Stephen Okeno

At the core of Equity’s award-winning growth (Kenya’s Most Valuable Brand, Best Regional Bank in East Africa, Most Admired Financial Services Brand), I lead architecture across enterprise, solutions, and data domains—ensuring technology and data enable scalable, secure, and innovative banking services.

Enterprise Architecture & Governance

• Define enterprise architecture vision, standards, and reference architectures aligned to business strategy
• Coordinate and lead Architecture Review Board (ARB) governance, enforcing compliance, reducing technical debt, and optimizing investments
• Drive cross-domain alignment across applications, data, integration, infrastructure, and security

Solutions Architecture

• Design and govern end-to-end enterprise solutions across retail, SME, and corporate banking
• Champion cloud-native, API-led, and microservices architectures to accelerate digital transformation
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Risk, and Compliance to ensure solutions meet security, resilience, and regulatory requirements

Data Architecture

• Define and implement a unified, governed data ecosystem supporting analytics, AI/ML, and regulatory reporting
• Lead MDM, data quality, and governance frameworks to deliver a 360° customer and product view
• Enable real-time, data-driven decision making through scalable data platforms and APIs.

Through this role, I contribute to strengthening Equity Group Holdings as a regional financial powerhouse—ensuring that technology, architecture standards, and data remain foundational pillars of trust, innovation, operational excellence, and sustainable growth.

Led digital transformation for a pan-African digital distribution platform, scaling operations across 4 countries.

• Strategic Platform Leadership:
  Spearheaded the development of a scalable digital order fulfillment platform, reducing operational costs by 32% and warehousing costs by 40% across 4 markets.
  Implemented AI-driven dispatch automation, cutting dispatch costs by 1.7% of GMV and enhancing profitability.
  Introduced Vendor Managed Inventory, reducing working capital needs by 50% in Kenya.
• Technology Modernization:
  Led migration to Data Mesh architecture, Temporal Workflows, gRPC, Kafka, MongoDB and Kubernetes, ensuring scalability and resilience.
  Engineered BFF (Backend for Frontend) architecture with Spring Boot GraphQL for AngularJS micro-frontends, improving performance by 40%.
• Engineering Excellence:
  Established SMLS framework (Software Engineering Leadership, DevOps, Cloud Architecting, ML/BI).
  Optimized CI/CD pipelines (CircleCI, ArgoCD), reducing deployment times by 70%.
• Resource Management: Managed budgeting and resource allocation for software development projects, ensuring optimal use of resources and timely delivery of milestones.

Pioneered AI-driven insurance solutions, reducing fraud and enhancing operational efficiency.

• AI & Automation Leadership:
  Spearheaded the implementation ML architecture for underwriting, integrating NLP chatbots, cutting claims resolution time by 40%.
  Developed an AI-based motor assessment portal, reducing fraudulent claims by 55%, saving millions.
• Innovation Culture:
  Championed hackathons, AI training, and cross-functional collaboration to embed AI in underwriting & pricing.

• Led backend development for "Happiness App", driving a 231% increase in Gross Written Premium (GWP).
• Designed a Payment Wallet, enabling innovative insurance products (e.g., Bima Bamba, Jamil Plus).
• Optimized AWS cloud costs via optimized deployment templates
• Increased daily deployment frequency to 70% by CI/CD automation (CircleCI) and feature flagging, increasing the number of features delivered and an uptime of 99%.

• Directed end-to-end software development for Seam Insure, Seam Tiba, Seam Pensions, and Seam Financials.
• Managed company-level architecture, platform and data configuration processes and implementation protocols.
• Slashed payment processing time from 90 to 30 minutes, accelerating deposit portfolio growth.
• Evaluated and recommended new tools and technologies that resulted in increased development efficiency and up-to-date technical skillsets within the team.
• Led a team of developers to successfully deliver high-quality software projects on time and within budget constraints.
• Aligned IT strategy with organizational goals, fostering collaboration between technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Coordinated third-party vendors and client IT teams to seamlessly deliver effective solutions.

• Deployment Engineer for Leap Financial Services, a web-based platform for Saccos and Microfinance Institutions, leading the design and deployment of cloud solutions on AWS, GCP, and Digital Ocean
• Designed the Payments Service that significantly reduced the turnaround time taken to make disbursements and deposits from 1 hr 30 mins to less than 30 mins, which led to a significant growth of the deposit portfolio.
• Enhanced software functionality by identifying and resolving complex technical issues.
• Mentored junior developers, fostering professional growth and enhancing team productivity.
• Delivered unit-tested systems within customer-prescribed timeframes.

• Microsoft Dynamics BC Deployment and Support, ICT Policy formulation and implementation, experience in ICT project management, Deployment of ICT infrastructure for issuing of permits
• Managed information on company databases for different organizational activities to track history and safeguard accurate information
• Learned practical skills and techniques by shadowing senior staff to understand the organization's operations, policies, and procedures.
• Maintained strict adherence to industry regulations, minimizing risk exposure for the organization.