Backend engineering
APIs, services and data models in Python (FastAPI), Java (Spring Boot), Node and Go, on PostgreSQL and event-driven infrastructure that stays fast and observable.
Felix Makinda, Senior Software & AI/ML Engineer
Open to select workI build backend systems and AI products that hold up in production, and I help companies put AI and automation to work. When a project needs it, I also cover data engineering, DevOps and the frontend.
- Years building software
- 13+
- Projects shipped
- 50+
- Essays published
- 18
00/Approach
Most automation fails for human reasons, not technical ones. I start with how your people actually work, build the smallest system that makes that work easier, and leave it simple enough for your team to run without me.
01/Selected projects
A few of the backend and AI systems I've shipped. Open any one for the problem, the approach and how it was built.
02/Capabilities
I work best where product, architecture and people meet: setting direction, making the hard calls, and staying hands-on in the code.
AI/ML engineering
Multi-agent systems, RAG pipelines, fine-tuning and evaluation, with guardrails that keep model output grounded, testable and auditable.
AI adoption, end to end
From finding the work worth automating to fine-tuning models on your data, building the agents around them and training your team to run them.
Data, DevOps, design & full-stack
Data pipelines, Terraform, Kubernetes and CI/CD on AWS, GCP and Azure, plus product design in Figma and the frontend when the product needs them.
03/About
Felix MakindaNairobi, Kenya
I'm a senior software and AI/ML engineer based in Nairobi, Kenya, and an independent consultant on AI and automation. Much of my recent work is the part of a product users never see: APIs, data models, agent orchestration and the infrastructure that keeps them reliable.
Most of my career has been spent owning systems end to end, from architecture and cloud infrastructure to the code and the handover. Because I'm comfortable across data engineering, DevOps and full-stack work, I can take a product from schema to shipped interface without handoffs.
I studied Computer Science at JKUAT, then earned distinctions in DevOps Engineering at Moringa School and AI Engineering at Andela, where I'm part of the global talent network. I work with companies in Kenya and abroad, directly or through Andela.
04/Selected experience
- Build production AI systems for businesses adopting AI: agents that take on real workflows, retrieval over company data, and automation wired into the tools teams already use.
- Fine-tune and evaluate models on client data, with test suites that show where a model is ready for production and where it is not.
- Take each system from first prototype to monitored production, then train the in-house team to run and extend it.
Education
Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate (KCNA) | https://www.credly.com/badges/a954f3db-256d-413e-9fef-3cd9258a7766/public_url
Linux Foundation / CNCF2026
AI Engineering Bootcamp (Distinction)
Andela2026
DevOps Engineering Bootcamp (Distinction)
Moringa School2024
IBM & Oracle technical training
IBM & Oracle programmes at JKUAT2015 – 2016
B.Sc. Computer Science
Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology2016
Toolkit
Languages
Python, Java, TypeScript, JavaScript, SQL, Go, C#, C++, C, PHP
Backend & APIs
FastAPI, Django, Spring Boot, Node.js, REST APIs, GraphQL, Next.js, React
AI / ML
RAG, Fine-tuning, QLoRA, LangChain, LangGraph, LangSmith, AutoGen, CrewAI, Google ADK, IBM watsonx.ai, Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker, Vertex AI, Azure AI, OpenAI SDK, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Scikit-learn, NLP, Model evaluation
Databases
PostgreSQL, Redis, MongoDB, MySQL, MSSQL, Oracle DB, IBM DB2, Supabase
DevOps & infrastructure
Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, OpenTofu, Pulumi, Ansible, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, IBM Code Engine, CI/CD
Cloud
AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud
Observability
Prometheus, Grafana, Kibana, LangSmith, Amazon CloudWatch
Data & tooling
Pandas, NumPy, Git, Jira, Figma, Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot
05/Writing
Long-form essays and shorter notes on technology, careers, books, history, psychology, faith, politics, money, learning, relationships and place. Written slowly, revised often.
Latest
All writing →- PsychologyEqual Trust Is Not a Strategy: What an AI Diplomacy Game Taught Me About Friends, Money and Sifuna's DilemmaMy AI agent trusted every player equally and lost most rounds, while another engineer's agent won every round. I have lost the same way in life, once with money a friend was meant to use to import a car for me. Here is the scoring arithmetic, the code, and what it says about Edwin Sifuna's choice for 2027.
- TechnologyBuild a Secure AI Agent Platform on Your Laptop: A Code WalkthroughMy last post explained how AWS secures AI agents on Amazon EKS. This one is the code. We rebuild every idea on a laptop with free tools, a model gateway, MCP tools behind per-persona rules, a sandbox for model-written code and end-to-end tracing, and test each one as we go.
- TechnologySecuring AI Agents on Amazon EKS: Seven Labs, One LessonI spent a day building an AI customer-service agent on Amazon EKS and growing it into one that writes code and opens pull requests. The agent barely changed. Everything that made it safe lived in the platform around it.
- PoliticsGovernment by Magic Spell: A Somali Story, a Kenyan Cabinet and the Race Rwanda WonIn a Somali short story we read for KCSE, a clan rules a country with a ten-year-old girl, a jinni and a spell that cures citizens of curiosity. The week Rwanda won Formula 1, Kenyans went looking for the spell in our own Cabinet.
- TechnologyAnatomy of a Full-Stack Web App: Following One Car From a Click to the Database and BackWhat actually happens when you click "Save" in a web app? Using a small car inventory app built with React, Spring Boot and MariaDB, we follow three everyday actions (listing, adding and deleting) from the button to the database and back, with diagrams and the real code.