Open to opportunities

George Njuguna

@georgenjuguna2

Message

Senior backend engineer building payment systems, real-time platforms, and AI-integrated distributed systems.

Kenya

Message

What I'm looking for

I’m looking for a team where I can build and own distributed, event-driven backend systems—payments and real-time data first—while integrating AI/LLMs and Web3 with strong engineering practices and clear product impact.

I build payment systems, real-time data platforms, and AI-integrated backends, with a track record of shipping to real users at scale. As Co-Founder and Lead Engineer at Okolea International, I helped a digital lending platform scale from 0 to 1M+ users, improving payment failure rates from 8% to under 1% and cutting manual KYC time from hours to seconds with Vision API automation.

Most recently, I’m shipping production code across sports data feeds, Web3 (Polymarket, Overtime), and LLM integrations (Gemini, Claude). At Gora Network, I designed and shipped 15+ third-party data integrations and built event-driven microservices with a pluggable provider framework for normalization, validation, retry/backoff, and SLA monitoring—ensuring on-chain data integrity with asymmetric authentication.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Backend Engineer

Current

KiX Sports NFT Exchange

Feb 2026 - Present (4 months)

Integrated sports data providers into an NFT marketplace, delivering live ingestion of scores, fixtures, and player stats. Built event-driven Node.js services for real-time data ingestion and webhook fan-out, and implemented cookie-based KOL referral attribution with analytics via PostHog and BigQuery.

Node TypeScript Event Driven Architecture Webhooks Microservices AWS Lambda DynamoDB SQS PostHog BigQuery

Senior Backend Engineer

BookieAI

Aug 2025 - Dec 2025 (4 months)

Built a Telegram chatbot for sports betting with natural-conversation odds discovery and bet construction. Integrated Polymarket and Overtime Sports Book for on-chain bet placement and settlement, and developed an event-driven backend for real-time bet status updates and notification fan-out.

TypeScript Event Driven Systems Webhooks Polymarket Overtime Sports Book Microservices Notification Pipelines

Senior Backend Engineer

Gora Network

Dec 2021 - Jul 2025 (3 years 7 months)

Designed and shipped 15+ third-party data integrations across aviation, weather, sports, crypto, and financial markets. Built event-driven microservices for high-throughput real-time feed processing, including a pluggable provider framework with normalization/validation, retries, and SLA monitoring.

Distributed Systems Microservices Event Driven Architecture Data Integration API Security Asymmetric Authentication Streaming Pipelines Monitoring Reliability Engineering

Engineer / Product Lead

Eneza Telecom

Sep 2018 - Dec 2023 (5 years 3 months)

Built USSD + M-Pesa payment rails for feature-phone users supporting mobile payments for agricultural payroll. Implemented real-time reconciliation and transaction monitoring for high-volume payroll runs.

M Pesa Performance Optimization Reporting USSD Integration

Lead Engineer / Co-Founder

Okolea International

Jan 2019 - Jun 2023 (4 years 5 months)

Co-founded and led engineering for a digital lending platform that scaled from 0 to 1M+ users. Built event-driven payment infrastructure on Firebase Cloud Functions and reduced payment failure rate from 8% to under 1% through idempotency and retry/recovery patterns.

Cloud Functions M Pesa Integrations Event Driven Payments Retry Payment Reconciliation Google Vision API Dialogflow GoogleVision API

Fractional CTO

Leja / Asilimia

Sep 2022 - May 2023 (8 months)

Architected an AWS serverless backend using Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, and CloudWatch to support an early-stage fintech MVP. Established CI/CD pipelines, coding standards, and core engineering processes from day one.

AWS Lambda API Gateway DynamoDB Cloudwatch Serverless Architecture CI CD Coding Guidelines System Design

Software Development Manager

Magpi

May 2009 - Dec 2018 (9 years 7 months)

Led development of an Android data collection platform with offline-first sync, deployed across 20+ countries for UNICEF, WHO, and USAID. Built and evolved solutions from ODK to a custom platform and implemented DHIS2 integration for country-level health data reporting.

Android Development Offline First Data Collection DHIS2 Integration Load Testing JMeter QA Leadership API Integration Deployment

Full Stack Engineer

Teeboxi

Jan 2026 - Present (5 months)

Built a booking engine for African golf clubs, managing tee-time slots, member directories, and tournament integrations. Integrated a Telegram bot to automate content publishing and member notifications.