The End of the Zinkworks Era

It all started in March 2020 when I accepted an offer from Zinkworks (formerly Neueda) to work as a Software Developer. It was my third experience working in company outside Nigeria, but it was a different challenge. It was an opportunity that will lead me to settling in the Republic of Ireland, and it was one that I embarked on while starting my family.

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I started my journey as a software developer, performing research and development activities for Ericsson and then I was soon moved into the Citi Bank Account. Because of my technical knowledge and ability to relate clients and take ownership of the client's vision, I was given the opportunity to lead an operations workbench team to develop a solution for Balance Sheet Optimization.

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I worked with an amazing application manager and we were able to improve the balance sheet optimization process. We did not just implement a solution, we championed the use and development of re-usable components and advocated for collaboration across teams to avoid re-inventing the wheel. We did not just improve the balance sheet optimization process, we created components to secure applications using the Oauth2 standard, manage, store and transfer files, perform ETL processes on data sources, and execute administrative processes in application environments.

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The stellar efforts of our team were recognized and a new team - the Catalyst team - was created, whose sole purpose is to develop and maintain reusable components to be used across teams starting with those components created from my previous role. I was a core member, architect and mentor of developers in that team. We took the development, maintenance and advocacy for the use of re-usable components to another level and, by working with other teams, we were able to adopt a standard for developing applications. I worked with so many talented and inspiring developers and application managers and, by obtaining feedback and collaborating with other teams, we were able to ensure that other teams only focused on implementing business logic. Other aspects of the application like security, file storage and ingestion, routing and messaging architecture were taken care of.

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By interacting with different application teams, I was able to consult and offer my architectural expertise to improve the design and implementation of different systems in Citi Bank. The contributions of my team lead to the growth of the Citi Bank account and, due to our accomplishments, Zinkworks became responsible for many other projects. In the past year, I headed the redesign and implementation of a major client facing portal in Citi Bank.

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To say the least, the last four years of my career has been interesting and I am grateful that this chapter has ended on a high note. Now a Solutions Architect, I have learned so much from my experiences building applications and interacting with clients. I started with Zinkworks as a new husband of a beautiful wife, and I am ending as a husband and father of two beautiful children (with one on its way). I have also been able to contribute to the Athlone Community and make lots of amazing friends.

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Besides the career skills I have picked up on the way, I learnt vital life lessons: respect everyone whether great or small; be honest in all things; and do your best regardless of the situation. I take these three things very seriously and they have since them become my motto. I am looking forward to what the next phase of my career will be. I am sure it will have lots of learning and development, experiments and explorations; failures and successes and working with bright individuals to improve the way we live our lives with technology.

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The last part is particularly significant. Because, throughout my career, I have observed, and been part of, major technological advancements and the startling thing is that while we are more connected, have more opportunities and can do things a lot easier, we are still plagued with the major problems of life. Many of us still feel lonely despite the connections of social media; still feel stressed and disillusioned despite the material things we have; and are still lost despite all the knowledge, skills and degrees we have acquired. I hope the next phase of my career leads me to solving one or more of these problems.

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