rick427

Frontend engineer — Nairobi, Kenya

I build the layerwhere JavaScriptmeets the device.

9+ years on the front end. Deep enough into the native and server layers to ship the parts most frontend engineers hand off.

see the work

Published.

Open-source React Native libraries running in production apps. Native on both sides, TypeScript in the middle, and an API surface small enough to learn in one sitting.

  1. face-verify

    v0.3.1 · iOS · Android

    Compares a reference image against a live front-camera capture using ML Kit quality checks and AWS Rekognition or a custom endpoint.

    → Frame-level quality gating before a single byte goes to the network — bad captures never cost you an API call.

  2. liveness

    v0.3.2 · iOS · Android

    Liveness detection using Vision Camera v4 and ML Kit.

    → Proving a face belongs to a person who is actually there, on a frame budget of ~16ms.

  3. bg-timer

    v0.1.0 · iOS · Android

    A reliable background timer with full New Architecture support. Works on iOS and Android even when the app is backgrounded or the screen is locked.

    → Two operating systems that both want to kill your timer, and one API that behaves the same on each.

  4. lottie-splash

    v1.2.0 · iOS · Android

    Animated Lottie splash screen that plays on launch and dismisses when the app is ready. Pairs with react-native-bootsplash for a flash-free launch.

    → Removing the white flash between native launch and first React render.

  5. developer-mode

    v1.1.0 · iOS · Android

    Detects whether developer mode is enabled on Android and iOS.

    → A small, boring security primitive that fintech apps keep needing.

all packages on npm ↗

about

Most of my work lives at a boundary.

I write interfaces for a living, and for nine years that has mostly meant React and React Native. But the problems I keep getting handed are the ones that cross a line: a camera that has to prove a face is alive, a timer that has to survive a locked screen, a payment flow that has to stay correct when the socket drops.

So I learned the other side. I publish native modules in Kotlin and Swift, wire them through the New Architecture, and keep the JavaScript API small enough that the next developer never has to think about any of it. That is the job — absorb the complexity, hand back something obvious.

Right now I build mobile at Myka, a licensed insurance platform in Nigeria — the consumer and partner apps — after five years at Pesawise building the interfaces businesses use to move money.

Interface

React, React Native and Next.js. Design systems, animation, and the accessibility and performance work that decides whether any of it is actually usable.

  • React
  • React Native
  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • Tailwind
  • GSAP
  • Three.js

Native

Kotlin and Swift modules bridged through the New Architecture. Camera pipelines, ML Kit, foreground services, and the platform quirks nobody documents.

  • Kotlin
  • Swift
  • TurboModules
  • Vision Camera
  • ML Kit
  • AWS Rekognition

Server

Node and Express APIs, MongoDB and Postgres, WebSocket transports. Enough backend to design the contract rather than just consume it.

  • Node.js
  • Express
  • MongoDB
  • PostgreSQL
  • REST
  • WebSocket

experience

Where the work happened.

Myka

case study

Full-time · Abuja, Nigeria

2026 — present

  • React Native
  • Expo
  • TypeScript
  • React Query
  • Zustand
  • Sanity
  • Firebase
  • CodePush
  • Fastlane

Senior Mobile Frontend Engineer

2026 — present

Own the consumer insurance app's hardest features: camera-driven device inspection for gadget cover, KYC face verification and liveness on my own open-source modules, on-device policy PDF generation, biometric auth, and real-time claim tracking over sockets. Automated the release pipeline with Fastlane plus CodePush OTA, and contribute across the Expo partner app — building new verticals, bug fixing and troubleshooting.

Pesawise

case study

Full-time · Nairobi, Kenya

2021 — 2026

  • React Native
  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • Flutter
  • Astro
  • Sentry
  • Firebase

Lead Frontend Developer

Jan 2025 — 2026

Leading frontend for a business-payments platform. Built a Lerna monorepo of shared payment libraries, shipped biometric auth and push-notification pipelines, drove version 5 of the business app to production with design and compliance teams, and cut the frontend backlog by 45%.

Senior Frontend Developer

Jun 2023 — Jan 2025

Built the cross-platform payments app for businesses in React Native and the consumer app in Flutter. Shipped an embeddable checkout system, rebuilt the payment gateway, migrated the business site from Next.js to Astro for speed, and managed a small, fast-moving engineering team.

Frontend Developer

Apr 2021 — Jun 2023

Migrated the whole frontend from CRA to Next.js with TypeScript and the data layer from Redux Toolkit to React Query. Set up error aggregation with Sentry, integrated Chatwoot, and built the platform's secure web payment client.

Agriarche

case study

Contract · Remote · Abuja, Nigeria

2021 — 2025

  • React
  • React Native
  • TypeScript
  • Redux Toolkit
  • Google APIs
  • Docker

Senior Frontend Developer

May 2023 — Dec 2025

Owned web and mobile clients for an agricultural trading platform — reusable component systems, performance and accessibility work, code review and mentorship, end-to-end feature delivery.

Frontend Developer

Nov 2021 — May 2023

Built the Kasuwa marketplace clients from scratch: a React/TypeScript dashboard and a cross-platform mobile app with OTA updates, push notifications, a virtual wallet, and Google Maps/Places integrations — shipped to the Play Store at a 10MB APK.

Cellulant

Full-time · FCT, Nigeria

2018 — 2021

  • React
  • Redux Saga
  • Vue.js
  • CSS

Software Engineer

Nov 2019 — Mar 2021

Overhauled the UI for Agrikore, a pan-African agricultural marketplace — refactored async Redux from thunk to saga, cut unnecessary JavaScript and lazy-loaded routes for performance, and maintained the Vue.js merchant dashboard.

Junior Software Engineer

Oct 2018 — Nov 2019

Ran human-to-machine simulations on the blockchain-integrated Alpha and Beta builds of Agrikore, tested and logged the blockchain APIs, and documented end-to-end platform processes.

Also built for The Zubeida, ToroNet, Winfield. Full history on LinkedIn ↗

Education

  • United States International University — Africa

    MSc, Information Systems and Technology

    2024 — 2025

  • Eastern Mediterranean University

    BSc, Information Technology

    2014 — 2018

Certifications