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Benjamin Efenudu

About

I'm a senior full-stack engineer who builds AI products and the platforms under them. I owned the interfaces a central bank and hundreds of banks use to run a regulated blockchain payment network, and I'm building SchoolWithEase, an AI-native school management platform.

8+ years in tech: running ICT at Covenant Child Academy and teaching Python for CodeLagos from 2018, and shipping production software full-time since 2021.

Benjamin Efenudu, in glasses and a black T-shirt, black-and-white portrait

The path here

I studied petroleum engineering and wrote my first programs in Fortran, BASIC and VBA as a student. Then I spent three years running the technology at Covenant Child Academy: computer labs, the network, digital records and payments, and moving every class online in March 2020 when COVID-19 closed the gates. Teaching Python for CodeLagos in that job is where explaining things clearly became part of the work.

Since 2021 I've shipped production software full-time. I led delivery at AtEase Insurance, GoaLabs and DeltaJob-ng: roadmaps, CI/CD pipelines, APIs, React front ends and containerised services on Docker and Kubernetes.

Then four years at Zone (formerly AppZone Group) as a senior software engineer. I was the primary owner of the Admin and Client Dashboards that the Central Bank of Nigeria, 18+ commercial banks and 450+ microfinance institutions in seven African countries use to run a regulated blockchain payment network, and for nearly two years the only frontend engineer on them. I also built the ZonePay PWA and QR Router. Zone named me one of its MVPs in its African Builder series.

Now it's SchoolWithEase, which I built end to end: a Turborepo monorepo with Next.js, NestJS, Prisma and PostgreSQL, and LLMs behind the AI features. The interesting problem is making AI useful to teachers without letting it say anything to a child that a person hasn't checked.

Along the way I've taken contract builds: the backend of an online university with a course-grounded OpenAI chatbot, the backend of an exam-prep app with 10K+ Play Store downloads, two Solana NFT platforms, and a marketing agency's website.

Benjamin at his desk, mug in hand, with a website and its code side by side on the monitor and the design open on his laptop
At my desk, building the UpShoot Marketing site.

How I work

  • Own the whole thing. From the database policy to the deploy pipeline to the in-app guide a bursar reads, I build products end to end and stay with them after launch.
  • Put the rule where it can't be skipped. Each school's data is kept apart by Postgres row-level security, checked in CI, not by app code someone might forget to call.
  • Let AI draft, let people decide. I work with coding agents every day and build AI into products, and nothing a model writes ships without a person reading it.
  • Stay calm when it's live. I've worked a live security breach on a production Web3 platform and shipped on a payment network where downtime costs real money.
  • Write it down. Plain-language guides for every role in a school, case studies, and years of teaching new developers.

Recognition

To mention just a few:

  • MVP and high performer, African Builder series, Zone Payment Network, 2024
  • Overall Best Trainee, Delta State ICT-YEP, 2021
  • Academic Excellence, top score nationwide, O3GP National Test, 2016
Benjamin in sunglasses, grinning as he bites a medal hanging from his neck, black-and-white photo

Teaching and community

  • Python Tutor, CodeLagos. Lagos State's school coding initiative, during the Covenant Child Academy role, 2018–2019
  • Frontend Tutor, Ideal IT Center, 2021
  • Backend Tutor (Intermediate Node.js), KodeCamp, 2022
  • Founder, Intelligent Investment Mindset Hub. Trained 500+ participants, 2019–2020

Elsewhere