About

I build software products and reliable backend systems.

Senior backend engineer with 10+ years of experience designing and operating scalable backend platforms, distributed systems and cloud infrastructure across fintech, payments, SaaS and developer platforms.

Backend · Cloud · Distributed Systems · AI

Experience

  1. MyTreep

    May 2026 — Present

    Technical Co-Founder

    Founder-level decisions on user experience, monetisation strategy, and system design for an AI-assisted travel platform.

    • Architected and built the backend of an AI-powered travel planning platform with Next.js, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, and Prisma.
    • Built authentication, AI-powered trip generation, itinerary workflows, wallet and pricing systems with usage tracking and rate limiting.
    • Developed internal admin, analytics, monitoring, and configuration tools supporting platform operations.
  2. Tribe IRL (Acquired by Zoop)

    Apr 2025 — Apr 2026

    Software Engineer

    Backend capabilities for a community events platform serving 50,000+ users, with release discipline and operational resilience.

    • Delivered backend capabilities across bookings, memberships, check-ins, authentication, and Stripe Connect payouts.
    • Owned refund and cancellation architecture with idempotency, asynchronous workers, reconciliation, retries, and manual-review workflows.
    • Modernized deployments with GitHub Actions, Terraform, AWS OIDC, and Docker.
    • Built resilient transactional notifications with AWS SNS and SendGrid.
  3. MortgageBloc / TaxBloc

    Jan 2023 — Present

    Software Engineer

    Backend architecture and production operations for a secure financial-data platform.

    • Architected a secure financial-data platform spanning authentication, RBAC, Stripe billing, Plaid connectivity, and financial reporting.
    • Designed distributed asynchronous exports using BullMQ, Redis, and AWS Lambda with circuit breakers, DLQs, and audit logging.
    • Automated cloud infrastructure and deployments across AWS ECS, ECR, Terraform, and GitHub Actions.
  4. InstaLOD GmbH

    Nov 2021 — Dec 2022

    Software Developer

    Backend microservices for a cloud-based 3D optimization platform.

    • Developed backend microservices including authentication, authorization, licensing, and high-availability services.
    • Built services processing 1,000+ requests per day and automated license-management workflows, reducing manual effort by ~80%.
  5. Vezeti

    Oct 2020 — Nov 2021

    Software Development Lead

    Architectural direction and engineering leadership across customer-facing and internal products.

    • Led backend and mobile engineering, providing architectural direction and engineering best practices.
    • Redesigned backend services, optimized database access, and built scalable REST APIs with NestJS and Spring Boot.

Technology areas

TypeScript · JavaScript · Java · Node.js · NestJS · Express.js · REST APIs · Prisma · AWS (ECS, Lambda, ECR, ALB, CloudWatch, SNS, SSM) · Terraform · Docker · GitHub Actions · OIDC · PostgreSQL · MySQL · MongoDB · Redis · Firebase · Firestore · Stripe · Stripe Connect · Plaid · SendGrid · React · Next.js · React Native · Expo

Open source

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© 2026 James Ugbanu