which for a small company budget is not a small thing to pull off.

I also got tired of digging through Meta's ads manager every week to find decent audience targeting, so I built my own tool that surfaces hidden audience interest data. And since nobody enjoys writing the same KPI report by hand every Monday, I automated our weekly reporting with n8n so the numbers are ready before anyone asks for them.

Content strategy Paid social Meta Ads Audience research KPI reporting
02

Accounting

Accounts & Inventory Officer

Help Tech Co. Ltd. · Erbil, Iraq Oct 2024 to present

I walked into this role with no chart of accounts and no real bookkeeping system in place, so I built one from scratch in QuickBooks. That meant setting up accounts payable and receivable, reconciling everything month over month, and clearing out a backlog that had been sitting untouched for a while. I also designed the inventory workflow the company still uses today, since there was not really one before.

QuickBooks AP / AR Reconciliation Inventory systems
03

Operations

Assistant Sales Manager

Help Tech Co. Ltd. · Erbil, Iraq Jan 2022 to Oct 2024

Before I moved into accounts, I ran the procurement and vendor side of things: requesting quotes, negotiating with suppliers, and handling purchase orders from start to finish. It gave me a full picture of how a small business actually runs behind the scenes, which turned out to be useful for everything I do now.

Procurement Vendor negotiation Purchase orders
04

AI Automation

Freelance AI Automation Developer

Self-employed, n8n workflows Jun 2025 to present

On the side, I build production automation workflows for clients using n8n, connecting things like OpenAI, Claude and Gemini to Google Workspace, Telegram and GoHighLevel. I write custom JavaScript function nodes when the built in ones are not enough, and I always validate against a schema and log everything, because an automation that fails silently is worse than no automation at all. Every workflow I hand off comes documented, so the client is never stuck if I am not around.

n8n OpenAI / Claude / Gemini Google Workspace Telegram bots GoHighLevel
05

Social Media

Social Media Marketing Specialist, Internship

YourVisio Media Dec 2023 to May 2024

My first real taste of agency style social media work. I got hands on experience managing content and campaigns in a faster paced environment than I was used to, which sharpened how I think about strategy before I brought those habits back into my main role.

Content creation Campaign support

Automation

Projects

A few n8n builds I am genuinely proud of, outside of client work.

n8n n8n

Invoice Fraud Firewall

Screens incoming payment emails for vendor and IBAN mismatches and other fraud signals, then holds anything risky for a human to check before money moves. Built with n8n, Gemini, Gmail, Sheets and Telegram.

n8n n8n

AI Lead Intelligence & Auto-Response

Scores inbound leads as hot, warm or cold, routes them accordingly, and sends an automatic first response. Runs on n8n, Gemini, webhooks, Sheets, Telegram and Calendar.

n8n n8n

Multi-Stage Invoice Approval Pipeline

Routes invoices for approval based on amount, keeps a human in the loop at the right stage, and logs the full audit trail. Built with n8n, Gemini, Gmail and Sheets.

n8n n8n

Facebook Audience-Interest Tool

A tool I built out of necessity, to surface hidden Meta targeting data that is normally buried or missing entirely from Ads Manager. It is what sharpened the targeting behind my paid campaigns at Help Tech.

Featured build

DAD LINK: a live e-commerce site for network infrastructure equipment in Iraq

DAD LINK is a fully working B2B online store I designed and launched for a network infrastructure supplier serving Iraq, built around the tagline "Build a Network That Never Fails." It sells certified Cat.6 and Cat.6A structured copper cabling, fiber optic patch cords from OM1 to OS2, server racks and cabinets from 4U to 42U, and HDMI 2.1 cables rated for 8K at 60Hz up to 50 meters, all engineered to ISO/IEC 11801 and TIA-568 standards.

I built the entire site on Odoo, the open source e-commerce and ERP platform, with Claude Code doing most of the heavy lifting: product catalog structure, category pages, on-page SEO, and the storefront layout itself, plus blog content on real installer questions like Wi-Fi 6E versus Wi-Fi 7 cabling requirements, Power over Ethernet variants, and structured cabling installation planning. The result is a real production store, not a demo, built around three pillars the brand leads with: certified quality, infrastructure built to scale, and a local partner network of authorized distributors across Baghdad, Erbil, and Sulaimaniyah, including Help Tech Co. Ltd, the same company I work at.

This project is the clearest proof point I have for what AI-assisted development actually looks like day to day: not a chatbot answering questions, but a working partner that plans the information architecture, writes product and category copy that targets real search terms like network cables Iraq, Cat6 cable, fiber optic patch cord, and server rack cabinet, and ships a site that is fast, indexable, and genuinely used by customers.

Odoo e-commerce Claude Code Technical SEO B2B catalog design Content strategy
Visit dad-link.com →

How I actually use AI

Beyond prompting

Anyone can type a clever prompt into a chat window. Getting an AI model to do real, unattended, production-grade work, like building and shipping the DAD LINK storefront above, takes four distinct layers of skill, and most people who claim to "know AI" have only touched the first one.

01

Prompt Engineering

Optimizes the instruction. This is what most people mean when they say "AI skills": how you phrase a request, assign a persona, set formatting rules, and give clear constraints for a single interaction. It matters, but it only covers one exchange, it does not survive a long project on its own.

Like giving a new hire their daily task list.

02

Context Engineering

Optimizes the information. It manages what the model's context window actually sees: retrieval-augmented generation, memory management, and picking the right documents, code, or prior decisions to surface at the right moment. Bad context engineering is why AI tools "forget" things mid-project. I treat this as a first-class design problem, not an afterthought.

Like handing them the correct project binders before they start.

03

Harness Engineering

Optimizes the execution environment. This is the closed-loop system around the model: what tools it can call, what guardrails stop it from doing something destructive, and how output gets validated before it is trusted. This is the layer that turns "the AI wrote something" into "the AI's work is safe to ship," and it is most of what I actually build when I automate something with n8n.

Like designing the workspace, the rules, and the oversight the employee works under.

04

Loop Engineering

Automates the repetition. It builds on harness engineering to let agents run for hours without me watching: spawning helper agents for sub-tasks, checking their own results against a standard, and self-correcting when something is off. Sites like DAD LINK get built this way, in long autonomous passes with checkpoints, not one prompt at a time.

Like an employee who runs their own workday and only escalates what actually needs a human.

Social Media

Strategy, content, and paid

Meta Ads Manager Content calendars Community management Audience research

Accounting & Ops

Numbers that actually reconcile

QuickBooks AP / AR Inventory control Procurement

AI & Automation

Workflows that do not break quietly

n8n OpenAI / Claude / Gemini Prompt engineering Context engineering Agent harness design Webhooks & APIs Schema validation

IT & Technical

The tools behind everything above

Python JavaScript HTML / CSS Software testing Canva / Photoshop Microsoft Excel & 365
AI tools I use daily

Background

Education

B.Sc. Computer Engineering Technology

Northern Technical University, Mosul 2017 to 2021 · Ranked 9th in class · GPA 2.81 / 4.0

My capstone project was a CNN based traffic sign recognition system, built in Python. It was my first real deep learning project, and it is a big part of why I ended up comfortable working with AI models later on rather than being intimidated by them.

Credentials

Certifications

Courses and certificates I completed to back up what I already do in practice.

Meta Certified Digital Marketing Associate

Meta

Social Media Marketing Professional Certificate

Meta, via Coursera

n8n Automation Level 1

n8n

Intro to Programming Using Python

Mosul Space

Web Development

Udacity

Microsoft Office 365

ICT Taskforce Initiative

Writing

From the blog

Notes on AI automation, social media marketing, and shipping real software with AI tools, written from doing the work, not from a marketing deck.

Read the blog →

Quick answers

Frequently asked

The questions people usually have before reaching out.

Who is Ibrahim Maher Al-Bander?

A social media marketer, accounts and inventory officer, and freelance AI automation developer based in Erbil, Iraq, currently working three roles at Help Tech Co. Ltd. while running an independent n8n automation practice. Read the full story.

Is he available for freelance n8n or AI automation work?

Yes. He designs and deploys production n8n workflows integrating OpenAI, Claude, and Gemini for lead scoring, invoice processing, and reporting. Get in touch with what you need automated.

Does he do social media marketing for other businesses?

His main track record is in-house at Help Tech, where he grew a Facebook page more than 500 percent and ran campaigns close to 100 percent ROI, plus an agency internship at YourVisio Media managing multiple client accounts.

What is DAD LINK and did he really build it?

DAD LINK is a live B2B e-commerce store for network cabling equipment in Iraq that he designed and shipped on Odoo with Claude Code doing most of the build work. See the Projects section for details.

Get in touch

Let's talk

Whether it is a marketing role, an accounts position, or an automation project that needs building properly, I would like to hear about it.

Go to contact page →
Email me@ibrahimaher.com +964 (0)771 962 0471
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Location Erbil, Iraq