Software Engineer
Ian Sawala

Software Engineer specializing in building scalable distributed systems and cross-platform applications. Earned First Class Honours in Computer Science while working full-time to architect core infrastructure for a startup. Focused on real-time data pipelines and system design architectures. Passionate about solving complex problems, designing systems and reducing technical debt.

Core Technologies
RustJavaGoTypeScriptDartKafkaKubernetesPostgreSQLElasticsearchRedisFlutterDockerPrometheusGrafana

Featured Projects

A selection of projects demonstrating expertise in cloud architecture, full-stack development, and data engineering.

Distributed State Cache
A distributed TCP-based actor-model key-value store with Raft consensus, built from scratch in Rust.

Implemented a memory-safe distributed key-value store using channels without external crates. Features a custom memory arena with compaction at 85% usage, a lightweight Raft consensus protocol, and a fixed-size thread pool for safe concurrency under high request volume without DDoS risk.

RustTCPRaftConcurrency
Pacaya Mobile App
A cross-platform social media application with elastic search and real-time event processing.

Built core features for a cross-platform social app in Flutter, supporting 500+ peak QPS and 10,000+ users with 99.9% uptime. Includes Elasticsearch for fuzzy searching, biometric auth via Google ML Kit, and Stripe payment integration.

FlutterNestJSElasticsearchNeo4jGoogle ML KitAWS RekognitionStripe
LLM-Powered Events Generator
In-house LLM-powered events generator deployed on Microsoft Azure.

Implemented the authentication layer and integrated various Azure services for scalability and insights. Utilized Azure OpenAI and Cosmos DB.

AzureEntra IDCosmos DBOpenAIDocker
Kafka Connect Replication
Data pipeline replication from PostgreSQL to Neo4j with semantic relationship mapping.

Designed and deployed a Kafka Connect pipeline. Used Debezium for real-time capture and Single Message Transformations (SMT) for dynamic data enrichment.

JavaKafkaDebeziumPostgreSQLNeo4jGradle
Battery Analytics Platform
Real-time battery temperature analytics and anomaly detection for electric motorcycles.

Built a platform ingesting live sensor data with an LSTM model using TensorFlow, achieving RMSE of ~2.0°C and identifying ~70% of thermal anomalies. Deployed as a Flask microservice with sub-200ms response times.

PythonTensorFlowFlaskDocker

Work Experience

My professional journey and key achievements.

Software Engineer (Team Lead)

Pacaya International · Nairobi, KE

Feb 2025 – Feb 2026
  • Led a 3-person engineering team through sprint planning and feature decomposition, translating complex business requirements into scoped, deliverable technical solutions while maintaining stakeholder alignment via async-first communication and automated progress transparency.
  • Engineered an AI-augmented development framework establishing prompt engineering standards and agentic workflows using Claude Code, to reduce boilerplate generation time and enhance code review coverage for the engineering team.
  • Built a Kafka-based CDC pipeline replicating PostgreSQL data into Neo4j, maintaining semantic relationship mappings for multi-degree relationship queries.
  • Developed an Elasticsearch-backed microservice to replace Postgres FTS, resulting in a 40% improvement in search relevance based on internal analytics, directly improving user engagement with search-driven flows.
  • Configured and maintained Postgres read replicas and observability tooling (Prometheus, Grafana), reducing system load by ~20% and cutting p99 latency during peak traffic.

Software Engineer

Pacaya International · Nairobi, KE

July 2023 – Feb 2025
  • Built core features for a cross-platform social media app in Flutter, architecting backend services to support 500+ peak QPS and managing a mobile user base of 10,000+, maintaining 99.9% uptime through automated horizontal scaling in OpenShift.
  • Implemented biometric authentication via Google ML Kit using Flutter platform channels to bridge the native-only API, reducing bot account creation by 40%.
  • Integrated Stripe to support recurring payments with idempotency guarantees, enabling platform monetization and processing $10,000 in revenue within 3 months of launch.

Software Developer

StimaMobility · Nairobi, KEUniversity Project

Sep 2023 – Apr 2024
  • Built a real-time battery temperature analytics and anomaly detection platform, ingesting live sensor data and developing an LSTM-model using TensorFlow, achieving an RMSE of ~2.0°C and successfully identifying ~70% of thermal anomalies caused by aggressive driver behaviors such as speeding.
  • Owned deployment and monitoring of the model as a Flask microservice, delivering real-time updates to the consumer frontend with sub-200ms response times.

Technical Skills

Technologies and tools I work with.

Languages

RustJavaGoTypeScriptDart

Stack & Tools

KafkaKubernetes (OpenShift)PostgreSQLElasticsearchCassandraMilvusRedisFlutterDocker

Observability & SRE

PrometheusGrafanaELKOpenTelemetry

AI Tools

Claude CodeGithub Copilot CLIGemini CLI

Other

Linux & Shell ScriptingSystems & Microservices Development

Education

Academic background and qualifications.

Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science

First Class HonoursSep 2020 – June 2024