Kenneth Mojanaga

The CEO for the merchant division at the Connect Group, along with other leaders in the organization identified an opportunity to provide a bespoke solution for fuel stations in South Africa.

So I was tasked with heading the setup of the software development team, as well as leading the development of this new solution (Fuel Connect).

My duties in this role are as follows:

• Managed budgeting and resource allocation for software development projects, ensuring optimal use of resources and timely delivery of milestones.
• Led a team of engineers to deliver high-quality software solutions in a timely manner, ensuring customer satisfaction and business growth.
• Provided regular feedback to both junior engineers and senior leadership on individual performance metrics and observations.
• Championed best practices in software architecture, code quality, and testing within the engineering organization to maintain high standards of excellence.

Welcome Soweto School of Music (WESSOM) is a music school based in Soweto and has been in existence since 1999. The school now operates on Saturdays. Wessom's purpose/main-business is to manage and conduct a school of music, and generally promote the artistic, educational and recreational values relating to music. This school brings balance and redress particularly in the previously disadvantaged communities through music education and life skills. Since its inception it has been able to make an impact on thousands of children in Soweto and has spread to surrounding towns.

This has been a project very close to my heart. After having failed a few modules in my second year of study at Wits University, I ended up with a relatively free timetable and decided to learn a musical instrument.

This school took me in, and gave me a world class music education, such that I ended up playing the viola in the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra cadet programme, one year after having started learning the instrument.
Ever since then, I ended up taking up the Violin, Cello, and Piano as additional instruments. Not only am I currently still a student at the school, but I am now also one of the tutors helping contribute to the school.

The Connect Group was still growing aggressively. So a decision was made to break up the larger software team into squads having different product area focuses.

I was then tasked with spearheading all these teams/squads and providing consolidated technical leadership.

My main duties were as follows:

• Led development on a number simultaneous projects, multi-tasking across several deliverables while remaining in direct control of development paths.
• Facilitated open lines of communication between engineering teams and other departments for seamless project handoffs and efficient collaboration on cross-functional initiatives.
• Resolved critical production issues quickly and effectively by leading incident response efforts during system outages or security breaches.
• Developed comprehensive documentation for internal software systems, improving knowledge sharing among team members and reducing onboarding time for new hires.
• Increased overall team productivity through continuous process improvement initiatives and effective resource allocation.
• Managed software release cycles with careful planning, coordination, and communication across various departments.
• Coordinated with human resources on recruitment efforts to attract top talent in the software engineering field, contributing to a highly skilled and diverse team.
• Streamlined deployment processes by automating build pipelines and leveraging modern infrastructure-as-code practices.
• Collaborated with product managers to define clear project requirements, aligning engineering efforts with business goals.
• Promoted a culture of innovation within the team by encouraging experimentation with new tools and techniques.
• Mentored junior software engineers, providing careful guidance of development strategies and education on innovative development techniques.
• Allied with other engineering leaders to plan, manage and coordinate teams around reaching prescribed development milestones.
• Implemented robust cybersecurity measures to protect sensitive data and maintain compliance with industry regulations.
• Improved software development processes by implementing agile methodologies and facilitating cross-functional team collaboration.

The Connect Group was growing aggressively, and as a result, acquired a company name Kazang. As such a need arose to have a solution architecture function for overseeing overall system design and efficiency improvement.

My main duties in this role were as follows:

• Improved solution efficiency by designing and implementing scalable architectures for enterprise clients.
• Conducted research to evaluate systems design and process efficiency.
• Worked with customers or prospective customers to develop integrated solutions and lead detailed architectural dialogues to facilitate delivery of comprehensive solution.
• Facilitated seamless communication between technical teams and non-technical stakeholders by effectively translating complex concepts into understandable terms for all parties involved in projects.
• Worked closely with product teams to define and prioritize partner feature requests
• Optimized resource allocation across multiple projects by utilizing advanced project management tools and techniques for more efficient scheduling and task prioritization.

Afrowimbi Lifestyle was the first-ever coffee-shop in Soweto, aiming to introduce, and inculcate
a culture of coffee consumption in townships.

I founded this coffee shop as an experiment I've always wanted to do. I've always wanted to challenge the status quo by introducing a seemingly "foreign" product like this to a market not used to it. I was attempting to create a
market.
My job at Afrowimbi was overseeing operations at the shop and utilizing all means possible to make the shop
run as efficiently as possible.

From a tech point of view, I had created a mobile app, and ERP system for the employees and customers using the following tech:

• React Native
• Vue JS
• Node JS
• Python
• MongoDB

I ended up deciding to shut down the shop because load shedding was making it very difficult to run it successfully. A very rewarding experience nonetheless.

This job was a very interesting learning curve for me. I was offered an opportunity to learn and implement a
microservices architecture from scratch. The aim was to migrate from a legacy monolithic system, and we successfully achieved that goal.

This helped the company immensely in remaining relevant with regards to the ICT landscape.

The bouquet if technologies we used are outlined as follows:

• AWS (EC2, ELB/ALB, Lambda, S3, RDS, SNS, SQS)
• Apache Kafka
• Grafana and Prometheus
• Hashicorp Stack (Vault, Consul, Nomad, Terraform, Packer)
• ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana)
• GraphQL
• Web Front-End (Vue JS and React JS)
• Node JS
• Python
• Golang
• C#
• Databases (MSSQL, MySQL, Postgres, MongoDB)
• Architectures (Event-Driven, SQRS, Domain-Driven Design)

My daily duties were as follows:

• Enhanced software functionality by identifying and resolving complex technical issues.
• Mentored junior developers, fostering professional growth and enhancing team productivity.
• Developed scalable applications using agile methodologies for timely project delivery.
• Managed multiple projects simultaneously while maintaining strict deadlines and high-quality standards.

After having learned a lot about creating technology startups, I decided to get back into the job market by taking a software development consultancy role
at Dariel Solutions. This was a very amazing company to work for. In the short space of time I was in this company, I became even more polished at my craft.

During my time at Dariel, I was based at Disovery Insure (which is a client of theirs). My main task at Discovery was to help advise and also building a software platform for their then-new commercial insurance offering. The project was a success, and delivered on time.

Whilst I was based at Discovery, I was mostly using the following technology stack:

• Java EE
• JSF (Java Server Faces)
• Oracle DB
• JBoss

My daily duties were as follows:

• Collaborated with cross-functional teams to design innovative software solutions.
• Proactively identified areas for process improvement, implementing changes that led to significant time savings for the team.
• Delivered exceptional client support by promptly addressing concerns and implementing requested changes or enhancements to software solutions.
• Streamlined development workflows to increase team efficiency and reduce time spent on repetitive tasks.
• Analyzed proposed technical solutions based on customer requirements.

AEI was a non-profit which strived to assist the youth in becoming fully contributing citizens by developing their
employability skills through a comprehensive skills framework. AEI specialized in growing people’s personal skills and assisted their progress in order to help them gain a better understanding of essential skills for employment and to excel in their chosen careers, studies or entrepreneurship.

As a CTO at this company, I was in charge of advising and implementing technology/IT solutions which would help
the company remain relevant in the ICT space. I also made decisions on the technology stacks to be used. My overall duties whilst at AEI are outlined as follows:

• To ensure that all the ICT needs are catered for. These come in the form of developing/programming
  systems which would help in improving the operational plan where possible. And also developing systems
  that helped in getting the company to realize its vision.
• Developing and maintaining the website.
• Setting up and maintaining emails for everyone in the company
• From an operational level, assisting with content facilitation at schools where the organization was running its programmes.
• I was also part of the board, where from time to time, we would meet up to continuously assess the
  performance of the organization, and make the necessary decisions which will help bring the organization closer to realizing its vision

My experience at AEI helped me gain more exposure and experience to different frameworks making use of the following:

• Java
• Python
• Golang
• HTML, CSS, JavaScript

Oculus was co-founded alongside Zaidr Corp.

So, a university friend, and I decided to found Oculus on the premise of making competing enterprise software
products at a significantly cheaper price than what was being offered in the market by the major players (namely
Oracle, Microsoft, Sales Force, etc). We achieved this by making an extensive use of open-source software products.

Although we had assumed that corporations in S.A. would love such products, it turned out to be a lot harder to sell
such products than to make them. This was largely due to the relationships already formed, coupled with the difficulty in getting such enterprises migrated from their existing solutions. Thus we found ourselves having more luck on greenfield projects, i.e. projects that needed to be built from scratch.

During our time at Oculus, we were fortunate enough to find ourselves having worked on greenfield projects for two Botswana-based insurance companies, namely Bona Life, and Symphony Health. Liberty Life, ActionAid-SA and Equal-Education were also amongst the list of companies we were fortunate to have served.

Similarly to Zaidr Corp, even though the company didn’t succeed and we had to close shop, I would never ask to take away the experience of running a startup in a country like South Africa, because not only did I become a seasoned programmer, I also learned a lot about what it takes to make a business succeed. The technology stacks I got to work with are outlined as follows:

• Node.js
• Java EE (alongside Glassfish server)
• Python
• Golang
• Web Development (Bootstrap and Foundation Framework)
• Ionic
• Openbravo Platform

My main duties were as follows:

• Launched successful new products with extensive research on market trends combined with collaborative input from various departments.
• Evaluated emerging technologies for potential adoption, staying ahead of industry trends to maintain competitive advantage.
• Aligned IT strategy with organizational goals, fostering collaboration between technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Coordinated third-party vendors and client IT teams to seamlessly deliver effective solutions.

After having spent close to 2 years at BBD as a junior software developer, I had felt that the environment wasn't
providing me with more room to grow, and I wanted to grow aggressively in my coding craft.
So, a university friend, and I decided to start a company from a project we'd been working on for some months before the beginning of 2014. At Zaidr, we had developed a number of technologies, with the following flagship projects/products:

• A complex public transport search engine. The aim of such a platform was to integrate all modes of
  transport in South Africa and provide users with information on how to use them in the event they want
  to travel.
• A music download and sales platform for independent artists.
• An ERP system for salon owners.

Even though the company eventually didn’t succeed, and we had to close shop, I would never ask to take away the experience of running a startup in a country like South Africa, because not only did I become a seasoned programmer, but I also learned a lot about what it takes to make a business succeed. The technology stacks I got to work with are as follows:

• Node.js
• Python
• Golang
• Web Development (Bootstrap, Foundation Framework, React JS)

My duties whilst at Zaidr are outlined as follows:

• Interpreted multifaceted technological issues into defined frameworks and highly scripted action plans.
• Managed company-level architecture, platform and data configuration processes and implementation protocols.
• Maintained thorough understanding of all key and current technologies, platforms and trends.
• Championed data-driven decision-making, integrating advanced analytics tools for predictive insights.
• Developed and implemented long-term strategic technological blueprint.
• Managed cross-functional teams to successfully deliver complex technology projects on time and within budget.
• Designed enterprise-level technological blueprints and system architectures.

This was my first job fresh out of university with a Mechanical Engineering degree. So, I had zero dev experience, and I was a junior developer. However, this was the best job I ever had because I had an amazing opportunity to learn from some of the best developers and architects in industry.

Whilst in this job, I was outsourced to different companies, namely SARS, Treasury, and Vodacom. So, I had exposure
to different work environments, cultures and processes. I also managed to gain experience with the following
technologies:

• Java (SE and EE)
• IBM Webshere
• .NET Framework
• MySQL
• MSSQL
• Web Development (HTML, CSS and Javascript)

My main duties whilst at BBD are outlined as follows:

• Developed scalable and maintainable code, ensuring long-term stability of the software.
• Integrated new technologies into existing systems, increasing capabilities and improving overall performance.
• Developed reusable components that significantly reduced development effort on multiple projects.
• Implemented effective debugging strategies, resulting in fewer software defects and increased reliability.
• Consistently met project deadlines by effectively managing time and prioritizing tasks according to importance.