About Me

Implemented key enhancements to an ADSL and VoIP provider for one of South Africa's top 4 banks, developing both backend services and frontend web interfaces. This provided banking customers with complimentary ADSL data allocations when selecting this provider as their ISP. Additionally, the project included a VoIP solution featuring a mobile application that enabled free peer-to-peer calling, complemented by a flexible minute-based billing system for external network communications (GSM, PSTN).

Implemented and later architected a comprehensive suite of banking application frameworks and microservices architecture that powers a leading bank's digital banking platform. This enterprise-scale system serves millions of customers throughout Africa, maintaining robust performance while processing tens of thousands of concurrent sessions. The architecture incorporates high-availability principles, distributed data management, and advanced caching strategies to ensure 99.99% uptime for critical financial transactions.

Designed and implemented an enterprise-grade application framework that revolutionized cross-functional software development within the organization. This architectural solution empowered individual business units to independently develop and maintain their domain-specific application flows while ensuring UI consistency and adherence to brand standards through centralized governance. By adopting a Micro-Frontends approach with clear boundaries, teams could deploy their features independently, significantly reducing release dependencies and improving time-to-market for critical features while maintaining the cohesive user experience essential for the organization's brand.

Architected and implemented a messaging platform that initially consumed the existing real-time notification system for banking transactions and account activities, using push notifications instead of SMS, which saved the bank millions in network fees. Subsequently enhanced the platform by enabling secure authenticated conversations between customers and banking representatives, then incorporated a peer-to-peer chat and payment capability, allowing customers to conduct financial transactions directly with contacts through a secure communication channel.

Architected and implemented an AI-powered conversational banking solution using Amazon Lex, enabling automated customer service for routine banking inquiries and transactions. The architecture integrated with the existing Banking Messaging platform through an API layer, providing contextual handoffs between automated and human support channels. By extending the Micro-Frontends architectural principles, the solution featured a modular framework that empowered business units to independently develop and deploy domain-specific conversation flows while maintaining centralized governance.

Architected a sustainability feature within the bank's ecosystem that enables customers to quantify their carbon footprint based on transaction history. Designed a comprehensive technical architecture comprising API services and well-designed database models. The solution applies sophisticated categorization algorithms to transaction data, mapping financial activities to their corresponding environmental impact. The offering includes interactive educational components and a donation mechanism allowing customers to contribute directly to verified environmental organizations for carbon offsetting.

Architected an enterprise-grade payroll management solution for commercial banking clients. Designed a comprehensive technical architecture featuring secure API services and well-designed database models. The system enables businesses to efficiently create and manage customizable payroll schedules (monthly, bi-weekly, or weekly), process bulk payments with automated tax calculations, and generate comprehensive compliance reports. Implemented robust validation rules ensuring adherence to South African tax regulations and labor laws, while maintaining seamless integration with the bank's infrastructure for secure payment execution.

Designed and deployed a scalable e-commerce website (fromthehart.co.za) for educational resource distribution. Implemented a WordPress solution with WooCommerce integration and Payfast payment gateway for seamless transactions. Architected a high-availability AWS infrastructure leveraging EC2 with auto-scaling capabilities, RDS for database management, Application Load Balancer for traffic distribution, and CloudFront CDN for optimized content delivery. This enabled my wife, who is a teacher, to sell her teaching resources online.

Architect, designed and developed this website as a professional portfolio and technology showcase, combining modern front-end architecture with cloud-based infrastructure. Leveraging Vue.js/Nuxt for component-driven development and AWS for scalable hosting. The implementation features responsive design principles and optimized performance. Explore the blog section for more info behind this project's development.