Solomon (Barine) Akpuru
Senior Software Engineer
Experience
Apr 2025 - Oct 2025
7 monthsFounder and Lead Engineer
RechargePadi
- Built a bills payment platform supporting airtime, data, cable, and electricity payments using Ruby on Rails and Nuxt.js, integrated with VTpass and Flutterwave APIs
- Built modular APIs and payment adapters for multiple bill types, streamlining integration of future providers and reducing onboarding time for new services by over 60%
- Conducted market and user research, identifying user trust and brand preference for existing players (Opay, Moniepoint)
- Operated the startup part-time while working as an independent contractor, balancing product development and client commitments
- Gained valuable insights into fintech market saturation, user acquisition challenges, and monetization strategies
- Technologies: NuxtJS, Typescript, Ruby on Rails, Postgres, TailwindCSS
Oct 2024 - Present
1 year 4 monthsFounder and Lead Engineer
Toucan
- Founded and led development of Toucan, a social media app focused on close connections, realtime interaction, and user privacy — rejecting data harvesting and algorithmic manipulation
- Designed and built a real-time chat system using WebSockets and Phoenix Channels, enabling private one-to-one conversations with custom presence tracking and seamless message delivery
- Integrated secure authentication flows utilizing JWT and OAuth (Google, GitHub), enabling users to seamlessly access the platform with a 99.9% uptime and complete data protection
- Built a responsive, theme-aware frontend with dark/light mode toggles, TailwindCSS, and Redux Toolkit for global state management — ensuring a modern, fast, and user-friendly interface
- Technologies: React, TypeScript, Elixir Phoenix, Postgres, WebSockets, Background Jobs
May 2024 - Jan 2025
9 monthsWeb Developer
Digital Factory
- Improved Core Web Vitals by 20% and reduced page load times by 24% through performance profiling and frontend optimization
- Modernized the codebase by upgrading deprecated dependencies and replacing unsupported packages with actively maintained alternatives
- Migrated the file management system from Paperclip to Active Storage, improving maintainability and compatibility with modern Rails versions
- Refactored legacy code into modular components, increasing readability and easing future feature development
- Implemented comprehensive RSpec tests and integrated CI pipelines, improving code reliability and deployment confidence
- Enhanced security by enforcing stricter parameter validation and upgrading authentication libraries
- Collaborated cross-functionally with designers and backend engineers to ensure consistent UX and stable API integration
- Technologies: Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, AWS, Nginx, Postgres, SCSS
Nov 2023 - Feb 2024
4 monthsSoftware Engineer
Savasana AI
- Built a Chrome extension that increased support agent productivity by 50%, automating repetitive tasks and streamlining ticket responses
- Designed a serverless backend architecture using AWS Lambda and API Gateway, reducing infrastructure costs by 23% and improving response times by 12%
- Integrated Firebase for real-time data synchronization and user authentication, ensuring secure and seamless access
- Developed modular, reusable components in TypeScript with Plasmo and Express, improving maintainability and scalability
- Set up CI/CD workflows to automate builds, testing, and deployment, accelerating release cycles
- Collaborated with product and QA teams to validate performance gains and ensure smooth rollout across user environments
Jan 2023 - Present
3 years 1 monthSoftware Engineer
Consulting
- Delivered property rental SaaS platform serving 2K+ landlords and tenants, featuring real-time search with 80% faster query performance through optimized indexing and caching strategies
- Built crypto-fiat exchange infrastructure processing $30K+ monthly volume across 5+ cryptocurrencies, implementing fraud detection reducing chargebacks
- Architected e-commerce platform for digital art marketplace, integrating Stripe payments and achieving 99.95% transaction success rate with automated reconciliation
- Developed a recommendation engine increasing user engagement by 32% through collaborative filtering algorithms analyzing 8K+ user interactions
- Technologies: Laravel, React, NextJS, NuxtJS, Ruby on Rails, TailwindCSS, Postgres, MongoDB, Redis
May 2021 - Apr 2023
2 yearsSoftware Engineer II
Syntrix
- Built and shipped new features in a Django + React app, improving engagement and usability
- Automated heavy tasks with background jobs and workflows, boosting performance
- Managed email pipelines for reliable transactional and bulk notifications
- Enhanced accessibility (ARIA, semantic HTML, contrast), achieving WCAG compliance
- Containerized services with Docker and CI/CD via GitHub Actions, cutting release time
- Worked across Node.js and Rails services, integrating Kafka and Prometheus for event monitoring
- Technologies: Python, Ruby on Rails, NodeJS, Django, React, TailwindCSS, Docker, GitHub Actions, MySQL, Kafka, Prometheus
Jul 2020 - May 2021
11 monthsSoftware Engineer I
Syntrix
- Implemented secure authentication and OAuth integrations, and used Sidekiq for background jobs like message delivery, notifications, and scheduled tasks, reducing latency
- Optimized PostgreSQL queries and introduced Redis caching, cutting response times on frequently accessed endpoints
- Enhanced UI/UX with reusable, responsive Next.js and Material UI components
- Collaborated on system architecture to improve scalability and reliability while maintaining comprehensive RSpec and Jest test suites for stability
- Technologies: Ruby on Rails, Next.js, Material UI, PostgreSQL, WebSockets, Redis, Sidekiq, OAuth
Summary
Full-stack Software Engineer experienced in designing and building scalable SaaS, fintech, and real-time communication platforms. Integrated global payment systems such as Stripe, Flutterwave, Paystack, and NowPayments to power secure transactions and automated reconciliation. Skilled in React, TypeScript, Elixir Phoenix, Ruby on Rails, and Laravel, with a proven record of collaborating asynchronously with distributed teams across US and EU time zones. Passionate about building reliable, user-centered systems that drive measurable business impact.
Skills
- Frontend: React, Next.js, Nuxt.js, Typescript, Javascript, Tailwindcss
- Backend: Elixir Phoenix, Ruby On Rails, Laravel, Express
- Databases: Postgresql, Mongodb, Redis, Mysql
- Payments & Apis: Stripe, Flutterwave, Paystack, Nowpayments, Vtpass
- Devops & Cloud: Aws, Docker, Github Actions, Nginx, Hostinger
- Real-time Systems: Websockets, Phoenix Channels, Redis Pub/sub
- Collaboration: Github, Jira, Slack, Agile & Async Workflows
Languages
English
NativeSpanish
ElementaryEducation
Oct 2016 - Jun 2023
University of Port Harcourt
B.Eng · Petroleum and Gas Engineering · Port Harcourt, Nigeria
Certifications & licenses
Certificate Of Completion - Full Stack Web Development
microverse
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