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Anthony Olawo

@anthonyolawo

Backend software engineer focused on scalable systems, low-latency services, and reliable operations with actionable telemetry.

Kenya

Message

What I'm looking for

I’m looking to build backend services in teams that value reliability and speed—reducing latency, meeting SLAs, and shipping with strong telemetry, dashboards, and safer operational tooling.

I’m a Backend Software Engineer who improves user experiences by leading design and development of storage and contact-management features that reduce latency, handle millions of requests per day, and strengthen overall robustness with backup flows. I also ensure my team meets service level agreements by building dashboards, triage tools, and the telemetry needed for fast diagnosis.

Before Microsoft, I worked across microservices and full-stack projects, setting up CI/CD pipelines, contributing to web and Salesforce work, and leading the architecture and development of an admissions system used by ~20,000 applicants. I bring a strong engineering foundation from earlier roles spanning Go-based tooling, monitoring, and automation for production deployments.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Backend Software Engineer

Current

Microsoft

Apr 2021 - Present (5 years 4 months)

Led design and development of storage-service features to reduce latency of fetching people data for Microsoft 365. Built and operated backend capabilities including a contact photo deletion endpoint, SLAs/triage dashboards, telemetry for on-call diagnostics, and backup jobs for failover.

Dashboarding Triage Telemetry Monitoring Backup and Failover Jobs

Senior Software Development Contractor

Baobab Partners

Aug 2019 - Apr 2021 (1 year 8 months)

Supported development of project management, payroll, and billing microservices by building staging and production environments and setting up DevOps CI/CD pipelines for constituent services. Led a team building a Salesforce texting app and contributed code and planning support across web and Salesforce projects.

Microservices DevOps CI CD Pipelines Salesforce Software Development

Software Engineer

Lendable

Aug 2018 - Feb 2019 (6 months)

Improved core engineer productivity by reducing test runtime through database rollbacks and local caching of remote test data. Built a monitoring app to track the health of deals for the Risk team.

Test Automation Optimization Caching Monitoring

Full Stack Software Engineer

African Leadership University

Nov 2016 - Jul 2018 (1 year 8 months)

Led architecting and development of an application design and submission system used by approximately 20,000 applicants. Contributed Python code to the Open edX learning management system to support learning team and students.

System Architecture Python Edx Learning Management

Software Engineer

IBM

Aug 2015 - May 2016 (9 months)

Supported BlueMix DevOps by building Go tools to identify new dashboards for the Bluemix monitoring console and by implementing monitoring console features and deployments. Worked on automation for testing and deployment of Bluemix components by contributing Golang to a continuous integration and deployment pipeline.

DevOps CI CD Pipelines Testing Automation Deployment

Education

Degrees, certifications, and relevant coursework

Duke University

Bachelor of Arts, Computer Science

2011 - 2015

Earned a Bachelor of Arts with a major in Computer Science and a minor in Creative Writing. Coursework included Algorithm Design and Analysis, Delivering Software, Software Design and Implementation, and Networking Protocols.