Simbarashe Andrea

Co-founded Mopane Labs and lead technical strategy, product architecture, engineering standards, and delivery for an AI-first software studio. Remain hands-on across full-stack and AI engineering, designing APIs, building features, and integrating LLM workflows.

Developed and maintained Laravel backend systems handling AI-powered requests at scale for a platform serving more than 200,000 users. Optimized AI service endpoints and database performance while collaborating on AI technology integration.

Modernized legacy applications for five clients, reducing hosting costs by 25%, and built backend services for a fintech platform handling 10,000+ API calls per minute. Implemented JWT authentication and RBAC for a Spring REST API serving 50,000 users.

Designed secure Laravel and Symfony backend infrastructure on AWS for a restaurant chain, including APIs for orders, delivery tracking, and location services. Built Docker and Kubernetes CI/CD workflows that increased release frequency by 40%.

Architected the Hotbox Marketplace platform with Symfony, PHP, Docker, and MySQL for more than 600,000 users; led a team of eight engineers. Introduced automated QA that reduced bugs by 30% and improved application performance by 45%.

Led backend development for the Jorar Academic Portal and designed REST APIs for authentication and course management serving 20,000+ users. Built AWS infrastructure supporting 15,000 concurrent users; the platform earned three international awards.

Maintained internal Java ERP and email systems, and contributed to the plant website using Java Spring Boot, PHP, and SQL Server.

Full Stack Engineer Certificate.

Symfony Master Class certification.

Grade: Upper Second Class Honours

BSc Software Engineering with Upper Second Class Honours.

Spring Boot Master certification.