Gerard Onesi

Software Developer with over 8 years of experience designing, developing, and delivering scalable, high-performance applications for fintech, SaaS, and enterprise clients across North America and Africa. Proficient in PHP, C#, JavaScript/TypeScript (React, Angular, Vue.js, Node.js), Java, and Python, with a strong foundation in Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) and SOLID principles. Experienced in REST/SOAP/GraphQL API design, SQL & NoSQL databases, CI/CD, DevOps practices, and production deployments on AWS (EKS, Lambda, ECS, Fargate).

Introduced AI-assisted development workflows (GitHub Copilot, Claude, Google Gemini) and consistently contributed production code while collaborating in Agile (Scrum) teams. Transitioned to software development through self-directed learning and practical experience, accumulating over 8 years of full-time professional practice across multiple markets.

Software Developer - Metric Aid

(2024-12)

• Identified and decommissioned 2 poor-performing services through the use of CloudWatch Custom Metrics, trimming monthly AWS infrastructure costs.
• Collaborated with AI vendors to secure development tokens and early-access tooling, introducing LLM-enabled and AI-assisted development workflows that lifted team productivity.
• Led optimization efforts for high-volume database transactions, raising efficiency and eliminating peak-time failures by implementing idempotency controls and stricter validation workflows.
• Owned production deployments and reviews on AWS (EKS) using Docker and CI/CD pipelines, significantly cutting mean time to resolution for critical incidents.
• Applied modern practices and third-party services such as AI agents, packages, and dependencies based on current research to help shorten development time.

Engineering Lead - Tentacle

(2024-07 - 2024-12)

• Architected a Loan Management product supporting USSD, Web, and Mobile channels via API integrations with banks, card processors, securities, and credit bureaus, with customizable KYC, contributing a new revenue stream for the company.
• Shaped technical direction by defining architectural standards through code reviews, upholding high coding principles, and mentoring a team of engineers.
• Implemented robust state persistence logic using SQL transaction controls (ACID principles), decreasing failed payment and workflow states across deployed environments.
• Oversaw budget planning for a team of 6 engineers, balancing staffing, tooling, and infrastructure requirements to ensure the successful delivery of multiple concurrent product initiatives.
• Optimized state persistence layer using indexed state transition tables and foreign key constraints, raising query efficiency by 45% and cutting downstream incident investigations.
• Integrated with banks, payment gateways, tax authorities, and benefits providers via secure API integrations, contributing to reliable payment flows and reconciliations.

Software Developer - Quantkey

(2022-03 - 2024-06)

• Implemented a flexible email service capable of handling over 10,000 requests per second based on a custom user SMTP server with authentication, spam detection, and content keyword replacement.
• Built custom software development initiatives, delivering custom table features to allow users to dynamically query records by given fields and download them in multiple formats.
• Built a CI/CD pipeline from scratch using GitHub Actions, eliminating errors and deployment time from 5 minutes to 23 seconds for the backend repo.
• Optimized database schemas by altering static "status" fields to use an Enum structure and adding new indexes to accelerate retrieval speed across production systems.
• Accelerated development by creating a local Auth/API data utility and two other libraries to standardize common operations and shorten onboarding time for engineers.

Full Stack Software Developer - Workremits

(2021-03 - 2022-03)

• Accelerated application rendering performance by refactoring inefficient React component re-renders, lifting UI responsiveness.
• Established engineering documentation standards using Notion, increasing team onboarding efficiency.
• Automated AWS provisioning using Terraform and Elastic Beanstalk, eliminating manual deployment steps.
• Championed Docker-based containerization and pipelines to automate testing and deployments, reducing release times by 65% and accelerating deployment reliability across environments.
• Engineered a high-performance, decoupled service using secured pre-signed URLs for S3 buckets to handle large file uploads securely.

B.Eng. - Mechanical - Ambrose Alli University (2016-06)

General Certificate Courses - PHP, C#, Nest.js, Laravel, DSA - Udemy