Open to opportunities

Samuel Gicho

@samuelgicho

Message

I build secure fintech and AI products from architecture to production.

Kenya

Message

What I'm looking for

I'm looking to build secure, scalable fintech and AI products where I can own architecture, delivery, and technical decisions from 0-to-1 through production.

I'm building ReePaya, a non-custodial payment orchestration platform for South Africa's informal economy, owning its architecture, security, and delivery end to end. I shipped the MVP, integrated FNB and OTT Voucher, and resolved critical issues across Redis, KYC logic, authentication, and token storage.

Over 7+ years, I've delivered production web systems and payment infrastructure using React, Django, Node.js, and cloud platforms. I've also built AI products for fraud detection, livestock diagnostics, and RAG-based question answering, while improving enterprise operational efficiency and reliability through secure APIs, CI/CD, AWS, GCP, and SQL optimization.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Technical Co-Founder

Current

ReePaya

Jan 2026 - Present (7 months)

Co-founded and lead technical architecture for a non-custodial payment orchestration platform serving South Africa's informal economy. Designed and shipped the MVP to production with active integrations into FNB and OTT Voucher.

Payment Orchestration Architecture Security KYC Redis Authentication PayShap Instant EFT Visa Mastercard EWallet CashSend

Current

Full Stack Engineer (Freelance)

Current

Self-employed

Jan 2020 - Present (6 years 7 months)

Designed and delivered scalable web applications using React, Django, and Node.js for multiple clients. Built AI-powered products including FraudShield AI and AfriVet AI, and developed a RAG-based AI Q&A system.

React Django Node.Js Development AI Fraud Detection NLP RAG fastAPI Next.js JWT Docker AWS GCP

System Administrator

Juba Catering Services LTD

Oct 2023 - Feb 2025 (1 year 4 months)

Designed and deployed internal web-based systems that improved operational efficiency by 30%. Migrated enterprise systems to AWS and GCP, improving reliability by 35%, and implemented CI/CD pipelines.

Django RBAC AWS GCP GitHub Actions Docker PostgreSQL MySQL SQL SIT UAT

Software Implementation Specialist

Ezen Partners LTD

Oct 2022 - Sep 2023 (11 months)

Built full-stack ERP modules with React frontend and Django backend, including database schema design and SQL optimization. Integrated third-party APIs and worked directly with business users to translate requirements.