ISRAEL AYOKUNNU

Professional Summary

Full-stack engineer with 8+ years of experience, based in Cambridge, UK. Most of my career has been as the senior engineer at startups, where I solo-led a serverless SaaS rebuild at Mashoorah, owned Stripe Connect billing end-to-end at KOR, and shipped pediatric healthtech features at Pfizer.

Key Skills

Professional Experience

• Solo-led the full Mashoorah platform rebuild post-acquisition - consolidated a sprawl of self-hosted Node.js microservices into a serverless AWS Lambda monorepo managed via CDK; rebuilt the frontend on Vite + TanStack Router; MongoDB as the data layer; full EN/AR + RTL i18n. Zero client-facing downtime through the migration.
• Owned the service surface: auth, sessions, assessments, surveys, analytics, scheduling, notifications, file uploads, API gateway, Redis caching, MongoDB change streams
• Built an async analytics engine (SQS-driven Lambda processing) for sub-second report rendering across many metrics, plus an Excel export pipeline (Lambda, S3, SES)
• Designed the Engagement Hub - the Action Center for participants and experts; Capacity Engine (1 group = 1 slot), Pacing Engine, Creative Canvas (Tiptap + S3)
• Established engineering practices: feature flags by default, weekly release cadence, manual cross-platform smoke tests before deploy, CI/CD through GitLab

• Core engineer on a team of 7 - owned billing infrastructure; contributed to frontend, data API, and Terraform infra
• Solo-led Stripe Connect billing infrastructure - platform subscriptions, creator payouts, dynamic pricing, tier deletion grace periods, payout webhook hardening, transactional email pipeline (Ruby on Rails + Stripe Connect)
• Built real-time messaging system - DMs and group chats via ActionCable / WebSocket channels, message scheduling and broadcasting, unread conversation tracking
• Created "Shadow Router" - custom SSR engine bridging Next.js static export with dynamic SEO injection; JSON-LD schema across DiscussionForum, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList and Person entities; FAQ bot pages for crawlers; sitemap management
• Built community system - nested topics, threaded posts, access control, slug history tracking, global user search with pagination
• Shipped React Native mobile app (Expo) for iOS and Android - push notifications, onboarding flows
• Set the team's delivery rhythm - weekly releases, feature flags by default, manual cross-platform verification before merge

• Mobile engineer on Pfizer's GroAssist team - a regulated healthtech app supporting parents and children through daily growth hormone injection therapy (Play Store)
• Led the multi-region, multi-market re-architecture - made the app configurable per market (locale, regulatory copy, feature toggles), supporting expansion beyond the initial German launch
• Designed and shipped offline-first sync for the multi-caregiver supervisor network - local-first injection logging with conflict-safe sync across parents, grandparents, and carers
• Owned key mobile features: injection site tracking, calendar integration and local notifications for daily injection reminders and medical appointments, exportable treatment diary for clinician review, gamified rewards system
• Shipped redesigned screens as part of an app-wide UI revamp, working from Figma designs with design ops
• Built mobile features on Ionic + Angular; wrote Python scripts to automate asset generation and parts of the release pipeline
• Shipped production releases for 3 years on a privacy-sensitive product (children's medical data, GDPR-compliant)

Ventures & Independent Products

Founder of Assemblage - independent product studio. 10+ shipped products from a catalogue of 85+ concepts.

• Primal Journal - Academic publishing platform with CrossRef integration. 9 backend services, CI/CD pipeline. In production since 2022.
• Polished - AI workplace communication tool. Next.js 15, SST/CDK, Bedrock Claude, Cognito, Stripe.
• Finalmash - AI video reframing. Client-side MediaPipe + FFmpeg ("Zero-Choice UX").
• Reelly - Nollywood / African cinema review platform. SST/CDK, MongoDB, Cognito.
• Olam - Software engineering curriculum platform across 13 phases: hardware foundations, web engine internals, framework virtuality, backend topologies, distributed cloud, data persistence, neural networks, security mechanics, and React internals.
• ChefFromChat - AI recipe and grocery assistant.
• HangeulSprint - Korean learning platform with audio.
• Ensemble - Forensic AI-writing detection platform: 7-detector ensemble with trained meta-learner, segment/sentence-level evidence, token attribution, Stripe billing + credit wallet.
• Polyvalent Canvas - MBA thesis prototype, delivered.

• RoofRibbon - Creator-fan engagement platform.
• ThesisOS - AI academic writing environment. In planning.

Education

Community & Leadership

• Campaign Lead - ARU × Change Please Foundation: Led £10K crowdfunding campaign for social enterprise combating homelessness through barista training. Delivered keynote at Iftar event (90+ attendees).
• Co-Founder - ARU Chapter, Plant-Based University Europe: Built campaign strategy, research playbook, and organisational guide (50K+ words).
• President - Impact Lab (ARU Society): Led student society focused on social impact. Built Python automation tools for stakeholder discovery; designed brand identity and pitch materials.