Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Industry Expertise
Timeline
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Peter Okello

Senior Backend Engineer

Summary

Senior Backend Engineer with 6+ years of expertise in designing, developing, and integrating scalable financial systems and payment gateways. Proven track record in leading teams to deliver robust solutions using Java, Spring Boot, and Microservices architecture on AWS and Azure. Passionate about implementing DevOps practices (Docker, Kubernetes, Jenkins, Terraform) and engineering best practices to build secure, high-availability applications for the banking sector.

Overview

6
6
years of professional experience

Work History

Snr. Backend Engineer

Africa's Talking
08.2023 - Current


  • Ownership of Voice API Development:Maintains and enhances Africastalking's Voice API, ensuring stability and scalability while delivering cutting-edge features for seamless client integration and improved user experience.
  • Implemented Call Action feature for voice calls, enabling voice OTP authentication integration from clients and increasing the number of clients by 17%.
  • Developed a risk hold feature to block fraudulent voice calls, enhancing call security and saving the company $1,000 monthly.
  • Implemented a rate-limiting solution, reducing the risk of call spamming by 100% and boosting system performance.

Snr. Backend Engineer

BURN Manufacturing USA LLC
08.2022 - 08.2023


  • Led a team of 6 in designing a scalable payment gateway for Central/East Africa, enabling cross-border transactions in 6 countries.
  • Implemented a Circuit Breaker pattern (using Resilience4j) to handle cascading failures in a distributed payment gateway system.
  • Configured failure thresholds, retry policies, and fallback mechanisms, reducing inter-service dependency faults by 40% and improving system uptime.
  • Integrated with Prometheus/Grafana for real-time monitoring of circuit states (OPEN/HALF-OPEN/CLOSED), enabling proactive incident response.
  • Built an AuthN/AuthZ microservice with role-based access control, eliminating unauthorized access.
  • Integrated New Relic + Ops Genie for real-time alerts, improving incident response by 95%.


Full Stack Software Engineer

M Tech Limited(Fintech)
11.2019 - 08.2022

Company Overview:

Fintech Company specializing in integration and efficiency improvements for banking systems and third-party services.

  • Led team in building payment gateway for NCBA bank, cutting customer complaints by 40%.
  • Designed APIs for SIDIAN bank, reducing push notification downtime to 2%.
  • Integrated SIDIAN banking systems with ERP, reducing notification downtime to 1%.
  • Designed and Developed USSD system for STANBIC bank, achieving 96% uptime and reducing complaints by 23%.
  • Deployed payment system for SIDIAN bank, boosting efficiency to 98%, enhancing API security by 95%.
  • Built email service, increasing emails sent daily from 5,000 to 50,000.
  • Built C2B payment gateways for ABSA bank, reducing complaints by 50% and achieving 98% API uptime.
  • Enhanced security with JWT/OAuth third part push payment notifications, reducing breaches by 95%.

Education

Bachelor of Science - Computer Science

Kenyatta University
Nairobi

Skills

Cloud & DevOps: AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, Azure DevOps

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Industry Expertise

  • Scala
  • Java
  • DevOps
  • Agile Methodologies

Timeline

Snr. Backend Engineer

Africa's Talking
08.2023 - Current

Snr. Backend Engineer

BURN Manufacturing USA LLC
08.2022 - 08.2023

Full Stack Software Engineer

M Tech Limited(Fintech)
11.2019 - 08.2022

Bachelor of Science - Computer Science

Kenyatta University
Peter OkelloSenior Backend Engineer