Hello, I'm Segun 👋
Distributed Systems Engineer & Signals Architect
I build and debug complex systems—from code to chaos recovery.
Debugging & Engineering Journey
Foundation years (2009 - 2014)
An era defined by independence, system-level thinking, and engineering through real-world constraints.
Reflections
Technical depth shaped by constraint and intent
Across these years, I delivered working systems without external scaffolding — no frameworks, no teams, and often no prior blueprint.
Every line of code had to matter. I learned how to build for clarity, debug under pressure, and deliver results without abstractions.
That mindset still defines how I approach complex systems today.
Independent Developer
2009 - 2011
Early-stage engineering and systems intuition
Began building C/C++ applications to automate academic workflows and simulate learning tools.
Adopted Java for GUI development where C++ toolchains proved unstable.
These formative years were less about language and more about logic, persistence, and making things work — with or without proper tools.
University Projects & Systems Building
2012 - 2014
Targeted solutions deployed in production and pilot environments
Developed and deployed an SMS-authenticated e-voting system for over 3,000 users.
Built a subnetting visualization tool used in Cisco NetAcad programs.
Also collaborated with peers in academic institutions to build functional prototypes of a student results alert system and a result management application — assisting them in translating their thesis concepts into working software.
Each system offered unique lessons in trust, delivery, and real-world system behavior.
eRecom
2013
Distributed stakeholder platform with intelligent grouping
Designed and implemented a web-based tool that facilitated asynchronous requirement gathering for large-scale software systems.
Applied a hybrid of Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and Probabilistic LSA to group stakeholders by intent and context.
The system functioned as an early intelligent collaboration layer — well ahead of its time in distributed decision support.
Early Exposure — Public Sector IT Support
2013 - 2014
National Youth Service Corps Member
Supported basic Windows-based infrastructure in a government education office.
While the technical scope was limited, the role offered firsthand insight into how even low-complexity systems sustain mission-critical operations in the public sector.
From Code to Systems Thinking
(2015 - 2019)
Reflections: Systems Thinking Begins
This phase marked a pivotal shift. I moved from simply building software to engineering systems with durability, observability, and scale in mind. I immersed myself in Linux internals, studied software-defined networking, explored Docker deeply after watching DockerCon 2016, and containerized everything — even my LaTeX compiler. I didn’t just write code; I investigated how systems behave in real-world environments and learned how to shape them with intent.
Engineering Research in Motion
Drove deep exploration into next-gen communication frameworks and converged subscriber data architectures. Reverse-engineered telecom systems like OpenIMSCore from the Fokus Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin, containerized them, and built Java-based systems that exposed heterogeneous data over standardized APIs. These models reflected how real-world telecom infrastructure consolidates, stores, and serves critical data. I presented some of this work at respected conferences in South Africa and Spain.
Self-Driven Infrastructure Learning
This was my autodidact era. I dove deep into Linux internals and networking via Linux Foundation courses — not for certifications, but for depth. Explored OpenStack and containerized full systems before orchestration tools became mainstream. I dissected and simulated how large-scale systems communicate, fail, and recover. That mindset still shapes how I build and lead today.
SDN & Smart Grid Resilience
Designed and prototyped a smart-grid communication protocol at the Telematics Institute, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Using Software-Defined Networking, P4, and ONOS, I built a Frame Replication and Elimination system (FRER) to enhance fault tolerance in energy networks. It wasn’t theoretical — I led experiment design, implementation, and iterations in a live testbed.
ML for Systems Insight
Began applying machine learning to infrastructure-level problems. Built a predictive model to identify telco users most likely to adopt value-added services. Trained reinforcement learning agents using OpenAI Gym to simulate control logic in real-time systems like quadcopters. This seeded my long-term pursuit of intelligent observability.
Mentorship & Protocol Engineering
At KIT’s Telematics Institute, I ran protocol engineering practicals, reviewed codebases, and supervised final-year thesis projects. Mentoring junior engineers wasn't just about clean code — it was about debugging mental models and shaping how they approached real-world systems.
Systems under fire (2019 - 2021)
Reflections
This was a defining phase. I wasn’t just building—I was diagnosing, dissecting, and restoring. Whether it was debugging unknown production failures, integrating fractured systems, or leading backend development for a new platform, I found clarity in chaos. I began seeing codebases less as puzzles and more like pressure systems—where the real work is knowing what not to touch, what to patch, and when to rebuild from first principles. I also started working with a small team on an idea—one that deepened my thinking around service reliability and distributed problem spaces.
Platform Engineering in Motion
2019 - 2020
Built out key backend APIs for a new internal platform.
Integrated incompatible software products, resolved performance bottlenecks, and instrumented Kafka-powered notifications.
Adopted NLP architectures and used real-time metrics to continuously maintain uptime and feature delivery.
Worked quietly with a team on a forward-looking idea—focused on intelligent systems infrastructure.
Precision Debugging at Scale
2021
Worked remotely on complex software issues across a suite of enterprise products.
Led source-level debugging across Java, .NET, and Linux systems—often reverse engineering binaries to trace undocumented behavior.
Was routinely assigned Severity-1 issues with no known path to resolution—including cases unresolved for over six months. Many were resolved within 2–3 weeks.
Supported both SaaS and on-premise deployments, working closely with client teams and engineering leads to ensure fast, durable fixes with minimal impact on core systems.
Elevation, Precision & Product Vision (2021 to present)
Reflections
This era reflects a deliberate shift from deep systems mastery to the art of shaping resilient infrastructure, building teams, and ultimately crafting tools for others to scale their own systems with confidence. Work has spanned high-impact consulting, open-source contributions, and now—venturing into the product space with an ambitious observability platform.
Architecting for Resilience at Scale
Remotely led critical backend and infrastructure transformations for engineering teams across multiple time zones.
Focused on optimizing distributed systems, container orchestration, and event-driven platforms, while contributing hands-on to architecture design, monitoring, and reliability automation. Projects consistently emphasized stability, developer velocity, and operational clarity.
Unblocking Data Infrastructure with Kafka Precision
Elevated Kafka observability and cluster resilience across large-scale production systems.
Designed and built tools for dynamic topic insights, automated storage rebalancing, and seamless multi-region failovers—removing painful operational bottlenecks.
Facilitated infrastructure self-service across teams, enabling faster deployments and better ownership of production data pipelines.
Building the Missing Layer — Real-Time Observability
Currently building a real-time observability platform focused on surfacing silent failures, reducing mean time-to-detection, and automating insights at the infrastructure and code level. The platform—Clutta—is designed for clarity at scale. Internal milestones have included: a zero-touch SDK, WebSocket-based live feeds, anomaly correlation engines, and early usage across internal systems. Now in early access.
Current explorations
What I'm exploring now
Observability
Currently focused on scaling Clutta — a real-time observability platform designed to detect issues before users experience them. The goal is not just visibility, but precision: surfacing silent failures, tracing anomaly roots, and shrinking the time between impact and insight.
Infrastructure
At the same time, I'm studying how teams manage complexity at scale, and how infrastructure tooling can shift left—where performance, security, and observability become part of development itself, not just operations.
Other interests
I’m also deeply interested in:
Zero-touch developer experience for telemetry
Correlation engines that make sense of chaotic data streams
Infrastructure-as-code principles extended to real-time systems
Designing systems that self-report, self-diagnose, and eventually self-heal
Systems at Scale
Self-Healing Systems
Custom Load Balancers
Data Pipelines
Service Resilience
Protocol Buffers
Telecommunication Backbones
Real-Time Infrastructure
CI/CD Pipelines
High-Throughput Systems
Contributions
Engineering Contributions & Systems Shape
Over the years, I’ve architected, implemented, and shaped systems that span distributed infrastructure, observability platforms, telecommunication backbones, and intelligent automation. What unites these efforts is a commitment to clarity, control, and uncompromising reliability—whether at scale or at the edge.
Kafka Storage Load Balancer
Python, SaltStack, Kafka, GitHub Actions
Designed and built an internal tool that dynamically rebalances Kafka storage and partitions across brokers.
Eliminated days of manual rebalancing work, removed the need for scheduled maintenance windows, and drastically improved cluster scalability.
Subscription Activator
Golang, GraphQL, Redis, PostgreSQL, Kafka, Nomad, GitHub Actions
Automated the cleanup and reactivation of over nine million telecom subscription records.
Leveraged asynchronous processing, Kafka microservices, and Redis caching to deliver high-throughput corrections without human involvement.
Kafka Topics Lookup
Python, Flask, Redis, Nomad, Swagger UI
Developed a self-service metadata tool to identify topic owners, health, and usage across Kafka clusters.
Unified fragmented metadata sources and exposed them via a lightweight REST API with Swagger documentation.
Self-Healing Systems at Scale
Golang, Ruby, Kafka, Grafana, HashiCorp Nomad, Vault, Consul
Prototyped real-time anomaly detection and remediation pipelines.
Integrated infrastructure-aware alerting and autonomous recovery mechanisms—reducing mean time-to-repair (MTTR) significantly in production-like environments.
DataHub Deployment & Enhancement
Java (Spring Boot), Python, PostgreSQL, ElasticSearch, GitHub Actions
Contributed to LinkedIn’s open-source DataHub, improving ElasticSearch reliability and fixing schema registry integration for Kafka metadata.
Helped operationalize deployments across staging and production environments.
OpenIMSCore Re-Engineering
Java, SIP, Diameter, Docker Compose, Restcomm SIP Servlets
Reverse-engineered the OpenIMSCore stack from the Fokus Fraunhofer Institute. Virtualized its components and built SIP-based messaging/voice experiments to understand telecom signaling paths and protocols.
UDC-Compliant Stateless Network Functions
Java, HTTP, OData, SIP, Diameter
Created front-end (FE) telecom services based on 3GPP’s UDC spec.
Refactored legacy HSS behavior into stateless, API-driven components that supported SIP, Diameter, and modern REST/OData protocols.
Converged Subscriber Data Repository (CSDR)
Java, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, OData, Apache Olingo, Docker
Built a scalable data service for heterogeneous telecom data sources.
Adopted a polyglot persistence model and implemented OData interfaces for unified querying across disparate datasets.
Frame Replication & Elimination for Reliability (FRER)
P4, Java, ONOS SDN Controller, Bazel, Apache Thrift
Developed an SDN-based prototype of the IEEE 802.1CB FRER standard for smart grid reliability.
Combined P4 programming with ONOS control logic to replicate Ethernet frames and eliminate duplicates under fault conditions.
Machine Learning: Customer Prediction Model
Python, TensorFlow, Keras, Scikit-learn, Pandas
Delivered a 98% accurate predictive model for identifying likely adopters of mobile value-added services.
Combined Gaussian Mixture Model clustering with deep learning classification to produce actionable insights for telecom marketing.
Reinforcement Learning: Teaching a Quadcopter to Fly
Python, OpenAI Gym, DDPG, Pandas
Trained a quadcopter flight control agent using Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG).
Designed a reward function that enabled stable liftoff and directional navigation under simulation constraints.
Awards & Academic Journey
Academic Foundations & Recognitions
Education
MSc, Computer Science – Rhodes University, South Africa
Graduated with Distinction
Thesis: A Unified Data Repository for Rich Communication Services
BTech, Computer Science – Bells University of Technology, Nigeria
First Class Honours
Thesis: Development of a Requirement Analysis Supporting Tool for Large Scale Systems Using an Enhanced Latent Semantic Model
Certifications
Machine Learning Engineer Nanodegree – Udacity
AI Programming with Python Nanodegree – Udacity
SIP School Certified Associate (SSCA)
IELTS – Overall Band: 8.0 / 9.0
Oracle Certified Professional Java Programmer (OCP)
Oracle Certified SQL Expert (OCE)
Oracle Certified Associate Database 11g Administrator (OCA)
Honours & Awards
Best Computer Science Research Student – Rhodes University
Bells University of Technology:
Chancellor’s Prize – Best Graduating Student excelling in National Academic Competitions
College Prize – Best Graduating Student, College of Information and Communications Technology
Departmental Prize – Best Graduating Student, Department of Computer Science
Selected Publications
Realizing Seamless Redundancy in Cyber-Physical Networks with Programmable
Protocol-Independent Packet Processors
Accepted as a poster at The 44th IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN), Osnabrueck, Germany, 2019
Exposing Polyglot-Persisted Data Using the Open Data Protocol for User Data
Convergence in Mobile Networks
Southern Africa Telecommunication Network and Applications Conference (SATNAC), Barcelona, Spain – 2017
A Unified Data Repository for Rich Communication Services
Open Access Theses and Dissertations (OATD), Rhodes University – 2017
Adopting the OData Protocol as a UD Reference Point for User Data Convergence
Southern Africa Telecommunication Network and Applications Conference (SATNAC), George, South Africa – 2016
An Empirical Study of Automated Classification Tools for Informal Requirements in Large-Scale Systems
International Journal of Business Information Systems, Inderscience – 2015
Footprint
Global Engineering Experience
Showcasing a wealth of global engineering experience, I bring innovative solutions and expertise to every project.
Cross-Continental Delivery – Designed, built, and deployed systems across Africa, Europe, and North America. From telecom infrastructure in South Africa to distributed observability and backend systems powering large-scale operations globally.
Remote Impact at Scale – Diagnosed and resolved production issues in critical platforms like LinkedIn’s DataHub, enhancing ElasticSearch integration and improving metadata reliability for distributed data teams.
Telecom-Grade Engineering – Re-engineered OpenIMSCore from Fokus Fraunhofer (Germany) into scalable SIP-based environments. Enabled experimental telco deployments using containerized infrastructure.
IEEE-Standard Prototyping – Built a Frame Replication and Elimination (FRER) system based on IEEE 802.1CB at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), contributing to fault-tolerant network designs for critical infrastructure.
Collaborations Across Borders – Delivered machine learning projects and peer-reviewed publications via South African and European academic-industrial partnerships (e.g., SATNAC, Telkom CoE).
Edge-to-Cloud Versatility – Deployed infrastructure spanning edge-network virtualized systems to cloud-native setups using Kubernetes, Nomad, and Terraform on GCP and AWS.
Interoperability by Design – Built stateless network services with multi-protocol support (Diameter, SIP, HTTP, OData), enabling seamless integration across vendor stacks.
North America Systems Architecture – Supported and resolved complex backend and infrastructure challenges for North American enterprise platforms—working across time zones and systems at architectural depth.
Contact
Let's Connect
Whether you’re building critical infrastructure, need help navigating architectural complexity, or just want to jam on systems thinking — I’m open to collaborations, conversations, and consulting.
Hello, I'm Segun 👋
Distributed Systems Engineer & Signals Architect
I build and debug complex systems—from code to chaos recovery.
Debugging & Engineering Journey
Foundation years (2009 - 2014)
An era defined by independence, system-level thinking, and engineering through real-world constraints.
Reflections
Technical depth shaped by constraint and intent
Across these years, I delivered working systems without external scaffolding — no frameworks, no teams, and often no prior blueprint.
Every line of code had to matter. I learned how to build for clarity, debug under pressure, and deliver results without abstractions.
That mindset still defines how I approach complex systems today.
Independent Developer
2009 - 2011
Early-stage engineering and systems intuition
Began building C/C++ applications to automate academic workflows and simulate learning tools.
Adopted Java for GUI development where C++ toolchains proved unstable.
These formative years were less about language and more about logic, persistence, and making things work — with or without proper tools.
University Projects & Systems Building
2012 - 2014
Targeted solutions deployed in production and pilot environments
Developed and deployed an SMS-authenticated e-voting system for over 3,000 users.
Built a subnetting visualization tool used in Cisco NetAcad programs.
Also collaborated with peers in academic institutions to build functional prototypes of a student results alert system and a result management application — assisting them in translating their thesis concepts into working software.
Each system offered unique lessons in trust, delivery, and real-world system behavior.
eRecom
2013
Distributed stakeholder platform with intelligent grouping
Designed and implemented a web-based tool that facilitated asynchronous requirement gathering for large-scale software systems.
Applied a hybrid of Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and Probabilistic LSA to group stakeholders by intent and context.
The system functioned as an early intelligent collaboration layer — well ahead of its time in distributed decision support.
Early Exposure — Public Sector IT Support
2013 - 2014
National Youth Service Corps Member
Supported basic Windows-based infrastructure in a government education office.
While the technical scope was limited, the role offered firsthand insight into how even low-complexity systems sustain mission-critical operations in the public sector.
From Code to Systems Thinking
(2015 - 2019)
Reflections: Systems Thinking Begins
This phase marked a pivotal shift. I moved from simply building software to engineering systems with durability, observability, and scale in mind. I immersed myself in Linux internals, studied software-defined networking, explored Docker deeply after watching DockerCon 2016, and containerized everything — even my LaTeX compiler. I didn’t just write code; I investigated how systems behave in real-world environments and learned how to shape them with intent.
Engineering Research in Motion
Drove deep exploration into next-gen communication frameworks and converged subscriber data architectures. Reverse-engineered telecom systems like OpenIMSCore from the Fokus Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin, containerized them, and built Java-based systems that exposed heterogeneous data over standardized APIs. These models reflected how real-world telecom infrastructure consolidates, stores, and serves critical data. I presented some of this work at respected conferences in South Africa and Spain.
Self-Driven Infrastructure Learning
This was my autodidact era. I dove deep into Linux internals and networking via Linux Foundation courses — not for certifications, but for depth. Explored OpenStack and containerized full systems before orchestration tools became mainstream. I dissected and simulated how large-scale systems communicate, fail, and recover. That mindset still shapes how I build and lead today.
SDN & Smart Grid Resilience
Designed and prototyped a smart-grid communication protocol at the Telematics Institute, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Using Software-Defined Networking, P4, and ONOS, I built a Frame Replication and Elimination system (FRER) to enhance fault tolerance in energy networks. It wasn’t theoretical — I led experiment design, implementation, and iterations in a live testbed.
ML for Systems Insight
Began applying machine learning to infrastructure-level problems. Built a predictive model to identify telco users most likely to adopt value-added services. Trained reinforcement learning agents using OpenAI Gym to simulate control logic in real-time systems like quadcopters. This seeded my long-term pursuit of intelligent observability.
Mentorship & Protocol Engineering
At KIT’s Telematics Institute, I ran protocol engineering practicals, reviewed codebases, and supervised final-year thesis projects. Mentoring junior engineers wasn't just about clean code — it was about debugging mental models and shaping how they approached real-world systems.
Systems under fire (2019 - 2021)
Reflections
This was a defining phase. I wasn’t just building—I was diagnosing, dissecting, and restoring. Whether it was debugging unknown production failures, integrating fractured systems, or leading backend development for a new platform, I found clarity in chaos. I began seeing codebases less as puzzles and more like pressure systems—where the real work is knowing what not to touch, what to patch, and when to rebuild from first principles. I also started working with a small team on an idea—one that deepened my thinking around service reliability and distributed problem spaces.
Platform Engineering in Motion
2019 - 2020
Built out key backend APIs for a new internal platform.
Integrated incompatible software products, resolved performance bottlenecks, and instrumented Kafka-powered notifications.
Adopted NLP architectures and used real-time metrics to continuously maintain uptime and feature delivery.
Worked quietly with a team on a forward-looking idea—focused on intelligent systems infrastructure.
Precision Debugging at Scale
2021
Worked remotely on complex software issues across a suite of enterprise products.
Led source-level debugging across Java, .NET, and Linux systems—often reverse engineering binaries to trace undocumented behavior.
Was routinely assigned Severity-1 issues with no known path to resolution—including cases unresolved for over six months. Many were resolved within 2–3 weeks.
Supported both SaaS and on-premise deployments, working closely with client teams and engineering leads to ensure fast, durable fixes with minimal impact on core systems.
Elevation, Precision & Product Vision (2021 to present)
Reflections
This era reflects a deliberate shift from deep systems mastery to the art of shaping resilient infrastructure, building teams, and ultimately crafting tools for others to scale their own systems with confidence. Work has spanned high-impact consulting, open-source contributions, and now—venturing into the product space with an ambitious observability platform.
Architecting for Resilience at Scale
Remotely led critical backend and infrastructure transformations for engineering teams across multiple time zones.
Focused on optimizing distributed systems, container orchestration, and event-driven platforms, while contributing hands-on to architecture design, monitoring, and reliability automation. Projects consistently emphasized stability, developer velocity, and operational clarity.
Unblocking Data Infrastructure with Kafka Precision
Elevated Kafka observability and cluster resilience across large-scale production systems.
Designed and built tools for dynamic topic insights, automated storage rebalancing, and seamless multi-region failovers—removing painful operational bottlenecks.
Facilitated infrastructure self-service across teams, enabling faster deployments and better ownership of production data pipelines.
Building the Missing Layer — Real-Time Observability
Currently building a real-time observability platform focused on surfacing silent failures, reducing mean time-to-detection, and automating insights at the infrastructure and code level. The platform—Clutta—is designed for clarity at scale. Internal milestones have included: a zero-touch SDK, WebSocket-based live feeds, anomaly correlation engines, and early usage across internal systems. Now in early access.
Current explorations
What I'm exploring now
Observability
Currently focused on scaling Clutta — a real-time observability platform designed to detect issues before users experience them. The goal is not just visibility, but precision: surfacing silent failures, tracing anomaly roots, and shrinking the time between impact and insight.
Infrastructure
At the same time, I'm studying how teams manage complexity at scale, and how infrastructure tooling can shift left—where performance, security, and observability become part of development itself, not just operations.
Other interests
I’m also deeply interested in:
Zero-touch developer experience for telemetry
Correlation engines that make sense of chaotic data streams
Infrastructure-as-code principles extended to real-time systems
Designing systems that self-report, self-diagnose, and eventually self-heal
Systems at Scale
Self-Healing Systems
Custom Load Balancers
Data Pipelines
Service Resilience
Protocol Buffers
Telecommunication Backbones
Real-Time Infrastructure
CI/CD Pipelines
High-Throughput Systems
Contributions
Engineering Contributions & Systems Shape
Over the years, I’ve architected, implemented, and shaped systems that span distributed infrastructure, observability platforms, telecommunication backbones, and intelligent automation. What unites these efforts is a commitment to clarity, control, and uncompromising reliability—whether at scale or at the edge.
Kafka Storage Load Balancer
Python, SaltStack, Kafka, GitHub Actions
Designed and built an internal tool that dynamically rebalances Kafka storage and partitions across brokers.
Eliminated days of manual rebalancing work, removed the need for scheduled maintenance windows, and drastically improved cluster scalability.
Subscription Activator
Golang, GraphQL, Redis, PostgreSQL, Kafka, Nomad, GitHub Actions
Automated the cleanup and reactivation of over nine million telecom subscription records.
Leveraged asynchronous processing, Kafka microservices, and Redis caching to deliver high-throughput corrections without human involvement.
Kafka Topics Lookup
Python, Flask, Redis, Nomad, Swagger UI
Developed a self-service metadata tool to identify topic owners, health, and usage across Kafka clusters.
Unified fragmented metadata sources and exposed them via a lightweight REST API with Swagger documentation.
Self-Healing Systems at Scale
Golang, Ruby, Kafka, Grafana, HashiCorp Nomad, Vault, Consul
Prototyped real-time anomaly detection and remediation pipelines.
Integrated infrastructure-aware alerting and autonomous recovery mechanisms—reducing mean time-to-repair (MTTR) significantly in production-like environments.
DataHub Deployment & Enhancement
Java (Spring Boot), Python, PostgreSQL, ElasticSearch, GitHub Actions
Contributed to LinkedIn’s open-source DataHub, improving ElasticSearch reliability and fixing schema registry integration for Kafka metadata.
Helped operationalize deployments across staging and production environments.
OpenIMSCore Re-Engineering
Java, SIP, Diameter, Docker Compose, Restcomm SIP Servlets
Reverse-engineered the OpenIMSCore stack from the Fokus Fraunhofer Institute. Virtualized its components and built SIP-based messaging/voice experiments to understand telecom signaling paths and protocols.
UDC-Compliant Stateless Network Functions
Java, HTTP, OData, SIP, Diameter
Created front-end (FE) telecom services based on 3GPP’s UDC spec.
Refactored legacy HSS behavior into stateless, API-driven components that supported SIP, Diameter, and modern REST/OData protocols.
Converged Subscriber Data Repository (CSDR)
Java, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, OData, Apache Olingo, Docker
Built a scalable data service for heterogeneous telecom data sources.
Adopted a polyglot persistence model and implemented OData interfaces for unified querying across disparate datasets.
Frame Replication & Elimination for Reliability (FRER)
P4, Java, ONOS SDN Controller, Bazel, Apache Thrift
Developed an SDN-based prototype of the IEEE 802.1CB FRER standard for smart grid reliability.
Combined P4 programming with ONOS control logic to replicate Ethernet frames and eliminate duplicates under fault conditions.
Machine Learning: Customer Prediction Model
Python, TensorFlow, Keras, Scikit-learn, Pandas
Delivered a 98% accurate predictive model for identifying likely adopters of mobile value-added services.
Combined Gaussian Mixture Model clustering with deep learning classification to produce actionable insights for telecom marketing.
Reinforcement Learning: Teaching a Quadcopter to Fly
Python, OpenAI Gym, DDPG, Pandas
Trained a quadcopter flight control agent using Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG).
Designed a reward function that enabled stable liftoff and directional navigation under simulation constraints.
Awards & Academic Journey
Academic Foundations & Recognitions
Education
MSc, Computer Science – Rhodes University, South Africa
Graduated with Distinction
Thesis: A Unified Data Repository for Rich Communication Services
BTech, Computer Science – Bells University of Technology, Nigeria
First Class Honours
Thesis: Development of a Requirement Analysis Supporting Tool for Large Scale Systems Using an Enhanced Latent Semantic Model
Certifications
Machine Learning Engineer Nanodegree – Udacity
AI Programming with Python Nanodegree – Udacity
SIP School Certified Associate (SSCA)
IELTS – Overall Band: 8.0 / 9.0
Oracle Certified Professional Java Programmer (OCP)
Oracle Certified SQL Expert (OCE)
Oracle Certified Associate Database 11g Administrator (OCA)
Honours & Awards
Best Computer Science Research Student – Rhodes University
Bells University of Technology:
Chancellor’s Prize – Best Graduating Student excelling in National Academic Competitions
College Prize – Best Graduating Student, College of Information and Communications Technology
Departmental Prize – Best Graduating Student, Department of Computer Science
Selected Publications
Realizing Seamless Redundancy in Cyber-Physical Networks with Programmable
Protocol-Independent Packet Processors
Accepted as a poster at The 44th IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN), Osnabrueck, Germany, 2019
Exposing Polyglot-Persisted Data Using the Open Data Protocol for User Data
Convergence in Mobile Networks
Southern Africa Telecommunication Network and Applications Conference (SATNAC), Barcelona, Spain – 2017
A Unified Data Repository for Rich Communication Services
Open Access Theses and Dissertations (OATD), Rhodes University – 2017
Adopting the OData Protocol as a UD Reference Point for User Data Convergence
Southern Africa Telecommunication Network and Applications Conference (SATNAC), George, South Africa – 2016
An Empirical Study of Automated Classification Tools for Informal Requirements in Large-Scale Systems
International Journal of Business Information Systems, Inderscience – 2015
Footprint
Global Engineering Experience
Showcasing a wealth of global engineering experience, I bring innovative solutions and expertise to every project.
Cross-Continental Delivery – Designed, built, and deployed systems across Africa, Europe, and North America. From telecom infrastructure in South Africa to distributed observability and backend systems powering large-scale operations globally.
Remote Impact at Scale – Diagnosed and resolved production issues in critical platforms like LinkedIn’s DataHub, enhancing ElasticSearch integration and improving metadata reliability for distributed data teams.
Telecom-Grade Engineering – Re-engineered OpenIMSCore from Fokus Fraunhofer (Germany) into scalable SIP-based environments. Enabled experimental telco deployments using containerized infrastructure.
IEEE-Standard Prototyping – Built a Frame Replication and Elimination (FRER) system based on IEEE 802.1CB at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), contributing to fault-tolerant network designs for critical infrastructure.
Collaborations Across Borders – Delivered machine learning projects and peer-reviewed publications via South African and European academic-industrial partnerships (e.g., SATNAC, Telkom CoE).
Edge-to-Cloud Versatility – Deployed infrastructure spanning edge-network virtualized systems to cloud-native setups using Kubernetes, Nomad, and Terraform on GCP and AWS.
Interoperability by Design – Built stateless network services with multi-protocol support (Diameter, SIP, HTTP, OData), enabling seamless integration across vendor stacks.
North America Systems Architecture – Supported and resolved complex backend and infrastructure challenges for North American enterprise platforms—working across time zones and systems at architectural depth.
Contact
Let's Connect
Whether you’re building critical infrastructure, need help navigating architectural complexity, or just want to jam on systems thinking — I’m open to collaborations, conversations, and consulting.
Hello, I'm Segun 👋
Distributed Systems Engineer & Signals Architect
I build and debug complex systems—from code to chaos recovery.
Debugging & Engineering Journey
Foundation years (2009 - 2014)
An era defined by independence, system-level thinking, and engineering through real-world constraints.
Reflections
Technical depth shaped by constraint and intent
Across these years, I delivered working systems without external scaffolding — no frameworks, no teams, and often no prior blueprint.
Every line of code had to matter. I learned how to build for clarity, debug under pressure, and deliver results without abstractions.
That mindset still defines how I approach complex systems today.
Independent Developer
2009 - 2011
Early-stage engineering and systems intuition
Began building C/C++ applications to automate academic workflows and simulate learning tools.
Adopted Java for GUI development where C++ toolchains proved unstable.
These formative years were less about language and more about logic, persistence, and making things work — with or without proper tools.
University Projects & Systems Building
2012 - 2014
Targeted solutions deployed in production and pilot environments
Developed and deployed an SMS-authenticated e-voting system for over 3,000 users.
Built a subnetting visualization tool used in Cisco NetAcad programs.
Also collaborated with peers in academic institutions to build functional prototypes of a student results alert system and a result management application — assisting them in translating their thesis concepts into working software.
Each system offered unique lessons in trust, delivery, and real-world system behavior.
eRecom
2013
Distributed stakeholder platform with intelligent grouping
Designed and implemented a web-based tool that facilitated asynchronous requirement gathering for large-scale software systems.
Applied a hybrid of Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and Probabilistic LSA to group stakeholders by intent and context.
The system functioned as an early intelligent collaboration layer — well ahead of its time in distributed decision support.
Early Exposure — Public Sector IT Support
2013 - 2014
National Youth Service Corps Member
Supported basic Windows-based infrastructure in a government education office.
While the technical scope was limited, the role offered firsthand insight into how even low-complexity systems sustain mission-critical operations in the public sector.
From Code to Systems Thinking
(2015 - 2019)
Reflections: Systems Thinking Begins
This phase marked a pivotal shift. I moved from simply building software to engineering systems with durability, observability, and scale in mind. I immersed myself in Linux internals, studied software-defined networking, explored Docker deeply after watching DockerCon 2016, and containerized everything — even my LaTeX compiler. I didn’t just write code; I investigated how systems behave in real-world environments and learned how to shape them with intent.
Engineering Research in Motion
Drove deep exploration into next-gen communication frameworks and converged subscriber data architectures. Reverse-engineered telecom systems like OpenIMSCore from the Fokus Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin, containerized them, and built Java-based systems that exposed heterogeneous data over standardized APIs. These models reflected how real-world telecom infrastructure consolidates, stores, and serves critical data. I presented some of this work at respected conferences in South Africa and Spain.
Self-Driven Infrastructure Learning
This was my autodidact era. I dove deep into Linux internals and networking via Linux Foundation courses — not for certifications, but for depth. Explored OpenStack and containerized full systems before orchestration tools became mainstream. I dissected and simulated how large-scale systems communicate, fail, and recover. That mindset still shapes how I build and lead today.
SDN & Smart Grid Resilience
Designed and prototyped a smart-grid communication protocol at the Telematics Institute, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Using Software-Defined Networking, P4, and ONOS, I built a Frame Replication and Elimination system (FRER) to enhance fault tolerance in energy networks. It wasn’t theoretical — I led experiment design, implementation, and iterations in a live testbed.
ML for Systems Insight
Began applying machine learning to infrastructure-level problems. Built a predictive model to identify telco users most likely to adopt value-added services. Trained reinforcement learning agents using OpenAI Gym to simulate control logic in real-time systems like quadcopters. This seeded my long-term pursuit of intelligent observability.
Mentorship & Protocol Engineering
At KIT’s Telematics Institute, I ran protocol engineering practicals, reviewed codebases, and supervised final-year thesis projects. Mentoring junior engineers wasn't just about clean code — it was about debugging mental models and shaping how they approached real-world systems.
Systems under fire (2019 - 2021)
Reflections
This was a defining phase. I wasn’t just building—I was diagnosing, dissecting, and restoring. Whether it was debugging unknown production failures, integrating fractured systems, or leading backend development for a new platform, I found clarity in chaos. I began seeing codebases less as puzzles and more like pressure systems—where the real work is knowing what not to touch, what to patch, and when to rebuild from first principles. I also started working with a small team on an idea—one that deepened my thinking around service reliability and distributed problem spaces.
Platform Engineering in Motion
2019 - 2020
Built out key backend APIs for a new internal platform.
Integrated incompatible software products, resolved performance bottlenecks, and instrumented Kafka-powered notifications.
Adopted NLP architectures and used real-time metrics to continuously maintain uptime and feature delivery.
Worked quietly with a team on a forward-looking idea—focused on intelligent systems infrastructure.
Precision Debugging at Scale
2021
Worked remotely on complex software issues across a suite of enterprise products.
Led source-level debugging across Java, .NET, and Linux systems—often reverse engineering binaries to trace undocumented behavior.
Was routinely assigned Severity-1 issues with no known path to resolution—including cases unresolved for over six months. Many were resolved within 2–3 weeks.
Supported both SaaS and on-premise deployments, working closely with client teams and engineering leads to ensure fast, durable fixes with minimal impact on core systems.
Elevation, Precision & Product Vision (2021 to present)
Reflections
This era reflects a deliberate shift from deep systems mastery to the art of shaping resilient infrastructure, building teams, and ultimately crafting tools for others to scale their own systems with confidence. Work has spanned high-impact consulting, open-source contributions, and now—venturing into the product space with an ambitious observability platform.
Architecting for Resilience at Scale
Remotely led critical backend and infrastructure transformations for engineering teams across multiple time zones.
Focused on optimizing distributed systems, container orchestration, and event-driven platforms, while contributing hands-on to architecture design, monitoring, and reliability automation. Projects consistently emphasized stability, developer velocity, and operational clarity.
Unblocking Data Infrastructure with Kafka Precision
Elevated Kafka observability and cluster resilience across large-scale production systems.
Designed and built tools for dynamic topic insights, automated storage rebalancing, and seamless multi-region failovers—removing painful operational bottlenecks.
Facilitated infrastructure self-service across teams, enabling faster deployments and better ownership of production data pipelines.
Building the Missing Layer — Real-Time Observability
Currently building a real-time observability platform focused on surfacing silent failures, reducing mean time-to-detection, and automating insights at the infrastructure and code level. The platform—Clutta—is designed for clarity at scale. Internal milestones have included: a zero-touch SDK, WebSocket-based live feeds, anomaly correlation engines, and early usage across internal systems. Now in early access.
Current explorations
What I'm exploring now
Observability
Currently focused on scaling Clutta — a real-time observability platform designed to detect issues before users experience them. The goal is not just visibility, but precision: surfacing silent failures, tracing anomaly roots, and shrinking the time between impact and insight.
Infrastructure
At the same time, I'm studying how teams manage complexity at scale, and how infrastructure tooling can shift left—where performance, security, and observability become part of development itself, not just operations.
Other interests
I’m also deeply interested in:
Zero-touch developer experience for telemetry
Correlation engines that make sense of chaotic data streams
Infrastructure-as-code principles extended to real-time systems
Designing systems that self-report, self-diagnose, and eventually self-heal
Systems at Scale
Self-Healing Systems
Custom Load Balancers
Data Pipelines
Service Resilience
Protocol Buffers
Telecommunication Backbones
Real-Time Infrastructure
CI/CD Pipelines
High-Throughput Systems
Contributions
Engineering Contributions & Systems Shape
Over the years, I’ve architected, implemented, and shaped systems that span distributed infrastructure, observability platforms, telecommunication backbones, and intelligent automation. What unites these efforts is a commitment to clarity, control, and uncompromising reliability—whether at scale or at the edge.
Kafka Storage Load Balancer
Python, SaltStack, Kafka, GitHub Actions
Designed and built an internal tool that dynamically rebalances Kafka storage and partitions across brokers.
Eliminated days of manual rebalancing work, removed the need for scheduled maintenance windows, and drastically improved cluster scalability.
Subscription Activator
Golang, GraphQL, Redis, PostgreSQL, Kafka, Nomad, GitHub Actions
Automated the cleanup and reactivation of over nine million telecom subscription records.
Leveraged asynchronous processing, Kafka microservices, and Redis caching to deliver high-throughput corrections without human involvement.
Kafka Topics Lookup
Python, Flask, Redis, Nomad, Swagger UI
Developed a self-service metadata tool to identify topic owners, health, and usage across Kafka clusters.
Unified fragmented metadata sources and exposed them via a lightweight REST API with Swagger documentation.
Self-Healing Systems at Scale
Golang, Ruby, Kafka, Grafana, HashiCorp Nomad, Vault, Consul
Prototyped real-time anomaly detection and remediation pipelines.
Integrated infrastructure-aware alerting and autonomous recovery mechanisms—reducing mean time-to-repair (MTTR) significantly in production-like environments.
DataHub Deployment & Enhancement
Java (Spring Boot), Python, PostgreSQL, ElasticSearch, GitHub Actions
Contributed to LinkedIn’s open-source DataHub, improving ElasticSearch reliability and fixing schema registry integration for Kafka metadata.
Helped operationalize deployments across staging and production environments.
OpenIMSCore Re-Engineering
Java, SIP, Diameter, Docker Compose, Restcomm SIP Servlets
Reverse-engineered the OpenIMSCore stack from the Fokus Fraunhofer Institute. Virtualized its components and built SIP-based messaging/voice experiments to understand telecom signaling paths and protocols.
UDC-Compliant Stateless Network Functions
Java, HTTP, OData, SIP, Diameter
Created front-end (FE) telecom services based on 3GPP’s UDC spec.
Refactored legacy HSS behavior into stateless, API-driven components that supported SIP, Diameter, and modern REST/OData protocols.
Converged Subscriber Data Repository (CSDR)
Java, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, OData, Apache Olingo, Docker
Built a scalable data service for heterogeneous telecom data sources.
Adopted a polyglot persistence model and implemented OData interfaces for unified querying across disparate datasets.
Frame Replication & Elimination for Reliability (FRER)
P4, Java, ONOS SDN Controller, Bazel, Apache Thrift
Developed an SDN-based prototype of the IEEE 802.1CB FRER standard for smart grid reliability.
Combined P4 programming with ONOS control logic to replicate Ethernet frames and eliminate duplicates under fault conditions.
Machine Learning: Customer Prediction Model
Python, TensorFlow, Keras, Scikit-learn, Pandas
Delivered a 98% accurate predictive model for identifying likely adopters of mobile value-added services.
Combined Gaussian Mixture Model clustering with deep learning classification to produce actionable insights for telecom marketing.
Reinforcement Learning: Teaching a Quadcopter to Fly
Python, OpenAI Gym, DDPG, Pandas
Trained a quadcopter flight control agent using Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG).
Designed a reward function that enabled stable liftoff and directional navigation under simulation constraints.
Awards & Academic Journey
Academic Foundations & Recognitions
Education
MSc, Computer Science – Rhodes University, South Africa
Graduated with Distinction
Thesis: A Unified Data Repository for Rich Communication Services
BTech, Computer Science – Bells University of Technology, Nigeria
First Class Honours
Thesis: Development of a Requirement Analysis Supporting Tool for Large Scale Systems Using an Enhanced Latent Semantic Model
Certifications
Machine Learning Engineer Nanodegree – Udacity
AI Programming with Python Nanodegree – Udacity
SIP School Certified Associate (SSCA)
IELTS – Overall Band: 8.0 / 9.0
Oracle Certified Professional Java Programmer (OCP)
Oracle Certified SQL Expert (OCE)
Oracle Certified Associate Database 11g Administrator (OCA)
Honours & Awards
Best Computer Science Research Student – Rhodes University
Bells University of Technology:
Chancellor’s Prize – Best Graduating Student excelling in National Academic Competitions
College Prize – Best Graduating Student, College of Information and Communications Technology
Departmental Prize – Best Graduating Student, Department of Computer Science
Selected Publications
Realizing Seamless Redundancy in Cyber-Physical Networks with Programmable
Protocol-Independent Packet Processors
Accepted as a poster at The 44th IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN), Osnabrueck, Germany, 2019
Exposing Polyglot-Persisted Data Using the Open Data Protocol for User Data
Convergence in Mobile Networks
Southern Africa Telecommunication Network and Applications Conference (SATNAC), Barcelona, Spain – 2017
A Unified Data Repository for Rich Communication Services
Open Access Theses and Dissertations (OATD), Rhodes University – 2017
Adopting the OData Protocol as a UD Reference Point for User Data Convergence
Southern Africa Telecommunication Network and Applications Conference (SATNAC), George, South Africa – 2016
An Empirical Study of Automated Classification Tools for Informal Requirements in Large-Scale Systems
International Journal of Business Information Systems, Inderscience – 2015
Footprint
Global Engineering Experience
Showcasing a wealth of global engineering experience, I bring innovative solutions and expertise to every project.
Cross-Continental Delivery – Designed, built, and deployed systems across Africa, Europe, and North America. From telecom infrastructure in South Africa to distributed observability and backend systems powering large-scale operations globally.
Remote Impact at Scale – Diagnosed and resolved production issues in critical platforms like LinkedIn’s DataHub, enhancing ElasticSearch integration and improving metadata reliability for distributed data teams.
Telecom-Grade Engineering – Re-engineered OpenIMSCore from Fokus Fraunhofer (Germany) into scalable SIP-based environments. Enabled experimental telco deployments using containerized infrastructure.
IEEE-Standard Prototyping – Built a Frame Replication and Elimination (FRER) system based on IEEE 802.1CB at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), contributing to fault-tolerant network designs for critical infrastructure.
Collaborations Across Borders – Delivered machine learning projects and peer-reviewed publications via South African and European academic-industrial partnerships (e.g., SATNAC, Telkom CoE).
Edge-to-Cloud Versatility – Deployed infrastructure spanning edge-network virtualized systems to cloud-native setups using Kubernetes, Nomad, and Terraform on GCP and AWS.
Interoperability by Design – Built stateless network services with multi-protocol support (Diameter, SIP, HTTP, OData), enabling seamless integration across vendor stacks.
North America Systems Architecture – Supported and resolved complex backend and infrastructure challenges for North American enterprise platforms—working across time zones and systems at architectural depth.
Contact
Let's Connect
Whether you’re building critical infrastructure, need help navigating architectural complexity, or just want to jam on systems thinking — I’m open to collaborations, conversations, and consulting.