Engineering software
that solves real problems.
I'm a software engineer, architect and founder with 14 years of experience building and modernising high-availability systems.
From enterprise payment infrastructure to multi-tenant SaaS platforms, I focus on building reliable software that makes complex operations simpler.
Ulwazi Mapukata
Senior Software Engineer · Software Architect · Founder
📍 East London, South Africa
Building software that works.
Over the past 14 years I've worked across the full spectrum of software engineering — from designing and maintaining enterprise banking platforms that process over a million transactions monthly, to architecting multi-tenant SaaS products from the ground up.
My career began at Absa Bank, where I spent over a decade engineering mission-critical payment systems, retail partner integrations and remote-sales platforms. I progressed from Specialist Product Engineer to Lead Product Engineer (VP level), responsible for systems that maintained 99.9% availability and contributed to hundreds of millions in business value.
In 2024 I founded Fakade Innovations (Pty) Ltd, the company behind the M-Works™ software platform — a suite of products I've designed and built to solve real operational problems for businesses. From payroll orchestration to white-label commerce platforms, M-Works represents my transition from enterprise engineering into product ownership and entrepreneurship.
I'm interested in distributed systems, cloud-native architecture, automation and the practical application of AI in software engineering workflows. I build what businesses need, not what tech trends tell them to.
Professional Journey
14 years of engineering experience across enterprise fintech, SaaS and product development.
January 2024 — Present
Founder & Software Architect
Fakade Innovations (Pty) Ltd · East London, South Africa
- Founded and architected the M-Works™ platform suite — a collection of multi-tenant SaaS applications.
- Designed and built payroll orchestration and business operations platforms.
- Developed secure REST APIs with authentication and tenant isolation.
- Established CI/CD pipelines and containerised deployments using Docker/Podman.
- Responsible for product strategy, architecture and technical delivery across all M-Works products.
August 2026
AI Code Evaluator (Contract)
Alignerr
- Evaluated AI-generated code and model responses for repository-based software engineering tasks.
- Compared model outputs using structured evaluation workflows.
- Assessed correctness, honesty and agentic safety of AI-generated solutions.
- Produced evidence-based assessments following task-specific guidelines.
January 2022 — December 2023
Lead Product Engineer (VP Level)
Absa Bank Limited · Johannesburg, South Africa
- Led engineering for mission-critical payment and retail partner integration platforms.
- Supported systems processing more than 1 million monthly transactions.
- Maintained 99.9% platform availability across all managed applications.
- Improved performance, reliability and deployment automation.
- Mentored engineers and collaborated across architecture, product and operations teams.
- Led bi-annual disaster recovery exercises ensuring zero service interruptions.
- Used Grafana and New Relic for real-time API monitoring and rapid issue resolution.
September 2012 — December 2021
Specialist Product Engineer (AVP Level)
Absa Bank Limited · Johannesburg, South Africa
- Designed and enhanced enterprise banking applications using C#, .NET and Entity Framework.
- Delivered payment, onboarding and retail banking solutions contributing to R300M+ in business value.
- Scaled onboarding and remote-sales platforms to thousands of concurrent users during COVID-19.
- Developed integrations with internal banking systems and external retail partners.
- Managed CI/CD pipelines using TFS and Azure DevOps for SIT, UAT and Production deployments.
- Deployed and maintained applications on IIS with load balancing and SSL encryption.
- Ensured end-to-end encryption, authentication protocols and API security best practices.
Engineering Case Studies
Substantial engineering work — from independently built products to enterprise-grade payment infrastructure.
Payroll Aggregation by M-Works™ (PAM)
A multi-tenant payroll orchestration platform designed to streamline payroll execution, statutory obligations, payment initiation and reconciliation for businesses.
Tshapisa
A white-label business platform designed to help businesses manage online sales, services, customer interactions and operational workflows through configurable merchant storefronts.
Retailer Money Transfer Platform
A mission-critical payment platform supporting national retail partners with money transfers, transaction processing, reconciliation and remediation — processing over 1 million transactions monthly.
Skills & Technologies
Demonstrated capability across the full engineering stack.
Languages & Frameworks
Architecture
Databases
Cloud & DevOps
AI Engineering
Certifications & Education
Professional qualifications and continuous learning.
Build Distributed Apps with .NET Aspire
Microsoft Applied Skills
Certified Professional: Java SE Programmer
Oracle
Certified Scrum Master (CSM)
Scrum Alliance
National Diploma: Information Technology
Walter Sisulu University
National Certificate: Banking Services Advice
Milpark Business School
Certificate in Data Science
Julia Academy
Have an interesting engineering challenge?
I'm always open to conversations about software engineering, architecture, product development and opportunities to build useful technology.