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Senior Backend Engineer · Head of Engineering

Architecting systems
built for
scale & reliability.

Senior Backend Engineer with 5+ years of experience designing, building, and operating production backend systems across fintech, healthcare, logistics, hospitality, and SaaS.

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Head of Engineering at NQB8 Limited

system-architecture.json

API Gateway Live

Idempotency Guard Cache Lock

Core Domain Engine Auto-scaling

PostgreSQL

Write Master

Read Replicas

Load Balanced

Event Bus

Redis/Kafka

Horizon Workers

Async Jobs

Telemetry

Fintech HealthTech PropTech GovTech Alumni Tech HR Tech Logistics

Technical Skills

The stack behind the systems

Production-proven tools from API design to deployment infrastructure.

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Backend & Languages

Core engineering stack

PHP 8.x PHP Laravel Yii2 Filament Symfony 6 RESTful API Design Symfony gRPC RESTful APIs Domain Modelling Event-Driven Architecture Event-Driven Arch State Machine Design

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Databases & Storage

Data persistence layer

PostgreSQL MySQL MongoDB Redis SQLite Aggregation Pipelines Replica Sets

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Queues & Messaging

Async & event systems

RabbitMQ Apache Kafka Laravel Horizon Supervisor Event Dispatching

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Distributed Systems & Integrations

Complex APIs & Integrations

Idempotent API Design Webhook Processing OAuth2 / SSO Distributed Transactions Data Reconciliation Multi-Tenant Architecture Stripe / Paystack APIs

🛠

Search & Indexing

Technical skills

Typesense Algolia (Laravel Scout) Elasticsearch

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Payments & Fintech

Technical skills

Paystack Stripe Braintree Virtual Accounts Tokenized Mandates Ledger-Style Reconciliation

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DevOps & Infrastructure

Build & deploy pipeline

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) GitHub Actions Docker Linux/Ubuntu GitHub Actions CI/CD DigitalOcean Linode Linux (Ubuntu) Laravel Octane Laravel Pulse

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Observability

Technical skills

Honeybadger Sentry Datadog (dd-trace) Laravel Telescope Spatie Health Checks

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Testing

Technical skills

PHPUnit Pest TDD Paratest

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Testing & Observability

Quality & monitoring

Datadog Telescope

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API Documentation

Technical skills

Scramble (OpenAPI) L5-Swagger

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Architecture & Ecosystem

Technical skills

Livewire Spatie Multitenancy Spatie Permission (RBAC) Feature Flags (GrowthBook/FeatBit) Cloudinary BunnyCDN Ably (Realtime) Twilio Google Calendar API

Work History

Where I've built things

A track record of ownership, promotion, and shipping in fully remote, distributed teams.

Senior Backend Developer

Jan 2025 – Sep 2026

Gathern

Working with a Saudi Hospitality & PropTech client on scalable backend infrastructure.

Backend Developer

Apr 2023 – Apr 2025

Clafiya

Built backend services for a HealthTech platform handling sensitive patient data.

Engineering Team Lead

Dec 2020 – Present

Nqb8

Promoted from Software Engineer. Led engineering teams to deliver high-quality web applications and APIs. Established strict architectural standards, defined GitHub branch rulesets, and automated CI/CD pipelines to ensure code quality and deployment reliability.

Head of Engineering

Dec 2020 – Present

NQB8 Limited

Progressed from Software Engineer to Engineering Team Lead to Head of Engineering. Directing engineering across logistics, residential SaaS, and government regulatory platforms.

Send24 (Logistics): Architected the complete logistics backend from initial commit to production; designed a dual-ledger wallet handling ~5,000 daily transactions with strict PostgreSQL transactional safeguards and zero-fault reconciliation.
Residifi (Residential Management): Built a multi-tenant residential platform from scratch using Laravel, Livewire Volt, and sub-millisecond Typesense full-text search.
CLRD (GovTech): Architected a microservice platform for government logistics regulation using RabbitMQ, Remita payment integrations, and multi-step courier CAC verification.
Engineering Leadership: Standardized CI/CD pipelines via GitHub Actions (PHPStan/Rector) across all microservices; established Agile ceremonies improving delivery velocity by ~20%.

Full Unabridged Details

Progressed from Software Engineer to Engineering Team Lead, and promoted to Head of Engineering (Jul 2026). Directing engineering across multiple product lines spanning logistics, government regulation, and residential management.

Send24 (Logistics Platform):
• Architected and shipped the entire logistics backend from initial commit to production, managing order creation, routing, automated driver assignment, and fulfillment.
• Designed a dual-ledger wallet system handling ~5,000 daily transactions with strict PostgreSQL transactional safeguards, ensuring zero-fault reconciliation and compliance with core accounting principles.
• Built a financial invoicing and reporting engine with automated VAT calculation, sequential numbering, and per-order billing status tracking.
• Engineered a WhatsApp-integrated order creation pipeline supporting geocoded addresses, base64 image uploads, session tracking, and automated payment notifications.
• Developed an operations dashboard with role-based access control (RBAC), Paystack payments, Google Geolocation, OTP authentication, and Dockerized queue workers.

Residifi (Residential Management Platform):
• Built a multi-tenant residential management system from scratch using Laravel, Livewire Volt, and Tailwind CSS v4.
• Engineered offline-aware, real-time UI components and integrated Typesense for sub-millisecond full-text search across resident records.

CLRD (Government Logistics & Regulation):
• Architected a microservice platform for government logistics regulation, using RabbitMQ to handle communication between separate accounts and payments services.
• Designed courier onboarding pipeline with multi-step registration, CAC business verification, vehicle/rider QR code generation, and Remita payment gateway integration with webhook handling.

Engineering Leadership & Quality:
• Standardized organizational CI/CD workflows via GitHub Actions across all microservices, automating static analysis (PHPStan/Rector), and implementing strict squash-merging protocols.
• Managed engineering quality through structured code reviews, pair programming, and mentoring. Established Agile/Scrum ceremonies that improved team delivery velocity by an estimated 20%.

Earlier Projects:
• Contributed core features for Axocheck (Paystack/Stripe/Braintree integrations, secure database models), WriteRight (content verification platform), and Drop24 (delivery API with wallet debit transactions).

Senior Backend Developer

Jan 2025 – Aug 2026

Squadio / Gathern

Embedded via Squadio into Gathern’s distributed engineering team — a Saudi hospitality/PropTech platform operating across microservices and a Yii2 monolith backed by MongoDB and gRPC, handling over 200,000 requests daily.

OTA & Pricing Orchestration: Engineered the OTA integration layer with Spatie LaravelData DTOs for concurrent availability and pricing orchestration, reducing booking failure rates by ~15%.
Bulk Pricing Engine: Designed the bulk offer and discount system in the pricing microservice with batch job pipelines, cutting pricing conflict errors by 25%.
Guest Arrival & Departure Chat: Implemented backend chat capabilities for hosts to schedule and dispatch automated arrival instructions and departure reminders with strict reservation stage validation.
Query & Performance Optimization: Optimized notification pipelines and resolved N+1 queries, significantly reducing database load, with test suites raising coverage from ~5% to ~90% on core services.

Full Unabridged Details

Embedded via Squadio into Gathern’s engineering team — a Saudi hospitality/PropTech platform operating across several microservices and a Yii2 monolith in a distributed architecture backed by MongoDB and gRPC, handling over 200,000 requests daily.
• Engineered the OTA (Online Travel Agency) integration layer, focusing on unit availability and pricing orchestration. Introduced Spatie LaravelData DTOs to handle concurrent pricing checks and refactored data aggregators to correctly process nested pricing structures, reducing booking failure rates by roughly 15%.
• Designed the bulk offer and discount management system in the pricing microservice, implementing batch job processing for multi-unit offer creation, cutting pricing conflict errors by 25%.
• Engineered backend chat capabilities for hosts to schedule and dispatch automated arrival instructions and departure reminders to guests with strict reservation lifecycle and stage validations.
• Optimized reservation notification pipelines and unit points aggregation logic. By resolving N+1 queries, implementing caching, and eager loading selective columns, significantly reduced memory footprint and database load.
• Integrated GrowthBook feature flagging to allow safe, conditional rollouts of new features (such as automated checkout reminders) across the platform.
• Implemented claims statistics and detail pages in the monolith and feedback service, including date-range filtering with caching, product-type classification, and comprehensive unit test suites raising coverage from ~5% to ~90% on key services.
• Optimized the unit points aggregation system in the search microservice, resolving data discrepancies between table and detail endpoints.
• Authored production test suites for the chat service, enhancing ChatSearchHelper and ConversationService with dependency injection patterns and MongoDB model isolation.

Backend Developer

Apr 2023 – Apr 2025

Clafiya Limited

Engineered HealthTech backend services and integrations handling sensitive patient records across high-compliance environments.

Wallet & Recurring Payouts: Engineered automated wallet top-up and recurring payment systems using tokenized payment mandates with rollback-safe HSA balance transfers across automated debit cycles.
HSA Spend Limits: Designed and implemented accruing spend limit enforcement for employer-sponsored Health Savings Accounts with sponsor-controlled toggles, monthly carryover logic, and audit checks.
Centralized Provider Processing: Refactored service provider payment processing into centralized, queue-driven workflows with Slack notification pipelines for failed transfers.
External Health Integrations: Built Kafka-driven consultation data synchronization, partner consultation APIs (medication, diagnostic orders, Google Calendar sync), and full-text search across 75+ models.

Comprehensive Portfolio

Want the complete technical breakdown?

My complete resume details system architecture schemas, unredacted metrics, and deliverables across all 15+ production applications.

🎓

Bachelor of Science — Computer Science

University of Ibadan

Feb 2016 – Feb 2020 · Ibadan, Nigeria

Freelance & Independent

Products I've owned

End-to-end platforms built from schema to deployment — sole engineer to production.

Send24 (formerly Dilivva)

Head of Engineering / Lead Architect

High-volume urban logistics required automated order routing, driver dispatch, instant WhatsApp ordering, and zero-fault financial accounting across thousands of daily transactions.

Laravel, PostgreSQL (dual-ledger wallet), RabbitMQ, Docker, Paystack, WhatsApp API, Google Geolocation, Laravel Pulse, Honeybadger.
Handled 5,000+ daily transactions with zero-fault reconciliation; automated end-to-end VAT invoicing with Google Drive sync; reduced customer support overhead via automated WhatsApp payment confirmations.

Laravel PostgreSQL RabbitMQ Supervisor Paystack Ledger-Style Reconciliation Docker Laravel Pulse Honeybadger

Internal / Private

Residifi

Head of Engineering / Sole Developer

Residential estate management required offline-aware, real-time UI components for visitor access code generation, tenant-scoped data isolation, and instant resident lookups.

Laravel, Spatie Multitenancy, Livewire Volt, Tailwind CSS v4, Typesense, Alpine.js.
Delivered offline-aware visitor verification; sub-millisecond resident record search via Typesense; seamless tenant onboarding with Excel batch imports.

Laravel PostgreSQL Typesense Docker Livewire Spatie Multitenancy

Internal / Private

CLRD Regulatory Platform

Engineering Team Lead / Architect

State government logistics regulation required strict identity verification, courier company licensing workflows, QR asset generation, and statutory revenue collection.

Microservices (Accounts & Payments), RabbitMQ, CAC Business Verification, QR Code generation, Remita Payment Gateway.
Streamlined multi-step courier accreditation with cached CAC verification; automated government revenue collection via Remita webhooks with PDF receipt generation.

Laravel RESTful API Design PostgreSQL RabbitMQ Docker

Internal / Private

Venspace

Lead Backend Architect

Needed a multi-tenant space booking marketplace with custom domain support, finite state machine lifecycle for bookings, and dual-ledger escrow wallet tracking.

Laravel, Spatie Multitenancy, State Machine Design, PostgreSQL, Redis, Paystack, Ably (Realtime), BunnyCDN, Honeybadger, Laravel Pulse.
Unified booking lifecycle state machine; dual-ledger wallet system supporting virtual accounts and dispute resolution; real-time booking updates via Ably.

Laravel State Machine Design PostgreSQL Redis Paystack Laravel Pulse Honeybadger Spatie Multitenancy Ably (Realtime)

Internal / Private

Laurel Checks

Backend Engineer

Employee background verification required asynchronous bulk employee imports via Excel, idempotent document synchronization, and automated guarantor report generation.

Laravel, Livewire, Spatie Permission (RBAC), Maatwebsite Excel, Cloudinary idempotent sync, DomPDF, Spatie Health Checks.
Chunk-based Excel parsing for massive employee batches with per-row error tracking; idempotent checksum uploads to Cloudinary; automated referee PDF generation with approval workflows.

Laravel PostgreSQL Spatie Health Checks Livewire Spatie Permission (RBAC) Cloudinary

Internal / Private

Alma

Backend Architect

Building a multi-tenant alumni platform API supporting association-scoped data isolation, ledger-style dues accounting, and auto-generated API documentation across 90+ endpoints.

Laravel, Spatie Multitenancy, Paystack ledger workflows, Spatie Permission (RBAC), Scramble (OpenAPI), Cloudinary, Laravel Pulse.
Role-based access control across 90+ endpoints; event-driven subscription lifecycles with dues tracking; auto-generated interactive OpenAPI documentation via Scramble.

Laravel PostgreSQL Paystack Laravel Pulse Scramble (OpenAPI) Spatie Multitenancy Spatie Permission (RBAC)

Internal / Private

Fufila

Engineering Team Lead / Architect

Needed a vendor fulfillment platform that efficiently matches orders with nearby vendors without relying on expensive Google Maps API calls.

Laravel, PostgreSQL, Redis, Uber H3 Hexagonal Hierarchical Spatial Index.
Cut spatial calculation overhead and eradicated recurring map API query costs using Uber H3 hexagonal spatial indexing.

Laravel Domain Modelling PostgreSQL Redis

Internal / Private

Technical Writing

How I think in public

Writing about backend systems, engineering judgment, and production lessons learned the hard way.

The Case Against Rewrites: How I Evolved a 5-Year-Old Backend Codebase (And Why You Probably Shouldn’t Rewrite Yours Either)

dev.to Mar 2026

A deep dive into modernising legacy systems incrementally without breaking production or losing years...

Read article

The Case Against Rewrites: How I Evolved a 5-Year-Old Backend Codebase (And Why You Probably Shouldn’t Rewrite Yours Either)

dev.to Mar 2026

A deep dive into modernising legacy systems incrementally without breaking production or losing years...

Read article

How to Vibe Code Your MVP in Weeks Using AI-Assisted Development

dev.to Jan 2026

We need to stop pretending that "doing it right" means taking three months to ship a CRUD app. In...

Read article

Read all articles on Dev.to →

Testimonials

What people say

Olushola is a rockstar backend dev! We worked together and I was blown away by his skills, work ethic, and team spirit. He's dependable, self-motivated, and always up for a challenge. Whether it was t...

Read full on LinkedIn →

Goodness Ehizode, MBA

Olusola, a resilient Laravel Backend Engineer joined the team at a crucial point where he had to read, understand, develop and manage another engineers code in a very short time. Sola's impact to the...

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Enoch Oyerinde

Olusola is an excellent Laravel Developer. His focus keeps everything moving smoothly. Olusola is an important contributor to many of our projects. He consistently delivers high quality work products,...

Read full on LinkedIn →

Jenroluwa Sotunsa

Sola is an awesome developer who picks up any opportunity to learn something new. He's one hell of a developer to work with.

Ibiniyi Obikoya

Read full on LinkedIn →

Goodness Ehizode, MBA

Read full on LinkedIn →

Enoch Oyerinde

Read full on LinkedIn →

Jenroluwa Sotunsa

Sola is an awesome developer who picks up any opportunity to learn something new. He's one hell of a developer to work with.

Ibiniyi Obikoya

About Me

Engineering with intent

I build the systems that power products people depend on. Over five years of building in the trenches of production backend engineering, I've architected and shipped 15+ production APIs using Laravel, Yii2, and Symfony across fintech, healthcare, logistics, hospitality, and SaaS.

My work lives at the intersection of domain complexity and engineering discipline — with direct ownership of microservice decomposition, financial workflow engines, state machines, and event-driven integrations.

I've been the sole engineer who ships, the team lead who unblocks, and the architect who thinks three steps ahead. Whether it's a dual-ledger wallet system, government logistics microservices, or a healthcare payments engine — I take ownership of outcomes, not just tasks.

5++

Years Experience

15++

Production APIs

Industry Domains

90%

Test Coverage Gains

Good backend engineering is invisible. Users never think about the API, the queue, or the state machine — they just trust the product.

Domains I've shipped in

Fintech HealthTech Logistics PropTech & Hospitality GovTech SaaS Alumni Tech HR Tech

Impact & Metrics

Numbers that tell the story

Measurable outcomes from production systems, across years of engineering ownership.

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15++

Production APIs

Shipped across 6 domains

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90%

Test Coverage

Up from ~5% on key services

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Industry Domains

Fintech · Health · Logistics & more

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Years Remote

Distributed teams globally

Laravel ✦ Microservices ✦ Event-Driven Architecture ✦ Kafka ✦ Financial Engineering ✦ MongoDB ✦ TDD ✦ State Machines ✦ Multi-Tenancy ✦ Docker ✦ Laravel ✦ Microservices ✦ Event-Driven Architecture ✦ Kafka ✦ Financial Engineering ✦ MongoDB ✦ TDD ✦ State Machines ✦ Multi-Tenancy ✦ Docker ✦

Contact

Let's build something remarkable

Hiring for a backend role? Let's talk about your team and what you're building. Have a specific problem — payments, multi-tenancy, architecture, performance? Bring it.

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