Without the job titles

Before I wrote any code, I loved mathematics. In secondary school I competed in mathematics competitions.

Java was my first language. The first things I built outside class were small games, one of them an arithmetic quiz for my younger brother, built with my friend Yusuff, who I started learning programming with. Python came next, and with it web development, machine learning and automation.

The shift came at the tennis club where I play. The ladder competition was run by hand and could become hard to manage, so I built a system to run it. It was the first time I’d used software on a real problem rather than an exercise, and I’ve kept doing it since: notice a problem, learn what it takes, build the tool.

Not everything went well. An ambitious website for a baking business showed me how much I still had to learn about CSS and design, and I stepped away from code for a while.

Since coming back, I’ve worked below the application layer at IHS Towers, on enterprise processes at KPMG, as the founding engineer at Residence, on my first IoT prototype, and on Mufradaat, an Arabic vocabulary platform I co-founded. I graduated from Nile University of Nigeria as the best graduating student in the Faculty of Computing.

Today I’m a software engineer at KPMG, and I’m learning to build with AI.