My Journey

From university to building production systems at scale—here's how I've grown as a software engineer

Personal Projects

  • Deploy – A control-plane style AWS deployment platform that transforms infrastructure-as-code into production-ready cloud stacks. Evolved from Terraform/OpenTofu-compatible v1 to a native AWS SDK-driven reconciler v2 with drift detection and state management.
  • Prude – An AI-powered message triage and workflow automation system with event-driven ingestion, AWS Bedrock/LLM integration, and human-in-the-loop feedback. Achieved 95% accuracy and reduced latency from 2s to less than 400ms under 100× load.
BMW IT Hub

JavaScript/Web Software Developer

Delivered Results by releasing production-ready features across management, finance, and travel modules with measurable latency reduction (≈35%) through batched async operations (Promise.all) and GraphQL query optimisation. Enabled cross-team reuse of UI assets, accelerated new-feature delivery and improved maintainability.

Invented & Simplified by building a reusable form and modal library on top of Ant Design v4, solving the framework's lack of reactive validation. Designed shared components so product teams could apply BMW's design system without restyling for every feature, cutting UI duplication by ≈40%. Introduced an API-driven UI pattern where the front-end defined action types and the backend executed configurable functions dynamically. This removed brittle if/else branches that previously misrouted GraphQL calls, eliminating unpredictable side-effects in multi-module flows.

Dove Deep by profiling GraphQL resolvers to detect payload mismatches that caused incorrect API triggers. Integrated fine-grained metrics into Prometheus for response-time and resolver-latency tracking.

Ownership demonstrated through partnership with stakeholders to align UX changes and reporting flows, managed full delivery from design to deployment.

Standard Bank

Developer

Delivered Results by building and maintaining headless checkout and cart modules in Angular + Node.js, enabling shared cart state across the platform. Implemented split-payment logic and plan-upgrade queues to ensure financial consistency across accounts and prevent double charges. Built and enhanced the GL (General Ledger) accounts reconciliation feature, ensuring every in-app transaction synchronised with backend finance systems. This reduced manual reconciliation time and improved audit compliance, earning recognition from finance stakeholders.

Invented & Simplified by designing a JSON-driven Cypress testing framework, enabling declarative test configuration through simple data files instead of imperative code. Cut test duplication by ≈30% and increased regression reliability across multiple product modules. Simplified Angular state management using RxJS observables and service-based reactive forms to unify validation and API sync patterns. Consolidated checkout logic across multiple teams to reduce code drift and support faster releases.

Ownership demonstrated by collaborating with QA, DevOps, and finance stakeholders to align release cadence with audit and compliance goals, and managing migration readiness for S3-hosted assets and Lambda-backed APIs.

BBD (Vodacom)

Software Engineer

Delivered Results by delivering high-availability web and cloud solutions for Vodacom's retail ecosystem, maintaining 100% uptime during Black Friday, the client's peak traffic event. Optimized deployment readiness and standby protocols, tuning Kubernetes liveness and health probes to improve rollback stability and reduce release-related incidents during heavy-load windows. Supported production deployments and on-call monitoring rotations in an AWS-style pager-duty capacity, ensuring proactive alert response and rapid recovery procedures.

Dove Deep by configuring and maintaining Prometheus and Grafana dashboards to enhance visibility into system latency, API health, and deployment status across environments. Performed Kubernetes troubleshooting and live health verifications, identifying and resolving node failures, configuration drift, and scaling misconfigurations before they impacted users. Assisted in architecture and project component reviews, verifying deployment health checks, pipeline readiness, and service interdependencies.

Invented & Simplified by contributing to the retail site migration effort (Xamarin & SOAP → React.js & REST APIs), ensuring new deployments were properly monitored and instrumented for reliability. Automated monitoring alerts and simplified build deployment handoffs to reduce manual release overhead and ensure smooth production readiness.

Ownership & Mentorship demonstrated by taking ownership of deployment and observability layers, ensuring release stability and system integrity across multiple environments. Mentored junior developers and support engineers on Kubernetes configurations, CI/CD best practices, and real-time monitoring principles—building team confidence during high-traffic periods.

Stackworx

Full Stack Developer

Delivered Results by developing a React Native trading app and a React fleet dashboard with real-time mobile/web data sync.

Invented & Simplified by integrating Go-based Slack bots for workflow automation, reducing manual operations.

Ownership demonstrated by owning end-to-end delivery and coordinating API contracts with backend teams.

Telkom

Software Engineer

Delivered results by building customer-service dashboards that enabled faster issue triage and resolution.

WeThinkCode_

WeThinkCode_ Bootcamp

Immersive bootcamp covering C, Unix systems, algorithms, and team projects—from building a social network clone to networking simulators and iOS apps. This intensive program solidified my problem-solving approach, debugging skills, and ability to quickly learn new languages and technologies.

University of Cape Town

Computer Science & Business Computing Degree

Completed a Computer Science & Business Computing degree at the University of Cape Town. This program provided my foundation in structured programming and first insights into how software engineering supports real-world business operations.

Technical Skills

Technologies and tools I work with

AWS
AWS
Cloud architecture and services
JavaScript
JavaScript
Modern web development
Node.js
Node.js
Backend development
React
React
Frontend frameworks
Angular
Angular
Enterprise applications
Go
Go
System programming
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL
Database design

Certifications

Professional certifications and achievements

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

Amazon Web Services

2023

OpenJS Node.js Application Developer

OpenJS Node.js Application Developer

Linux Foundation

2023

Let's Connect

Interested in collaborating, discussing a project, or just want to chat about software engineering? I'd love to hear from you.