Senior Software Engineer & Systems Architect
I design and build scalable platforms, connected services, mobile applications, and real-time systems across backend, cloud, and the internet.
Hi, I'm Cipher Sage - a Computer Science graduate and software engineer with experience building fintech systems, mobile banking apps, integration platforms, digital payment systems, and distributed backend infrastructure.
My work sits at the intersection of software engineering, systems architecture, networking, and platform design. I build systems that allow applications, services, and devices to communicate reliably through REST, GraphQL, WebSockets, MQTT, and other network protocols.
Primary Focus
Connected systems
platform communication, reliability, and architecture
Delivery Range
Mobile to cloud
client apps, services, integrations, and infrastructure
Working Style
Systems-first
protocol choices, contracts, and observability matter
systems.map
runtime.flow
I am a senior engineer with a background in Computer Science and a career spanning integration engineering, Android engineering, iOS engineering, fintech platforms, startup systems, and mobile product delivery. The throughline is connected software: systems that exchange data with partners, internal services, mobile clients, and event-driven infrastructure.
I have built applications that handle financial transactions, third-party integrations, mobile wallets, distributed services, real-time communication, backend infrastructure, and service-to-service communication. I do not think about products as isolated screens or isolated endpoints. I think about how the whole system behaves when multiple clients, APIs, services, and external dependencies interact.
Financial transactions
Third-party integrations
Mobile wallets
Distributed services
Real-time communication
Backend infrastructure
Service-to-service communication
Modern software is not just code running in isolation. It is an ecosystem of clients, APIs, services, brokers, databases, devices, and networks communicating continuously. Strong engineering requires understanding how systems are structured, how services communicate, how failures propagate, and how architecture supports scale, maintainability, and integration.
Modern software is not code running alone. It is clients, APIs, services, brokers, databases, devices, and networks communicating continuously.
I care about how systems are decomposed, how contracts are shaped, and how teams can evolve services independently.
Protocol choice, payload design, latency, retries, and idempotency all shape reliability and system behavior.
Observability is part of design. If communication paths fail silently, the architecture is incomplete.
A scalable platform handles growth in load, features, partners, and engineering teams without collapsing into coupling.
I work as both builder and architect, reasoning from UI and mobile clients all the way down to transport and inter-service communication.
Across transport integrations, regulated fintech, mobile banking, and startup platform design, the common pattern has been software that must communicate clearly with other software, services, and operational environments.
Tospay Ltd
Worked on integration systems involving SGR bytecode, translating lower-level protocol data into RESTful interfaces consumable by third-party applications integrating with SGR services.
Built bridges between specialized transport protocols and modern API-based platforms.
Gladys Technologies
Worked on a mobile application and third-party APIs that helped power a fintech platform whose product maturity contributed to Gladys being licensed by the Central Bank of Kenya and later supporting wallet-driven payment experiences in Kenya.
Built product and integration layers in a regulated environment where reliability and compliance both mattered.
Alsoug
Built MyCashi, a digital payments and e-wallet style product in South Sudan serving local financial use cases such as transfers, bill pay, top-ups, and wallet-oriented mobile finance.
Designed mobile payment software for environments where connectivity and infrastructure are not guaranteed.
Power Financial Wellness
Developed and maintained Power iOS Kenya, Power iOS Uganda, and FCB Bank Zambia iOS with emphasis on secure financial mobile experiences, maintainable architecture, and stable client networking.
Built native banking and finance experiences across multiple markets and product contexts.
NCBA
Led or heavily contributed to CarDuka mobile while also working on AuctionDuka, combining product engineering, architecture ownership, and close collaboration with backend and business systems.
Owned product-facing mobile architecture while coordinating with wider banking and marketplace systems.
I design systems where communication is a first-class architectural concern. Some problems need the simplicity and compatibility of REST. Others benefit from GraphQL's flexible query model. Real-time experiences may rely on WebSockets or MQTT, while service boundaries may use synchronous APIs, asynchronous events, or background workers depending on latency, reliability, and failure behavior.
I work with REST APIs, GraphQL APIs, WebSockets, MQTT, background workers, event-driven messaging, real-time updates, and protocol-aware integrations. I care about how mobile apps communicate with backend services, how backends communicate with third-party services, how microservices communicate with each other, and how communication flows stay observable and reliable over time.
mobile-client -> gateway -> internal services -> workers -> realtime channels
request-response and event-driven models both matter. The decision depends on system behavior, not preference.
Client-server communication
Designing mobile and web clients that speak cleanly to backend services through well-shaped APIs and resilient networking behavior.
Service-to-service contracts
Defining internal interfaces that let services evolve independently without turning the platform into a tightly coupled chain.
Synchronous and asynchronous flows
Balancing request-response simplicity with events, workers, and queues where latency, isolation, or durability demand it.
State propagation
Using real-time channels, event-driven updates, and careful data ownership so distributed systems stay coherent under change.
This is where architecture becomes operational reality: choosing the right communication style, exposing safe contracts, integrating heterogeneous systems, and keeping the platform understandable as complexity grows.
REST
Resource-oriented interfaces
Stateless communication
HTTP semantics
Third-party integrations
Backend service interfaces
GraphQL
Schema-driven contracts
Flexible client querying
Typed interfaces
Reduced over-fetching and under-fetching
Frontend/backend coordination
WebSockets
Real-time updates
Live dashboards
Delivery tracking
Notifications
Presence-aware systems
MQTT
Lightweight messaging
Pub/sub distribution
Device and mobile-friendly delivery
Real-time event fan-out
Constrained network efficiency
TCP / UDP
Reliability versus speed tradeoffs
Connection-oriented versus connectionless delivery
Latency and ordering implications
Transport-aware architecture decisions
Protocol behavior under load
System Integration
Translating between protocols
External vendor integrations
Internal service contracts
Interoperability boundaries
Communication as infrastructure
The value of this stack is not breadth for its own sake. It is the ability to move across mobile, backend, integration, communication, and architecture layers while keeping the whole system in view.
The strongest signal in my work is not just what was shipped, but how each product had to coordinate communication across users, clients, services, and external systems.
Featured project
Founder-led neighborhood commerce platform for delivery-oriented local services.
Problem: Connect customers and neighborhood vendors through a mobile and backend platform that can coordinate local commerce reliably.
Role: Founder, product architect, and systems builder from concept through implementation.
Systems angle: Strong proof of connected system design: mobile clients, backend orchestration, location-aware discovery, and real-time service coordination.
Featured project
Digital payments and e-wallet style product serving local financial use cases in South Sudan.
Problem: Support transfers, wallet flows, and mobile financial tasks in an environment where reliability and usability must hold under uneven infrastructure.
Role: Android engineer focused on product delivery, reliability, and payment-oriented user flows.
Systems angle: A mobile financial platform where communication reliability, transaction confidence, and resilient client behavior are core product requirements.
Featured project
NCBA-backed mobile product at the intersection of marketplace experiences and banking-adjacent workflows.
Problem: Deliver a product experience that coordinates users, mobile flows, and backend capabilities inside a larger financial ecosystem.
Role: Mobile engineer and architecture owner contributing to product direction and delivery.
Systems angle: Product architecture had to coordinate mobile clients with backend and business systems without losing maintainability or delivery speed.
Featured project
Marketplace-oriented product work inside NCBA's wider digital platform ecosystem.
Problem: Expand the platform into marketplace interactions while staying aligned with banking-grade reliability and broader organizational systems.
Role: Engineer contributing to product engineering and system-aware feature delivery.
Systems angle: Combined product-facing interfaces with the realities of service contracts, backend dependencies, and evolving platform boundaries.
I founded Bebea, a startup focused on building neighborhood commerce infrastructure. That experience is proof that I can design from first principles, own architecture decisions, move from concept to product, and think beyond tickets into operations, product mechanics, and business impact.
Bebea sharpened my ability to think like both engineer and operator. It required product judgment, architecture ownership, communication design, and execution discipline across mobile clients, backend workflows, and delivery-oriented platform behavior.
Design from first principles
Own architecture decisions
Move from concept to product
Think beyond tickets into systems, operations, and business impact
I actively use AI in my workflow for debugging, iteration, architecture exploration, code acceleration, and reducing feedback loops. AI does not replace engineering judgment. It amplifies it.
ai.multiplier
Step 1
Debugging complex issue chains across clients and services
Step 2
Reducing iteration time during implementation and refinement
Step 3
Using AI to explore architecture options before committing to a path
Step 4
Accelerating repetitive coding and scaffolding work
Step 5
Compressing feedback loops while keeping engineering judgment in control
Engineering judgment
The tool changes. The responsibility stays with the engineer.
The value of AI is speed with context, not speed without thought. I use it to widen exploration, accelerate delivery, and tighten loops around debugging and architecture decisions while keeping quality and system behavior in focus.