Experience

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  Hoërskool jan van riebeeck (as student)

  Jan 2016 - Nov 2017

  Each matric student council member chose or was assigned a portfolio (subdivision of the school) for them to manage. Furthermore each portfolio had the chance to seek members to help run it. The more members the quicker things get done, but the more difficult it becomes to manage people. Portfolio heads are left to make all operational decisions on their own.My first choice was the Tech Portfolio, because with my combined knowledge and experience, technology was my strongest suit. The portfolio is responsible for providing, setting up and managing the necessary sound and lighting reinforcement for school events. This covers almost literally every event the school hosts (swimming galas, athletics days, interschool rugby matches, plays and cultural performances) as well as a lot of day-to-day operations (weekly hall gatherings and other announcements). The events covered could take up to 2 hours and 6 trained students to set up. Although this was a very specialised task requiring a lot of effort, the real difficulty came in with the live managing of the events' tech. Live tech management required high-level thinking and quick decision making under stressful circumstances. There was only so much the regular techies could do. When something went wrong during an event, it was entirely up to the live tech managers to devise and implement a solution as quickly as possible. There is nothing an audience hates more than "technical issues". Because of the large amounts of stress caused, there were very few students that were up to the task of live tech management. Show less I was the sole techie of the school's drama group. Apart from rehearsing with the group, I was tasked with setting up, adjusting, recabling, focussing, fixing and even building lights for the stage the group performed on. This was no easy job, especially for one person, but I managed with the help of the cast. On the nights of performance at the ATKV Tienertoneel Durbanville Regionals, the lights created an absolutely stunning effect and greatly helped the director tell his story. I personally achieved a gold certificate for lighting design and silver for lighting management. The production as a whole achieved a gold certificate. At the finale, we achieved second place (out of the 22 regional participants), beating schools with larger casts and much higher tech budgets, like Durbanville, Stellenbosch, Stellenberg and Paul Roos.Furthermore, we were nominated as one of the top 15 production of all participants (South Africa and Namibia). This put us through to the National Finals that took place at Artscape in October. Adapting to the new lighting console and general lighting setup at Artscape was no joke, but I managed. We went through to the final top 5. The production was nominated for best handling of technical aspects.At the end of the year, our school awarded us the prize of "Culture newsmaker of the year". Show less The matric farewell committee was a group of 15 learners, elected by their peers basically to organise the matric farewell (the grade above; not our own). In reality the committee did much more than just the organisation of the huge event. It was also responsible for collecting all the funds necessary (~R150 000). This meant that the committee was in charge of every single for-profit event of the school.Except for participating in general committee discussion and voting, I was also in charge of all tech-related decisions as well as oversight and execution of sound and lighting management at all Committee-ran events. Show less

  • Head of Tech Portfolio

    Oct 2016 - Nov 2017

  • Lighting Specialist (Drama Group)

    May 2017 - Oct 2017

  • Co-Head of Matric Farewell Committee

    Jan 2016 - Sept 2016
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  Ubereats

  Oct 2017 - Feb 2018

  Driver

  I worked part time delivering food through UberEats. The job entailed driving to various restaurants in Cape Town, making a pickup and delivering to customers. The job had quite some pressure as both the restaurant and customer could live track me while driving. No slacking allowed.

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  Skillup tutors

  Mar 2018 - Dec 2018

  Tutor

  I regularly tutored via a service called SkillUp. Tutors are allowed to register their services (after a vetting process and interview for determining competence by a SkillUp representative). Students can then browse through tutors and pick the one they feel most comfortable with. I very quickly gained quite a few students and filled up my timetable.I mostly tutored Matric mathematics and university-level Computer Science.

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  Absa aliens

  Jun 2018 - Jun 2018

  Intern

  I interned at ABSA’s tech innovation wing, called Aliens. The interns were split into teams and each assigned the task to come up with an idea and implement it within the two weeks. My team worked on an access control suite called Clubeau (details on my company website). The service had a RESTful API, web client and Android client, all with different use cases. Implementing the idea was a challenging piece of work, but in the end we finished a fully functioning proof of concept.During the internship the team did morningly standups and extensively used git and Trello to manage Clubeau’s progress. Every member was to some degree involved in every aspect of Clubeau, but I was for the most part responsible for the API.Technologies used: Android, Java, PHP, RESTful API, Linux Server, Agile Development Show less

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  Mwr infosecurity

  Jul 2018 - Jul 2018

  Software engineering intern

  MWR InfoSecurity is an international tech company that specialises in information security. The business is split into two distinct wings: consultancy and development. The former is tasked with attempting to break into a client’s systems and write a report on what features of their system is unsafe. The latter is creation of the solution to these security threats. I was flown up to their South African headquarters to intern at the development department. The time I spent there got me some great first-hand experience of what it’s like to work in the information security industry.The project I was tasked with did not directly involve working on MWR’s systems, however it did focus a lot on technologies used in the industry. Because of the non-disclosure agreement they had me sign, I cannot disclose what exactly my project entailed. I can however say that I learned much more than I was expecting to and my time there feels like the equivalent of passing a course.Technologies used: NoSQL, ElasticSearch, Kibana, Python, Sentiment Analysis, Linux Server Show less

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  Aci worldwide

  Nov 2018 - Feb 2019

  Software engineering intern

  ACI Worldwide is a massive 40-year-old tech corporation specialising in the payments industry and has a well-established international brand. I was hired as an intern at the Cape Town office for the Summer holidays. Working at ACI was my first in-depth exposure to serious big corporate culture. Bureaucracy, code reviews, programming standards, sprint standups and project managers to report everything to. I was thrown into an old, distributed multi-million LoC project with multiple languages as components, told to figure out how it works and given a list of enhancements to implement. The other employees were helpful, but more than most of the work was mine to bear. None the less, after I was settled in properly, I starting closing tickets at a rapid pace. So much so, I completed my project well before the PM’s ETR. I was asked to join another team and assist them in their tasks until the end of my contract. The enhancements I did on my originally assigned project have since been released into production and is now running on ACI’s clients’ servers all around the world. Technologies used: Java, Delphi, Python, Jenkins, Perforce, Angular, Django, SQL Server. Show less

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  Uct developer society

  Feb 2019 - Sept 2019

  Subcom member & project manager

  Subcommittee member for the University of Cape Town Developer Society.- Assisted in the organisation, preparation and hosting of society held events. - Managed the development of the society's new website. -- Ran development meetings and progress check-ins. -- Assisted in technology decision making and consultation. -- Reported directly to the executive committee on sitreps and proposals.-- Planned for budget, required technologies, people and time.

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  University of cape town

  Feb 2019 - Oct 2019

  Computer science tutor

  University-appointed tutor for the computer science department first-year courses.- Ran weekly tutorials for ~30 students, assisting, advancing and inspiring their CS affiliation. - Assisted in marking bi-semesterly computer science tests.- Assisted in student assignment assessment and feedback.- Attended weekly tutor meetings and gave progress feedback.

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  Electrum

  Jun 2019 - Jul 2019

  Software engineering intern

  - Writing an API in a remarkably big and sensitive project space. - Porting the feature for a legacy system. - Writing documentation for both implementations.- Managing the progression of features through the full DevOps integration lifecycle. ( VCS - CI - Static Analysis - RC - Dev testing env - Prod)- Daily reporting at standups as well as project presentation.

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  Uct open mind society

  Nov 2019 - Dec 2020

  Chairperson

  I founded and lead the UCT Open Mind Society, which has the mission of cultivating free thought among students. We hosted on-campus meet-ups where students from different backgrounds joined to say their say on topical issues (e.g. GBV, meat-eating, AI ethics, social justice, BEE, PC culture). When the pandemic struck early on in 2020, we went online and continued our events over video conferencing and WhatsApp text-based discussion groups. More on the website: https://openmindsociety.org.za/about Show less

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  Developer student clubs - university of cape town

  Feb 2020 - Nov 2020

  Tech mentor

  Technical mentor working with DSC committee to manage and assist in various technical projects. - Hosted and co-hosted multiple tech workshops for students, including workshops on git, OSS, and web development.- Assisted in the management of several DSC events and talks.- Managed two teams working on tech development projects solving societal issues. Including running regular stand-ups, unblock liaising, resolution guidance, and development mentoring.

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  Hyperiondev

  May 2020 - Jul 2021

  Technical consultant

  Various responsibilities, including:- Writing and reviewing technical guides and tasks on various computer science topics- Reviewing and marking student assignment code submissions- Lecturing (live and recorded) on topics I authored as well as some others- Presenting live tech talks to HyperionDev staff on cutting-edge tech topics- Aligning technical assignments to SAQA standardsCS topics include version control, containerisation, web development, database architecture, various languages (incl. Java, Python, JS) and software engineering best practices. Show less

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  Centre for artificial intelligence research

  Dec 2020 - Jan 2021

  Research intern

  A Computer Science colleague and I worked together on a Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KRR) project under direct supervision of Thomas Meyer, the head of the KRR group in CAIR. Our project makes computed logical reasoning more accessible and lays the groundwork for further KRR research projects to occur in 2021.https://cair.org.za

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  Displode

  Sept 2021 - Jan 2022

  Full stack engineer

  Wrote UI code, built the backend storage schema, and conjured interoperation programming for Displode's flagship platform, Sundial.

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  Electrum

  Jan 2022 - Aug 2024

  - Lead an infrastructure project to upgrade 50+ AWS databases from version 5 to version 8 with next to no downtime. The upgrade saved Electrum thousands of dollars in AWS extended support fees, and significantly improved transaction throughput and RDS stability. The project included building automation tools which can be used to automate future database upgrades.- Managed and significantly designed the Electrum Enterprise system consisting of 20+ distributed and interlinked Kubernetes clusters in a multi-account AWS environment. I wrote helm charts, configured cross-account networking and IAM, and created high-quality documentation to allow effortless management of thousands of containers worldwide.- Architected, integrated, and maintained the infrastructure for various high-throughput Kafka data pipelines for purposes of reconciliation, monitoring, and business intelligence. Engineered the automated provisioning of Elasticsearch dashboards and alerts for site reliability.- Mentored and trained multiple new-starters in the Platforms team, leading them to produce Electrum-standard high-quality software in a matter of months.- Started and ran a department-wide engineering initiative for gathering feedback about and improving the Electrum Internal Developer Platform (IDP). The initiative was crucial in prioritising and architecting the Platform Team's work.- Met regularly with the CTO and Platforms Lead to prioritise and architect work on the IDP in accordance with ongoing and planned customer projects as well as developer feedback.- Consistently upheld high standards wrt platform quality. Our IDP allowed for quick and easy onboarding of new customers and services, with "batteries included" features such as self-healing clusters, automated backups, zero-downtime deployments, highly available applications, networking, cronjobs, Kafka topics, and databases. Show less - Writing, testing, and deploying spec'd features, and owning said features throughout the entire SDLC.- Analysing complex feature solutions in a multi-million SLOC codebase, and overseeing said features' development throughout the SDLC. - Contributing to many internal brainstorming and solution architecture discussions to improve the Electrum code ecosystem, and ensure new solutions will be compatible, supported, and maintainable.- Playing the role of Technical Lead for multiple different projects, which entails communicating effectively with project stakeholders (team leads, project managers, and customers) to provide accurate timelines and highlight potential risks early; doing the majority of the project's solution architecture while keeping engineering stakeholders (senior architects, and other code owners) in the loop; managing project resources and overseeing development of project code throughout the SDLC; and working together with Electrum's and customers' business analysts to construct high-level multi-party solutions.- Supporting Electrum's infrastructure and software after hours for multiple week-long shifts per year. This includes being on call at all times after business hours; staying on top of alerts and ensuring all systems are functioning nominally; engaging with customers' and third parties' after hours teams to resolve technical issues ASAP after they occur; communicating downtime timeously to customer success staff.- Hosting regular internal Engineering meetings with the purpose of disseminating useful information across the entire department. Topics include Electrum-specific tools, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, and computer and business ethics. - Organising team social events to improve team morale.- Mentoring of interns and new hires to ensure a smooth and quick onboarding experience, and also provide effective teach-a-man-to-fish style learning. Show less

  • Platform Engineer

    Sept 2023 - Aug 2024

  • Intermediate Software Engineer

    Mar 2023 - Sept 2023

  • Junior Software Engineer

    Jan 2022 - Feb 2023
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  Tech seals

  Nov 2024 - now

  Senior devops engineer

  Customer: Rabobank