SOFTWARE ENGINEER · ACCRA, GH · OPEN TO SENIOR ROLES

Richard Bentil

Software Engineer (Systems + Product Builder)

I build production systems that move money, run payroll, and hold up under real load — full-stack, with a bias toward correctness and clear failure handling.

AI Design

Screens designed with AI workflows

Figma → v0 → production-ready UI

System Design

Distributed systems from scratch

APIs · event queues · consistency

Payments

Founded SkillsPad

Paystack billing · 1,200+ customers

Selected work

Systems shipped to production, not demos.

Seven systems · 2021—2026

Payment Flow Architecture

Payments

End-to-end payment pipeline that stays correct under failure — safe retries, recovery points, and a consistent ledger.

FLOWClient · API gateway · Validation · Processor · Webhook · Ledger

FOCUSIdempotency · failure recovery · transaction consistency

HR Payroll Workflow

Operations

Scheduled payroll lifecycle from employee data to payout, with an auditable history of every run.

FLOWEmployee data · Payroll engine · Salary rules · Approval · Payout · Notify

FOCUSCron / job queue · audit trail · data integrity

Authentication + JWT

Auth

Secure auth flow with short-lived access tokens, refresh rotation, and middleware-guarded routes.

FLOWLogin · Auth service · JWT · Refresh · Middleware · Protected routes

FOCUSToken expiry · secure storage · middleware route guard

Notification System

Messaging

Event-driven delivery that fans out to SMS and email asynchronously, with retries on failure.

FLOWEvent · Queue · Worker · SMS (Arkesel) / Email (Nodemailer)

FOCUSAsync processing · retry with backoff · failure handling

Cloudflare R2 Storage

Storage

Object storage with validated uploads, signed-URL access control, and CDN-style retrieval.

FLOWClient · Backend API · Access (signed URL) · R2 · CDN

FOCUSSigned URLs · upload validation · scalable object storage

Redis + Upstash Caching

Caching

Caching layer that absorbs read load with TTL-based invalidation and a database fallback on miss.

FLOWClient · Backend API · Redis (hit / miss) · Database fallback

FOCUSRate limiting · session cache · TTL strategy

Middleware Subdomain Routing

Multi-tenancy

Multi-tenant routing that resolves the tenant from the subdomain and isolates each tenant's data.

FLOWRequest · Middleware · Subdomain parser · Tenant resolver · Route · Tenant data

FOCUSTenant isolation · dynamic routing · request interception

Engineering thinking

How I reason about the systems I build.

Notes & essays

REASONING PIPELINEflowchart · how I move from problem to shipped

8 min

Designing systems before writing code

The questions I answer before the first commit: boundaries, data ownership, failure modes.

11 min

Modular monolith vs. microservices

Why I default to a well-bounded monolith, and the signals that justify splitting it.

9 min

Reliability in backend systems

Idempotency, retries, and reconciliation — the patterns that keep payment systems honest.

System snapshots

The shape of what I build.

Architecture, abbreviated

Payment flow

Client

merchant

→

API

idempotent

→

Ledger

Postgres

→

PSP

card/momo

Payroll pipeline

Records

employee

→

Run engine

deduct

→

Audit

immutable

→

Payslips

PDF

Contact

Building something that needs to be correct?

richardebo.bentil@gmail.com

GitHub

github.com/richardbentil

in/richard-bentil