Evanson Biwott
Engineering Executive
Nairobi
Summary
Seasoned engineering executive with a demonstrable history of driving and advancing organizations within the logistics, supply chain, and fin-tech sectors. Adept at orchestrating strategic planning, steering software development initiatives, and cultivating teams for optimal growth.
Proficient in recognizing lucrative opportunities and executing pragmatic business strategies, while maintaining a relentless pursuit of staying abreast of cutting-edge trends, technologies, and industry best practices.
Overview
11
11
years of professional experience
3
3
Languages
Work History
Engineering Research and Development Fellow
Sendy LTD
Nairobi
02.2022 - Current
- Conducted engineering experiments and gathered detailed design data to assist in research work.
- Validated and tested engineering models to ensure adequacy and reformulated models when necessary.
- Achieved a successful delivery rate of 5 out of 7 major projects (success rate over 70%) and accomplished over 50% success in various other small experiments.
- Enhanced customer acquisition by 20% through E-commerce platform integrations for WordPress, Woo-Commerce, and Shopify.
- Seamlessly integrated APIs with 20+ key customers, facilitating their use by over 15,000 current sellers on the platform, and effectively handing them over to the product development team.
Chief Technology Officer
Sendy LTD
Nairobi
11.2018 - 02.2022
- Developed a comprehensive business continuity plan to ensure data protection in the event of a natural disaster or long-term outage.
- Managed company-level architecture, platform, and data configuration processes, overseeing implementation protocols.
- Briefed executives on technology risks and proposed solutions to address their concerns.
- Coordinated with third-party vendors and client IT teams to deliver effective solutions seamlessly.
- Created and executed a long-term strategic technological blueprint.
- Collaborated with third-party vendors to implement suitable integrations.
- Provided project leadership in a dynamic, technology-driven environment with multiple priorities.
- Addressed a wider customer need by simplifying access to Fast Moving Consumer Goods from local retailers and wholesalers, resulting in significant growth.
- Expanded payment options to include card payments, leading to a 20% increase in the number of incoming payments and a 3% rise in total value, while enhancing existing payment methods.
- Amplified growth beyond the Kenyan borders, with successful expansion into Uganda and other regions.
- Adapted to the changes brought by Covid in 2020 by introducing B2B (Sendy Supply) and B2C (Sendy GO), both experiencing a remarkable 20% month-on-month growth during their initial year and later stabilizing at 10%.
- Launched an end-to-end fulfillment service in 2021, providing online sellers with more affordable business solutions. Successfully rolled out this service in Kenya, Uganda, Cote d'Ivoire, and Nigeria, resulting in an increase of sellers to over 6000.
- Successfully migrated docker containers to Kubernetes, significantly improving uptime across 50+ microservices from 99.5% to 99.98%, thereby enhancing the customer and partner experience.
Head of Engineering
Sendy LTD
Nairobi
08.2016 - 11.2018
- Managed complex system and subsystem design from conception through final production phases.
- Delegated work to teams of engineers and technicians, distributing responsibilities to maximize useful skills and avoid knowledge gaps.
- Completed projects under budget and within prescribed timeframes by strictly adhering to provided milestones and guidelines.
- Applied widely-accepted engineering principles to proposed designs, creating reliable and repeatable final product designs.
- Revised, modularized, and updated old code bases to modern development standards, reducing operating costs, and improving functionality.
- Implemented platform observability & monitoring by integrating tools like StatusCake (https://www.statuscake.com/), Sentry (https://sentry.io/), and Dynatrace (https://www.dynatrace.com/), which helped reduce critical incoming customer tickets by 70%.
- Set up DB replication on AWS with a set of master and slaves, removing all query blocks and achieving a sign-in time of less than 2 seconds and order placement time of less than 3 seconds, thus improving the overall user experience on the apps.
- Migrated to AWS, bringing together all the tools used under one roof, and reducing the time spent on DevOps by over 90%.
- Orchestrated microservices with Docker, improving overall reliability by over 20% and reducing the number of app crashes from about 5 a day to 1 a week.
- Organized teams around products, with a product manager, QA, relevant engineers, and an engineering lead to ensure smooth communication between sales, customer support, and the product team, leading to better product delivery.
- Automated deployments with Git and DeployBot, improving software development output by about 30%.
- Strengthened the DevOps and quality assurance teams to improve the reliability and quality of the products.
- Provided support for cross-border deliveries, scaling up to 20,000 individuals and 1,200 businesses.
Technical Lead
Sendy LTD
Nairobi
05.2015 - 08.2016
- Officially launched at the beginning of the year
- Added a web platform later in the year
- Improved how our partners received delivery requests by developing a hybrid app, migrating fully from USSD delivery requests and gps trackers
- Became early recipients of Safaricom spark venture fund later on November of 2015
- Moved good across Uganda and tanzania borders and pushed our peer to peer users to 20,00 and 1200 businesses with over 200 partners
- Growing an engineering team to fine tune the platform and building in a revenue model, setup team of backend, web developers and mobile developers
- Moved to a microservices architecture
- Moved from windows to a linux server
- Documented technical workflows and knowledge to educate newly hired employees.
- Setting up Sendy for growth and building an architecture for scalability and growth.
- Investigated system issues and implemented resolutions to reduce downtime.
- Designed support structure needed to confirm scalable application rollouts.
Software Developer
Sendy LTD
Nairobi
02.2014 - 05.2015
- Co-founded Sendy and built a working version 1, which won the utilities category at Pivot East 2014.
- Developed a mobile app for peer-to-peer deliveries.
- Implemented USSD to facilitate order requests to partners.
- Conducted GPS tracker installations on motorbikes.
- Started with 3 riders and experienced rapid growth, reaching 1200 orders per month by early 2015.
Junior Software Developer
MTL
Nairobi
05.2013 - 02.2014
- Worked on payment and ticketing solutions for a major courier and bus company operating in East Africa (M-Shop).
- Assisted in building an education system for a local university and documented key aspects of a healthcare system.
Skills
Strategic planning
Technology utilization optimization
Project Management
Relationship building and retention
Team growth and leadership
Roadmap Planning
Performance management
Corporate strategy development
IT Management and delivery
Business administration
Data Collection
Data analysis
Cloud-based environments
Performance metrics analysis
Reporting capabilities
Application/database design
Budgeting
Technological analysis
New product introductions
System design and implementation
Change Management
Compliance Oversight
General management and administration
Education
Bachelor of Science - Computer Software Engineering
Kenyatta University
Nairobi, Kenya 01.2009 - 04.2013
Timeline
Engineering Research and Development Fellow
Sendy LTD
02.2022 - Current
Chief Technology Officer
Sendy LTD
11.2018 - 02.2022
Head of Engineering
Sendy LTD
08.2016 - 11.2018
Technical Lead
Sendy LTD
05.2015 - 08.2016
Software Developer
Sendy LTD
02.2014 - 05.2015
Junior Software Developer
MTL
05.2013 - 02.2014
Bachelor of Science - Computer Software Engineering
Kenyatta University
01.2009 - 04.2013
Career Highlights
- Co founder at Sendy in 2014 and winning the pivot east 2014
- Winning pivot east tech competition and building an engineering team to build the sendy platform
- Expansion to East and west africa
Internship
Software developer intern at MTL systems from 2012 May to 2013 May
- Learned the basics of software development, which sparked my interest in web and API development.
- Worked on a variety of applications, including health, education, rental, and ticketing systems.