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Nairobi · remote · open to US roles

I build web products end to end — and ship small ones for fun.

Senior full-stack engineer in Nairobi. I spent six years leading the engineering team at lobstr.io, building scrapers, data pipelines and the React apps on top of them. Now looking for the next team to build with.

See my workGet in touch
leading an engineering team
6 yrs
leading an engineering team
from database schema to pixels
End to end
from database schema to pixels
afternoons overlap US mornings
UTC+3
afternoons overlap US mornings

01 / What I do

Useful from the first commit.

Most of my work sits where product, data and frontend meet. I'm happiest owning a feature from the schema to the pixels.
  • 01

    Full-stack product engineering

    I take a product from idea to production: data model, API, interface, deploys, and the monitoring that tells you it's still working next month.

    • Node.js
    • PostgreSQL
    • Prisma
    • Docker
    • AWS
  • 02

    Scraping & data pipelines

    Crawlers that hold up against real websites, with retries, sessions and headless browsers, feeding pipelines that turn messy pages into clean, queryable data.

    • Python
    • Node.js
    • PostgreSQL
  • 03

    Frontend / React

    Fast, accessible interfaces in React and Next.js. Component systems, tricky state, and the small details that make an app feel solid.

    • React
    • Next.js
    • TypeScript
  • 04

    Team leadership

    I ran the dev team at lobstr.io: hiring, code review, planning and helping a small team ship reliably, week after week.

    • Hiring
    • Mentoring
    • Delivery

02 / Shipped

Things I've built and put out there.

Products I've built and launched. Each one has a page with screenshots, how it works and the stack behind it.
  • Live

    PropellaDocs

    An AI proposal and SOW writer for IT consultants: paste a client email or brief and get a structured, client-ready document.

    • SaaS
    • AI
    • Next.js
    • Django
  • Live

    ContentBunker

    Turns a real estate listing into a finished short-form video: AI script, voiceover, motion, captions and music.

    • SaaS
    • AI video
    • Next.js
    • Prisma
  • +more in progressFollow along on GitHub

03 / About

Engineer first, lead when it helps.

I'm Derrick, a full-stack engineer based in Nairobi. I like owning a problem all the way through: figuring out what people actually need, designing the data, writing the code and watching it run in production.

From 2020 to 2026 I was Engineering Lead at lobstr.io, where I managed the dev team. That meant building and maintaining scraping infrastructure at scale, the product people used on top of it, and the habits that kept a small team shipping without burning out.

Outside of work I build small products to try ideas quickly. Some of them are on this page. I'm now looking for a remote role with a US team where I can do the same thing at a bigger scale.

Experience

2020 – 2026

Engineering Lead

lobstr.io

Managed the dev team. Owned architecture, hiring, code review and delivery.

Education

BS, Applied Computer Technology

United States International University–Africa

Stack

  • React
  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • Node.js
  • Python
  • PostgreSQL
  • Prisma
  • Docker
  • AWS

04 / Contact

Let's talk.

Hiring for a full-time role, need help with a project, or just want to say hi? Send a note and I'll get back to you.

Based in Nairobi (UTC+3). Happy to work US hours.

What do you need?