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Paul Karugu

@paulkarugu

Technical Product Manager at Safaricom who modernised Tunukiwa and maintained 99.9% uptime across business-critical services.

Kenya

Message

At Safaricom PLC, I owned the vision and roadmap for six customer value management products serving over 7 million customers daily. Tunukiwa’s call centre demand fell 87.5% as customers moved to self-service, while business-critical services held 99.9% uptime.

I guided the delivery cycle from sprint planning through release and aligned business and technical teams around a shared backlog. I also ran the pilot for the security-sensitive SIMSWAP DIY self-service journey.

As a Value-Added Services Developer at Safaricom PLC, I led Tunukiwa’s migration from a legacy system to IBM Unica and designed microservices architecture with automated failover. I also added payment options using Bonga loyalty points and Okoa airtime credit.

Earlier, I co-led an AWS serverless IoT tracking solution at MGas Ltd that provided real-time visibility of more than 10,000 assets. At Upande Ltd, I built the GSMA-funded WaSHMIS platform and developed geospatial asset tracking for water projects.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Value-Added Services (VAS) Developer

Current

Safaricom PLC

Jun 2021 - Present (5 years 4 months)

Translate commercial requirements into technical designs and led the Tunukiwa platform migration to IBM Unica. Designed microservices architecture with automated failover and built payment flexibility for Bonga points and Okoa airtime.

Java Spring Boot Microservices AWS SQL APIs IBM Unica System migration Redundancy Payment Integration

Product Manager

Safaricom PLC

Oct 2024 - Mar 2026 (1 year 5 months)

Guided a cross-functional team of 11+ engineers, designers, and QA specialists through the full Agile delivery cycle. Owned product vision and roadmap for six customer value management products serving over 7 million customers daily, achieving 99.9% uptime and contributing to 10% customer base growth.

Agile Scrum Product Management Roadmapping Stakeholder Management Backlog Management Jira Confluence SQL Amazon Quicksight AWS Java Spring Boot PostgreSQL MySQL APIs Microservices

Software Developer and Data Analyst

MGas Ltd

Apr 2020 - Mar 2021 (11 months)

Designed APIs and databases for asset tracking, customer, and operations microservices. Co-led a cloud-native IoT tracking solution on AWS serverless, providing real-time visibility of 10,000+ gas cylinders and reducing field issue resolution time from over 2 hours to under 1 hour.

API Design Database Design Microservices AWS Serverless IoT Asset Tracking Data Analysis Automation

Software Developer

Upande Ltd

Mar 2015 - Jul 2019 (4 years 4 months)

Built the GSMA-funded WaSHMIS platform for water utilities to reduce non-revenue water, including customer surveys and water tracking dashboards. Developed geospatial asset tracking and piloted a LoRa IoT project with Kuehne+Nagel and Florensis Kenya.

Software Development Geospatial IoT LoRAs Dashboard Development Survey Design Water Management

ICT Officer and Training Facilitator

Dhanush Infotech Ltd

Jun 2012 - Feb 2015 (2 years 8 months)

Wrote training manuals to make the financial system usable for non-technical staff and set up ICT training labs.

Technical Writer Training IT Setup Financial Systems

Education

Degrees, certifications, and relevant coursework

Scrum.org

Professional Scrum Product Owner I (PSPO I), Scrum

Professional Scrum Product Owner I (PSPO I) certification from Scrum.org, obtained in 2026.

Amazon Web Services

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, Cloud Computing

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification from Amazon Web Services, obtained in 2024.

Udemy

Master Microservices with Java, Spring, Docker and Kubernetes, Microservices

Master Microservices with Java, Spring, Docker and Kubernetes course from Udemy, completed in 2022.

Coursera

Building Modern Node.js Applications on AWS, Node.js

Building Modern Node.js Applications on AWS course from Coursera, completed in 2020.

United States International University-Africa

Bachelor of Science, Information Systems and Technology

Grade: 3.4/4.0

Bachelor of Science in Information Systems and Technology from United States International University-Africa, completed in 2011 with a GPA of 3.4/4.0.