Ladi Grillo

Software engineer with experience designing and delivering scalable backend and data systems. Proven track record of owning complex projects end-to-end, from architectural design and data modeling to production deployment and long-term maintenance, with a focus on building decoupled, event-driven systems and high-throughput processing pipelines. Demonstrates proactive problem-solving by identifying system gaps early and developing internal tooling, including an observability platform that improved system transparency and operational efficiency across teams.

Experienced in building distributed architectures, asynchronous processing workflows, and reliable data ingestion systems that support performance, scalability, and maintainability.

Founding Software Engineer at Chelotie (2025-03 – Present)

Building a stablecoin-based payment platform enabling creators and merchants to seamlessly receive crypto payments, bridging Web2 application logic with on-chain execution.

• Implemented an on-chain event processing pipeline, subscribing to smart contract events via Ethereum JSON-RPC, decoding ABI-encoded logs, and reconciling them with off-chain payment intents.
• Implemented gasless transaction flows using account abstraction, integrating paymaster sponsorship and bundler infrastructure to remove gas fee friction for end users.
• Implemented an event-driven architecture using NATS, enabling loosely coupled communication between services.
• Built asynchronous workflows across services by publishing and subscribing to domain events improving system scalability and extensibility.
• Implemented automated subscription renewal pipelines, triggering payment workflows for recurring billing and ensuring continuity of service for users.
• Architected and implemented wallet infrastructure by integrating embedded and smart wallets, enabling secure key management, transaction signing, and seamless user onboarding

Software Engineer at Broadbased Communications Ltd (2025-02 – 2025-03)

Designed and implemented a distributed, service-oriented architecture consisting of multiple independent services for ingestion, processing, delivery, and status tracking.

• Achieved high system availability and fault tolerance by decoupling services and leveraging asynchronous processing patterns.
• Built a data ingestion service integrating with Oracle database to continuously extract SMS records, transform them, and persist into a MongoDB-based outbox system with state tracking.
• Implemented idempotent message processing using database-level unique indexing strategies, eliminating duplicate SMS submissions and ensuring data consistency in a distributed system.
• Led end-to-end infrastructure setup and deployment, including provisioning and configuring Linux (CentOS) servers, firewall rules, and secure SSH-based deployment automation.
• Developed a high-performance SMS delivery worker maintaining persistent SMPP transmitter connections to multiple mobile network operators (MTN, Glo, Airtel), ensuring low-latency message submission and efficient throughput.
• Implemented end-to-end monitoring using Prometheus, establishing visibility into system metrics, performance, and availability.
• Configured alerting pipelines integrated with Slack and email, enabling real-time incident notifications and reducing mean time to detection (MTTD).
• Improved system reliability and uptime by enabling rapid identification and resolution of production issues through proactive monitoring and alerting systems.
• Led the end-to-end development of an internal observability and operations platform, improving system transparency across services.
• Designed and implemented a robust deduplication pipeline to ensure all incoming datasync events were stored while only unique events were processed for downstream systems.
• Engineered a two-stage data processing architecture using MongoDB to separate raw ingestion from validated processing.
• Optimized large-scale data processing by introducing a pre-aggregated reporting layer, reducing expensive real-time aggregation queries on high-volume datasets.
• Built and maintained CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps, enabling automated testing and deployment workflows for faster, safer releases.

Software Engineer at Essential Software Company (2022-06 – 2025-01)

Developed core modules for an ERP platform tailored to SMEs, enabling management of orders, inventory, warehouses, pricing, customers, staff, and webstore operations.

• Implemented an automated storefront generation feature that provisioned a unique online store per merchant, enabling customers to browse price lists and place orders, expanding merchants' digital sales channels.
• Designed and implemented the order service, defining the full lifecycle from order creation to fulfillment, improving reliability and traceability of transactions.
• Built flexible payment gateway integrations, allowing merchants to configure providers via API keys and receive payments directly into their own wallets, reducing platform liability and increasing adoption.
• Implemented multi-outlet management functionality, enabling merchants to operate and track operations across multiple business locations from a unified system.

Software Engineer at Prop44 (2023-01 – 2023-12)

• Built a scalable backend in Go, replacing Firebase with a custom service to improve control over business logic and system performance.
• Integrated Stripe payment infrastructure for one-time payment processing, reducing payment friction.
• Managed end-to-end deployment on a VPS, establishing a reliable production environment and handling server configuration, releases, and uptime management.
• Designed and implemented the application database schema, optimizing data access patterns and ensuring efficient query performance.

B.Sc in Biochemistry – University of Ilorin (2018-01 – 2023-10)