Essien Ekanem · Lagos · Open to global opportunities
10+ years shipping production systems in FinTech, Retail, and Logistics — currently CTO at IPC Africa, running a four-product SaaS portfolio serving 500+ enterprise clients. Equally at home writing the architecture and leading the org chart.
I've operated at every level from individual contributor to executive. Hire me for the seat you need filled.
Set technology vision and strategy alongside the CEO. At IPC Africa I own the roadmap for four products, align engineering with business OKRs, and turn market problems into shipped platforms.
Build and scale high-performance teams. Introduced agile processes, sprint planning, and a culture of 1:1s and code review that lifted delivery velocity 40% without sacrificing quality.
Make the hard architecture calls. Microservices decomposition, event-driven systems, payment processing, and database design for high-volume transactional workloads — with 99.9% uptime.
Own product strategy from discovery to growth. Translated customer feedback into roadmaps that cut customers' ingredient costs 15–30% and retailers' operational waste 25%.
Still hands-on. Node.js, TypeScript, NestJS, React/Vue, PostgreSQL, AWS. I've personally built credit engines, payroll systems, POS platforms, and logistics APIs end to end.
A connected portfolio across procurement, retail, logistics, and finance.
Real-time cost analytics, supplier matching, and 24-hour delivery orchestration.
Cuts ingredient costs 15–30%Cloud POS and inventory management with automated stock tracking and live dashboards.
Reduces operational waste 25%Route optimization, real-time GPS tracking, and fleet management APIs.
Sub-second responses at scaleFood-tech customer engagement product in the IPC Africa portfolio.
End-to-end credit product at Spleet Africa: assessment algorithms, payment scheduling, automated disbursement.
Personal finance platform scaled to 2,000+ daily active users with zero downtime.
Cut infra costs 50% · acquiredLead engineering and product across GoSource, Daash, FindEat, and Relay for 500+ enterprise clients.
Built the Rent Now, Pay Later platform end to end — credit assessment, payment scheduling, disbursement.
Scaled a personal finance platform to 2,000+ DAU; halved infrastructure costs.
Set technical direction for a financial services platform — security, encryption, API authentication.
Built a payroll platform: salary calculation, tax deductions, multi-bank disbursement with audit logging.
Led a savings and investment platform from greenfield to production, contributing to its acquisition.
Delivered full-stack products across client engagements; set company-wide engineering standards.
Shipped 15+ client projects — e-commerce, dashboards, CMS — with Node.js, React, PostgreSQL.
Node.js, TypeScript, NestJS, Express, Java, Laravel · Microservices, event-driven architecture, REST API design, system design
React, Next.js, Vue, Nuxt
PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis · AWS, GCP, Azure, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, Grafana, Prometheus
Team building, agile/scrum, mentoring, stakeholder management · Product strategy, roadmaps, OKRs, product-market fit