Open to opportunities

Aliu Lawal

@aliulawal

Senior product engineer building fintech systems, APIs, and mobile apps end to end. React Native, Node, Java. I ship and run in production.

Nigeria

Message

What I'm looking for

I’m looking for a senior product engineering role in fintech/APIs where I can own the full slice—architecture, data models, integrations, and reliable delivery—while building productized systems and mentoring engineers.

I'm a product engineer with 8+ years shipping production financial systems end to end, from thesis to live in market. I own the full slice: product thinking, system architecture, APIs, mobile and web, and delivery, with reliability patterns built in from day one.

Through Openfactor Technologies I served First Bank of Nigeria for three years, where I solo designed and built the bank's Treasury Investment Platform on Newgen iBPS. I led the CBPR+ ISO 20022 converter rollout across all seven subsidiaries, implemented the local RTGS converter for Gambia, Ghana, DRC, and Senegal, and delivered major enhancements to the Smart Account Opening and Smart Corporate onboarding workflows in production.

In parallel I run Alpha Global Tech, where I shipped two products in the last year. Picki is a multi-vendor commerce platform live with 30+ vendors, built on Next.js, Node, and Paystack with an AI checkout. Havyn is a multi-tenant child check-in SaaS with a native mobile app in production, built in React Native and Expo with an offline-first sync model. I own both from architecture through deployment and operations.

My engineering emphasises double-entry posting, idempotency, event-driven systems, retry orchestration, and graceful degradation. I also mentor junior engineers.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Senior Product Engineer

Current

Alpha Global Tech (AGT)

Jan 2026 - Present (6 months)

Owned end-to-end product and system architecture for consumer platforms Picki and Havyn, including mobile/web delivery and third-party integrations. Published productised banking middleware (including ISO 20022 conversion and SFTP-to-MQ bridging) under commercial licensing.

Product Ownership Solution Architecture API Design Next.js TypeScript React Native OTA Event Driven Systems Paystack Payments Resend Delivery Integrations ISO 20022 SFTP JMS Spring Security Audit Logging Offline Resilience

Senior Software Engineer

Openfactor Technologies

Mar 2023 - May 2026 (3 years 2 months)

Solo-owned delivery of First Bank of Nigeria’s Treasury Investment Platform end to end and led enhancements across Smart Account Opening/Smart Corporate onboarding workflows in production. Drove CBPR+ ISO 20022 converter and local RTGS converter rollouts across subsidiaries, plus refactoring and delivery of multiple high-volume fintech services.

System Design ISO 20022 CBPR+RTGS Event Driven Architecture Circuit Breakers Jasypt Encrypted Credentials Audit Trail Integration Bulk NIN Linkage Proof Of Investment (POI) Generation

Software Engineer

TAJBank Limited

Aug 2021 - Feb 2023 (1 year 6 months)

Designed and shipped event-driven Account Opening and Account Maintenance workflows aligned with CBN compliance and Sharia banking requirements. Implemented KYC gating and customer information modification flows and owned BPM measurement and reporting.

Account Opening Customer Information Modification Flows Sharia Banking Requirements

Automation Engineer

First Bank of Nigeria

Nov 2019 - Dec 2020 (1 year 1 month)

Built the Finacle Limit Enhancement Application to automate core banking limit enhancement workflows. Delivered a workflow-driven reduction in operational cost.

Finacle Core Banking Workflow Automation