The Journey
Early Foundations: Wyzetalk (2012-2015)
My journey began in Cape Town, South Africa, where I joined Wyzetalk as a full-stack developer after cutting my teeth as a junior at a bespoke software development house. This was before Slack and Microsoft Teams dominated the enterprise communication space, and we were building something revolutionary - a comprehensive enterprise communication platform connecting frontline workers with corporate systems.
Working with AngularJS on the frontend and Node.js Express APIs on the backend, I quickly discovered my passion for backend systems. What truly shaped my career trajectory was our early adoption of microservices architecture using Apache Thrift. While most companies were still building monolithic applications, we were already decomposing our system into specialized, interoperable services.
This experience taught me invaluable lessons about market timing, global competition, and the critical importance of scalable architecture. More importantly, it ignited my fascination with distributed systems and laid the foundation for everything that followed.
Global Scale: iflix (2016-2018)
The next chapter brought me to iflix, where I joined the payments team and experienced what it truly meant to build systems at global scale. We were processing payments across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, integrating with Apple Pay, Google Pay, and mobile operators across dozens of countries.
This is where I discovered AWS as far more than just an EC2 instance provider. Using Lambda functions with API Gateway, we architected a serverless infrastructure capable of handling massive payment volumes. Kinesis Streams enabled real-time payment processing, and I learned firsthand how to design systems that operate 24/7 - because when you're serving customers across multiple time zones, downtime simply isn't an option.
The complexity of handling diverse payment methods, currencies, and regulatory requirements across varied markets taught me the critical importance of robust error handling, comprehensive monitoring, and graceful degradation in distributed systems.
SaaS: More Than Just a Buzzword
In 2019, I joined Key Telematics in Cape Town, drawn by the opportunity to build a multi-tenant SaaS telematics platform that processes massive data volumes with an emphasis on zero downtime.
Initially, I viewed telematics as a less-than-fascinating industry. The appeal lay in working with low-level TCP/UDP traffic, building custom interfaces and firmware, processing big data, and gaining hands-on experience with large-scale system architecture. The reality exceeded my expectations. A comprehensive SaaS telematics product encompasses far more than just big data and hardware integrations. It requires a fundamental mindset shift from building bespoke solutions for specific requirements to identifying common patterns and creating generic solutions that adapt to user needs through customization and configuration.
This platform requires numerous specialized codebases covering features that entire companies dedicate themselves to:
- Multi-channel notifications (push, in-app, email, SMS, WhatsApp)
- Generic and custom third-party integrations
- Task and workflow management
- Distributed scheduling services
- Media ingestion and streaming pipelines
- Advanced reporting and business intelligence
- Real-time analytics and dashboards
- High-performance time-series data storage
- First Notice of Loss (FNOL) processing
- Comprehensive access management (native, third-party, SSO)
With over 78 service repositories and 10 internal libraries, every day presents new challenges and opportunities. It's impossible to get bored when working across such a diverse and complex ecosystem.
The Acquisition Story: South Africa to the United Kingdom (2019-Present)
Joining Key Telematics was meant to be challenging - an opportunity to venture into uncharted technical territory. What I didn't anticipate was that this decision would fundamentally alter my life's trajectory. In 2022, Radius Payment Solutions, a UK-based company, acquired Key Telematics.
This acquisition was more than a simple business transaction; it became my gateway to international opportunities. Radius recognized the value of our technical team and offered visa sponsorship for UK relocation. It was a leap of faith that transformed both my career trajectory and personal life in ways I never imagined.
Today, I lead the technical architecture of our multi-tenant SaaS platform, serving clients across global markets. The system processes real-time vehicle tracking, driver behavior analysis, and comprehensive fleet management for thousands of vehicles, all built on a robust foundation of AWS services, TypeScript, and infrastructure-as-code automation.
Technical Evolution
Over 15 years, I've witnessed and actively participated in the evolution of backend engineering. From pioneering microservices before they became mainstream, to embracing serverless architectures, to mastering infrastructure-as-code - each technological shift has deepened and refined my expertise.
My decade-plus journey with AWS spans the entire ecosystem: from Lambda and API Gateway during the early serverless revolution, to sophisticated data streaming with Kinesis, to modern container orchestration with ECS. My 12+ years with TypeScript and Node.js have allowed me to witness the language's evolution from a Microsoft experiment to the backbone of modern backend development and my daily toolkit.
Beyond the technologies themselves, what truly drives me is the challenge of building systems that scale across multiple dimensions - not just traffic volume, but team size, feature complexity, and evolving business requirements. Multi-tenancy, infrastructure automation, and developer experience represent the areas where I've concentrated my deepest expertise and passion.
Looking Forward
From Cape Town to the UK, from full-stack beginnings to backend specialization, from startup environments to enterprise scale - this journey has transcended mere code writing. It's been about solving complex technical challenges, architecting systems that create real impact, and continuously evolving alongside an ever-changing technology landscape.
Today, I bring this multifaceted experience to every project: the startup mindset of rapid iteration and agile development, the enterprise understanding of scale, reliability, and operational excellence, and the international perspective gained from building systems that serve diverse global audiences.