Backend Software Engineer

Botico is a multi-tenant WhatsApp automation platform for appointment-based businesses such as salons, clinics and gyms. I designed and built it end to end as a modular Go monolith on PostgreSQL.

An AI gateway routes every incoming message to one of four lanes: a guided flow, a human hand-off, a cached answer, or a single tool-using LLM call. Pure-function pre-routing and guard checks run before anything is sent, which keeps model calls, cost and behaviour under control.

The agent works through a tool framework with JSON-schema validation of inputs and replies, versioned per-tenant prompts, and a RAG knowledge base on pgvector. The design follows the EU AI Act: AI disclosure, human hand-off, and an audit trail of every model call, tool call and routing decision, with per-message cost reporting.

Integrations with Calendly, Fresha, Google Calendar, Stripe, SumUp and Tally use a plugin system. A React frontend gives tenants a visual workflow builder and a live conversation dashboard.

Tech Used

• Go (chi), background workers
• PostgreSQL 16 with pgvector
• Anthropic API, Voyage AI embeddings
• React, TypeScript, React Flow, WebSockets
• Docker

Loonya is a subscription productivity app that brings calendar, habits, goals, journal and gamification together. I designed and built it end to end: a FastAPI backend on PostgreSQL with raw SQL, and a React frontend.

Search is hybrid semantic and fuzzy, using Meilisearch with Voyage AI embeddings. Writes go through a transactional outbox to an async indexer, and every read passes through one path that enforces per-user isolation.

Billing runs on Stripe subscriptions with a trial, webhooks, a customer portal and vouchers. An MCP server lets AI assistants read a user's own data.

I built it to be operated, not just demoed: encrypted nightly backups with an automated weekly restore test, health checks and alerting, full account deletion across every system, and around 400 backend tests.

Tech Used

• Python, FastAPI
• PostgreSQL, Meilisearch, Voyage AI
• Stripe, MCP
• React, Vite, Tailwind
• Docker, Cloudflare Tunnel

Nintendo of Europe, one of Actindo's larger customers, moved its payments onto its own in-house payment gateway (NPGW, backed by Adyen). That meant integrating a complex payment process into an already established order workflow, with many dependencies.

I designed and implemented the REST/OAuth API integration and the Petri net workflows that drive it: card, PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay across multiple European markets, including pre-authorisation, Merchant Initiated Transactions for pre-orders, partial captures, refunds and multi-currency chargebacks.

Client communication was key, as Nintendo was developing its API in parallel. The integration went live in February 2025 and I continue to support it in production.

I also built a Go mock server for the gateway, shared by every sandbox, with header-switchable scenarios for declines, 3DS, gateway errors, timeouts and rate limits. It is now being integrated into the automated E2E test suite.

Tech Used

• PHP Backend (with HHVM)
• REST and OAuth API Integrations
• Petri net workflow engine
• Go (mock gateway server)
• MySQL Database

Designed and implemented multiple NetSuite API integrations using the SOAP protocol in PHP to support core finance operations within a freight-forwarding environment. The integrations enabled secure, reliable bi-directional data exchange between internal systems and NetSuite, including customer financials, invoices, disbursements, and ledger-related data.

Developed a disbursement control module to enforce financial governance across freight operations, ensuring that supplier payments, client charges, and operational costs were validated against predefined rules and approval thresholds before execution. This significantly reduced manual reconciliation, improved auditability, and minimized financial risk.

In parallel, built a management-level finance dashboard that aggregated NetSuite data into a high-level overview of client financial health. This included real-time visibility into balances, outstanding invoices, cash flow exposure, and client profitability, enabling senior stakeholders to make informed strategic and operational decisions without requiring direct access to NetSuite.

The solution emphasized data integrity, fault-tolerant SOAP communication, and clear separation between integration logic and business rules, resulting in a scalable and maintainable financial integration layer.

Tech Used

• PHP & Laravel
• SOAP Api Integrations
• VueJS Frontend
• PostgreSQL Database
• AWS Server Deployments

Designed and built a fully operational hosted VoIP switchboard solution using the Asterisk platform, this allowed users to set configuration settings from a web frontend which was built using PHP and AngularJS.

Features included call routing, voicemail, IVR menus, call recording, and user management.

The system was deployed on Linux servers and integrated with SIP trunk providers for external calling.

Tech Used

• Asterisk PBX
• PHP Backend
• AngularJS Frontend
• MySQL Database
• Linux Server Deployment

Founded and developed a New car aggregation website with a friend of mine. The site helped a new car buyer get the best quotes on a new car by allowing the user to find the car they wanted to buy from car dealerships on our network within a user specified area.

We had grown our dealership network to over 150 and were starting to get some small amounts of traction but really needed funding to take it further.

ABSA, one of the big 4 banks in South Africa, were really interested and through a series of investor meetings we worked our way up to the CIO pitching to the Barclays Africa seeker fund. Unfortunately, the bank had a change in direction and did not award us the funding.

Careers and personal life proved too much for the idea and it was shut down.

Tech Used

• PHP 5.6 with a custom built MVC framework
• MySQL Database
• JQuery on the Frontend
• Shared Hosting with a bit of a hack for Cron runs
• Google Maps API integration