Collins Thomas

👋 About

Hey,

I'm a software engineer with several years of experience building backend and platform systems for fintech, logistics, and productivity products. I spend most of my time designing APIs, modeling data, and keeping production systems healthy.

I've worked on products like GoPath (smart forms and information sharing), FXP2P (a peer‑to‑peer FX marketplace), LendMe (a loan app with tens of thousands of users), early versions of Alcott (logistics & delivery), and internal tools.

I'm currently transitioning deeper into machine learning and AI — building things like a Nigerian food classification model and an HR Slackbot that uses retrieval‑augmented generation to answer questions from documents.

I'm open to backend, platform, and AI/ML‑adjacent roles, as well as collaborations on interesting products. Reach out: thomascollins582@gmail.com

💼 Experience

Software Engineer

Acumen Digital (Remote)

February 2021 - Present

Building and maintaining backend systems for client‑focused products in an Agile environment. Recent work includes FXP2P, a USD/NGN FX marketplace where I handle escrow flows, bank and wallet management, admin dashboards, RBAC, and activity/audit logging.

Lead Backend Engineer

Zeddpay (Remote)

July 2022 - August 2023

Led backend engineering for a fintech platform enabling airtime‑to‑digital asset conversion and access to financial services. Owned API design, database schema, wallet/transaction flows, and performance optimization of the server architecture.

Software Engineer

Be Resources Ltd – LendMe (Remote)

February 2021 - Present

Developed and maintained the backend for LendMe, a loan app on Google Play with over 100k downloads. Focused on scalability, security, and performance for loan processing, repayments, payments, and simple investment products.

Backend Developer (Node)

Alcott (Remote, Contract)

November 2020 - February 2021

Implemented backend systems for a delivery service platform powering local, interstate, and international shipments. Worked on shipment lifecycle, rate calculations, and customer‑facing flows from pickup to delivery.

⚙️ Tech Stack

JavaScript
TypeScript
Node.js
Express
NestJS
Django
Python
PyTorch
TensorFlow
Go
PostgreSQL
MongoDB
AWS
GCP
Docker
Kubernetes
Git

📌 Selected Projects

GoPath – Smart Forms & Information Sharing

Product for reusable forms & structured data collection

Platform for creating reusable, customizable forms that users can share via a single link to collect or share verified information (applications, rentals, onboarding, etc.). Focus on clean data, exports, and a smooth multi‑party workflow.

FXP2P – USD/NGN FX Marketplace

Peer‑to‑peer foreign exchange with escrow and admin tooling

Node.js backend powering a P2P FX marketplace with escrow, bank and wallet management, role‑based admin access, and detailed activity logging. Built with a modular monolith architecture and real‑time updates.

LendMe – Digital Lending Platform

Loan app with 100k+ downloads

Backend for loans, repayments, payments, and investment features used by tens of thousands of users. Focus on reliability, risk‑aware flows, and smooth integration with payment and notification services.

Nigerian Food Classification Model

EfficientNet‑based CV model for 18 Nigerian food classes

Computer vision model trained with transfer learning (EfficientNetB4) to classify Nigerian dishes into 18 classes, deployed as an interactive demo. Worked on dataset preparation, training, evaluation, and communicating limitations around similar classes (e.g., soups).

HR Slackbot with RAG

Internal assistant for answering HR/document questions

Slackbot that uses retrieval‑augmented generation over internal documents to answer HR and policy questions. Handles document ingestion, retrieval, and response generation wired into Slack.