
Theo Okafor
Verified Expert in Engineering
React Developer
Lagos, Nigeria
Toptal member since August 31, 2021
Theo is a highly accomplished senior software engineer with a strong track record of delivering innovative solutions using a broad tech stack, including React, JavaScript, Python, AWS, and more. He has proven leadership experience in technical roles, fostering collaboration and driving results, exceptional problem-solving skills, work ethic, and a commitment to mentorship and excellence.
Portfolio
Experience
- React - 8 years
- JavaScript - 7 years
- Node.js - 7 years
- Git - 6 years
- Python - 5 years
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 5 years
- Django REST Framework - 5 years
- PostgreSQL - 5 years
Preferred Environment
Unix, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Ubuntu, MacOS
The most amazing...
...moment of my career is transitioning from associate software engineer to lead software engineer in under 10 months.
Work Experience
Founding Software Engineer
Dot Campus
- Engineered the front-end app for the LMS utilizing React and Next.js, along with HTML, CSS, Tailwind CSS, Radix-UI, and Shadcn, creating a seamless and secure user experience, using AWS Cognito and Paystack for authentication and payment processing.
- Architected and engineered over 140 secure REST APIs for the AI-powered LMS, using TypeScript, NestJS, Typeorm, and PostgreSQL, with integrations with Paystack API, Zoom API, OpenAI API, and DeepSeek AI APIs, ensuring an all-in-one user experience.
- Automated workflows for about 85% of time-consuming business processes using serverless infrastructure with Node.js, Zoho, TypeScript, GitHub APIs, AWS Lambda, Paystack, and Flutterwave APIs, saving the business thousands of naira monthly.
- Built an agentic AI CLI system using Node.js/TypeScript, OpenAI, Gemini, LangChain, and MongoDB to automatically evaluate, score, and refresh learning content based on freshness, quality, relevance, credibility, and accessibility.
- Worked extensively across the Zoho One ecosystem, integrating and automating workflows between Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, Zoho Campaigns, Zoho Flow, and related Zoho applications, enabling unified customer, finance, and operations data management.
- Architected advanced Zoho CRM integrations and developed custom serverless APIs and webhook-driven workflows with Zoho Flow and Deluge scripting to move and synchronize data between Zoho CRM, payment gateways, and custom forms.
- Developed a comprehensive and scalable learning curriculum for novice, beginner, and intermediate-level software developers and data analysts in collaboration with subject matter experts.
Senior React Engineer
Above Lending Inc
- Developed the newest version of the front-end application, which merged the loan servicing dashboard and the loan application web app into a single, easy-to-use, and maintainable application.
- Developed the servicing dashboard payment schedule functionality that enables the users to schedule loan repayments as they wish.
- Oversaw the deployment of a multi-variant test on the offer page using launch darkly.
Senior Full-stack Developer
Neoteros Limited
- Collaborated with back-end developer to design the architecture of the Exhibitrust Chrome extension, web application, and the back-end.
- Designed and developed the Exhibitrust Chrome extension software for secure full webpage captures in PNG and MHTML formats.
- Integrated custom-made OpenID and OAuth2 authentication mechanism to the Exhibitrust Chrome extension, enabling secure client-side authentication on the Chrome extension.
- Collaborated with the back-end engineer to integrate fit-for-purpose RESTful APIs to securely transmit data generated from the Chrome extension to the archive.
Software Engineer | Web Developer
BBC
- Contributed to the development of interactive visual web content covering the African water security problems using HTML, Sass, Handlebars, and Webpack.
- Developed the 2021 Africa Nations Cup results and fixtures for 12 African languages.
- Aggregated and documented the team's libraries using Dropbox Paper.
- Contributed to the documentation of the team's tools and best practices that enhanced the onboarding experience of new joiners.
Front-end Engineer
E-Settlement Limited
- Implemented complex features such as secure client authentication, merchant onboarding, and merchant settings for the company's next-generation fintech application.
- Developed Yep!'s secure payment widget enabling merchants to integrate it into their platforms and receive payments from their customers.
- Interfaced with back-end engineers to build fit-for-purpose RESTful API services.
- Collaborated with the product designer to develop parts of the application designs.
Lead Software Developer
eSoft Response
- Developed the processes for the software development operations involving every stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC). This enabled the company to secure first paying clients and subsequent clients.
- Recruited and managed mid-level and junior software developers for the company. Successfully grew the team from three to 10 software developers within 10 months.
- Designed, developed, deployed, and maintained complex software solutions for clients. Made solution and software architecture decisions that effectively led to quicker turnaround times and better client satisfaction.
- Migrated existing legacy applications to modern CI/CD pipelines on AWS, leading to more frequent feature releases (1 release per week to 4 – 5 releases per week) and over 50% cost-saving in AWS charges.
- Implemented complex new features and fixed bugs in the existing application using React on the client side with Redux, Context API, or hooks.
- Designed, implemented, and maintained complex RESTful API services.
Full-stack Software Engineer
Freelance
- Designed and built a complex custom in-app messaging system to enable asynchronous communications between admins, support team, and users.
- Interfaced with the product lead to establish the best product ideas.
- Detected and closed potential security vulnerabilities in the existing software system.
- Redesigned and rebuilt parts of the client application to meet market demands and standards.
Associate Software Engineer
Talent Accelerator Company
- Developed new features using React of the client and Node.js and Express.js for the server applications while adhering to team standards and conventions. Worked on the Steps bot application owned by IDEO.org.
- Built the feature on the Steps application that contributes to about 40% cost saving in the cost of operating the entire software application.
- Handled product demos to the product owner and client and participated in peer review and peer programming sessions with teammates.
- Mentored trainee software engineers, facilitated coding bootcamps, and participated in tech outreaches.
- Interviewed candidates and made hiring decisions for the junior technical positions in the company.
Lead Software Engineer and Founder
Ideosynergy (Self-employed)
- Designed, developed, and deployed software and solution architecture for worksfair.com, a listing platform for service-oriented businesses in Nigeria. Used Django REST framework to build RESTful APIs and React and Redux for the client application.
- Designed, developed, and deployed a fully-featured website builder within worksfair.com and enabled users to publish websites to the worksfair.co subdomain.
- Researched emerging trends within the industry and capitalized on finds to develop new strategies.
- Conducted pilot launch for the worksfair.com project and successfully listed about 100 works and services within one month.
Experience
SkillBridge Learning Platform
https://dotcampus.coMy work included designing and developing the AI Tutor chat system using NestJS and TypeScript, enabling secure, real-time conversations between users and AI tutors contextualized by course content. I integrated robust authentication and authorization mechanisms, leveraged DTOs for data validation, and utilized custom decorators and guards to enforce role-based access. I collaborated closely with cross-functional teams to deliver features such as dynamic course onboarding, personalized learning paths, and milestone-based progress tracking. My contributions ensured maintainable code, comprehensive API documentation with Swagger, and seamless integration with cloud-based content storage (S3). This resulted in a highly interactive, personalized learning experience for users while maintaining high standards for code quality, security, and scalability.
Above Lending
https://www.abovelending.comSpecNota Application
I acted as the technical team lead for the product. I also served as a full-stack software engineer contributing to the application's back end and front end.
MY ROLE
• Designing and developing complex new features, as well as maintaining the existing features.
• Interfacing with the developers and product designers to ensure that excellent design and engineering standards are implemented in the product.
• Managing the legacy deployment pipelines for the project, including the development of strategies for migrating to modern CI/CD setup.
• Implemented complex new features and fixed bugs in the existing application.
• Redesigning parts of the system architecture to support new business needs.
• Designing, implementation, and maintenance of RESTful API services.
Yep!
https://www.getyep.coLSE Generate — Genpool
I acted as the technical team lead for the project, setting up the application, especially the front-end architecture. I also led the deployment of the application. The front-end and back-end applications were deployed to AWS, AWS Amplify and AWS Elastic Beanstalk, respectively.
Plotpeer — The Project Investment App
Worksfair.com
Education
Master’s Degree in Business Administration (MBA)
Lagos Business School, Pan-Atlantic University - Lagos, Nigeria
Bachelor's Degree in Automotive Engineering
Federal University of Technology, Owerri - Owerri, Nigeria
Certifications
KCNA: Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate
Cloud Native and Computing Foundation
Architecting with AWS
QA Ltd
Software Architecture Foundations
Building Serverless Apps on AWS
Skills
Libraries/APIs
React, Node.js, REST APIs, Context API, AWS Amplify, React Redux, React Final Form, GitHub API, React Testing Library, React Query, Formik, Zoho API, Handlebars, OpenID, Recharts, OpenAI API
Tools
Celery, Git, Trello, GitHub, SpecNota, Webpack, Amazon Cognito, NPM, Jira, Pivotal Tracker, Asana, Travis CI, Code Climate, Figma, Mongoose, Bitbucket, Sequelize, Prisma, Confluence, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), AI Prompts, Shadcn, CircleCI, Babel, Notion, Claude, Pytest, Amazon CloudWatch, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Auth0, Jenkins, AWS SDK, AWS CloudFormation, Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), Zoho One, DeepSeek, Amazon ElastiCache
Languages
JavaScript, Python, HTML5, CSS3, TypeScript, SCSS, SQL, HTML, CSS, Sass, XML, Zoho Deluge, GraphQL, C++
Frameworks
Express.js, Jest, Redux, Next.js, Django, Bootstrap, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), Bulma, Material UI, Django REST Framework, Tailwind CSS, Ant Design, OAuth 2, NestJS, Agentic Frameworks, Cypress, React Native
Paradigms
Test-driven Development (TDD), Functional Programming, Agile Project Management, Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery (CD), Serverless Architecture, REST, Clean Code, Behavior-driven Development (BDD), Responsive Web Design (RWD), Testing, Automated Testing, Unit Testing, DevOps, Role-based Access Control (RBAC), Microservices
Platforms
Unix, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Ubuntu, MacOS, Heroku, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS Lambda, Google Chrome, Zoho CRM, Docker, Firebase, Netlify, Amazon EC2, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Linux, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Azure, AWS ALB, AWS Security Token Service (STS), Twilio, Kubernetes, Cloud Native
Storage
PostgreSQL, JSON, Redis, MongoDB, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Databases, NoSQL, Redis Cache
Industry Expertise
E-learning
Other
CI/CD Pipelines, Software Architecture, Solution Architecture, RESTful Web Services, Full-stack, Amazon API Gateway, Payment APIs, Engineering, Design, Critical Thinking, Research, Programming, Axios, Architecture, Integration Testing, Front-end, Front-end Development, Accessibility, APIs, Web Development, UI Components, Design Systems, MERN Stack, Web Usability, Web Applications, Responsive Web Apps, User Experience (UX), Test Case Development, Web App Development, Full-stack Development, Zoho Mail, Zoho Flow, Team Management, Business Process Automation, Webhooks, React Components, RESTFul APIs, Responsive UI, API Integration, SDKs, Back-end Development, Team Leadership, React Hooks, UI Frameworks, Back-end, Dashboards, System Design, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Startups, Zoho Administration, System Administration, API Design, Code Review, UX Engineering, Product Engineering, Early-stage Startups, Debugging, Performance Optimization, White Box Testing, Payments, Product Design, Material Design, Access Control, Web Security, Amazon RDS, Software System Architecture Development, Storybook, User Interface (UI), Online Payments, Data Visualization, Zoho Campaigns, Curriculum Design, Curriculum Development & Delivery, Business Strategy, Operations Management, Data Analysis, Gemini API, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Large-scale Projects, WCAG 2, Learning Management Systems (LMS), Marketplaces, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), AI Agents, Containerization, Zoho, Deluge, OpenAI, Digital Payments, Single-page Applications (SPAs), TypeORM, Tailwind UI, BullMQ, Technical Leadership, Anthropic, Vibe Coding, Large Language Models (LLMs), AI Tools, Prompt Engineering, Relational Database Design, Agentic AI, Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG), GitHub Actions, LangChain, Localization, WebSockets, OWASP, Chrome Extensions, Serverless, Cosmos, AWS Cloud Architecture, SOAP, Containers, Gemini, OpenAI GPT-4 API, Zoom SDK, OpenID Connect (OIDC), Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), Cursor AI, Human Resources (HR), Entrepreneurship, Finance, Cost Accounting, Management Accounting, User Behavior, Organizational Leadership, Negotiation, OAuth, KCNA, GitOps, Service Meshes
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