Full-stack engineer.
I write whatever the job needs.
I'm Johnn Nalwa. Payroll software that reconciles down to the cent. Video with sub-100ms latency. ML models that stay monitored after they ship. iOS tools where the calculations actually matter. TypeScript on the frontend, Python and C++ where performance is the constraint, Swift for mobile — I work across all of it.
Selected projects.
A small set of systems I've built end-to-end — each solved a concrete problem that off-the-shelf tools couldn't.
What I'm hired to build.
Real-time systems
RTSP, WebRTC, low-latency message buses, sub-100ms inference pipelines.
Mission-critical web
Payroll, fintech and healthcare apps where wrong answers cost real money.
AI productisation
Turning research notebooks into shippable services with monitoring and rollback.
Engineering as the slow, careful kind of craft.
Latency is a feature
From 40ms trading signals to frame-accurate video overlays — when speed is the product, every layer is measured.
Correctness over cleverness
Payroll, healthcare, finance. Domains where wrong answers cost real money or real outcomes. Conservative defaults, strong types, paper trails.
Boring tech, sharp edges
Postgres, Redis, plain RPC. The simple stack, deployed carefully, beats the fashionable one every time.
Always shipping.
Daily commits across client work, side experiments, and open source. Consistency compounds.
Working together.
Deep-tech engagements where engineering rigor is the differentiator — real-time infra, regulated software, or AI moving from prototype to production.
Both. I embed with product teams as a senior engineer, and I lead solo end-to-end builds when scope is well-defined.
Two weeks for a focused spike or audit, 6–12 weeks for a production rollout. I take on a small number of clients per year to keep quality high.
Nairobi, Kenya — working remote with clients across EU, US, and Africa time zones.
Have a system that needs
to actually work?
I take on a small number of deep-tech engagements per year. If you're building something where engineering rigor is the differentiator, I'd like to hear about it.