About
I'm Olusola — a backend engineer and founder based between Lagos and Helsinki. Over 9 years I've shipped production AI systems in fintech and retail, cut credit default rates from 90% to 50%, and built engineering teams from scratch.
Currently building RetailLoop — a retail intelligence platform for African merchants — and running QuantaBridge Labs, an AI engineering consultancy that ships production systems, not prototypes.
I grew up in Nigeria. I've worked in Finland. Most of my career has been in the gap between those two contexts — building systems that work when infrastructure is unreliable, when the market doesn't behave like the textbook, when the playbook hasn't been written yet.
I write about the IC → EM → Founder path because I couldn't find the thing I needed when I was navigating it. Most technical writing assumes a Silicon Valley baseline. Most leadership writing assumes a Western corporate structure. This is for everyone else.
Career
Engineering Lead
RetailLoop · Helsinki, Finland
- – Founded and scaled engineering org 0 → 20 engineers — career ladders, hiring rubrics, technical strategy from scratch
- – $500K+ in operational savings via digitisation of manual workflows across 300+ SMBs
- – 99.9% uptime on core transaction paths via multi-tenant real-time event pipeline (4,000+ events/day, ~1,500 merchants)
Engineering Lead, Non-Core Banking
9jaPay (New African Fintech Limited) · Lagos, Nigeria
- – Reduced onboarding drop-off 15%+ by redesigning KYB workflow
- – Increased user acquisition 18% via end-to-end referral system with tracking, attribution, and rewards
- – Cut server response times 30% and reduced cloud costs via platform-wide backend profiling
Senior Backend Developer
Slide · Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- – Designed Kafka-based event ingestion pipeline (4,000 events/day) with local caching on PostgreSQL, SQLite, Redis
- – Built resilient integrations with external POS and commerce platforms
- – Eliminated manual intervention in external order capture flows via APIs, webhooks, and automated state-update handlers
Senior Backend Developer
Terragon · Lagos, Nigeria
- – Built Terragon Prime from scratch — microservices platform for USSD/SMS campaign management and telco subscriber data, serving multiple telco clients and millions of subscribers
- – Maintained Java-based data collection and alerting pipeline integrated with Kafka and Jasmin gateway (~500 SMS alerts/day per client)
- – Built Python Flask + Twisted backend abstracting Jasmin's API into a management interface, cutting operational workload by half
Senior Backend Developer
Retailar · Lagos, Nigeria
- – Led 5-engineer team through end-to-end planning, delivery, and production rollout — shipped MVP of all core products in 3 months
- – Built credit-scoring engine that reduced loan defaulters by 20%
- – Built USSD application for offline users — drove 20% month-over-month adoption growth from previously unreachable users
Backend Developer
FieldInsight · Lagos, Nigeria
- – Built Node.js/MongoDB backend dynamically generating forms for 15,000+ active field staff
- – Increased automated test coverage from 30% to 70%+ on legacy codebase
- – Implemented Redis read-through cache layer on legacy production system
Volunteer Mentor
Formation Dev · Remote
- – 60+ engineers placed at Meta, Netflix, LinkedIn, Grafana Labs, Asana, Chime, and other Series A+ companies
- – 135+ technical mentoring sessions, 4.7/5 average rating
- – Socratic coaching approach — system design (junior to senior), algorithms and data structures
What people say
A definite plus on any team. Being privileged to work with him in multiple capacities and companies has been a great experience.
He always sees the big picture, calls out potential bottlenecks way before they happen, and always takes ownership of tasks and features from ideation to execution. A textbook definition of a 10x developer.
His positivity makes him a great team player and he is always loved by his peers, colleagues, direct reports, and even managers. His unique blend of empathy, expertise, and excellence makes him an invaluable asset to every organization.
Solution Architect, Paystack
Speaking
I speak on building AI systems for emerging markets, the IC → EM → Founder transition, and what production fintech infrastructure actually looks like. Talks are practical and grounded in real cases — not frameworks. Fee and availability vary by event. Fill in the form below and I'll respond within a few days.