About Me

Core Banking & Payment Systems Engineer

Software Engineer with 4+ years of professional experience, including 3+ years in the banking and fintech industry, building scalable, distributed backend systems. Specialized in Java and Spring Boot microservices, high-availability architectures, and real-time payment processing (SWIFT MT/MX, ISO 20022). I have hands-on experience delivering enterprise banking solutions, including SWIFT MT ↔ MX (ISO 20022) message conversion engines, multi-tenant SACCO core banking systems and payment integration platforms, where accuracy, compliance, and performance are critical. My work focuses on designing reliable, production-grade systems, optimizing databases, and integrating services supporting RTGS, SWIFT, and mobile payment workflows. I currently lead a team of six engineers, owning delivery across the SACCO core banking platform, the SWIFT MT ↔ MX converter and the integration middlewares, and have trained eight junior developers who now support those systems in production.

Francis Mugambi

What I work on

  • SWIFT MT ↔ MX (ISO 20022) messaging
  • Core banking platforms
  • Payment and mobile money integration
  • RTGS and cross-border payment flows
  • Finacle and third-party network integration
  • Distributed backend systems
  • API architecture and orchestration
  • High availability and failover
  • Database replication and tuning
  • Technical leadership and code review

Skills

Core Backend Java Spring Boot Spring Security Spring Data JPA Microservices REST APIs Hibernate OOP
Banking & Integration SWIFT MT/MX Messages ISO 20022 XML Processing JAXB SFTP File Processing API Integration Finacle Core Banking Interswitch RTGS Straight-Through Processing
Payments Domain Knowledge Standards and flows I have studied and written about, rather than built in production. ISO 8583 Card authorisation ATM & POS switching Acquiring & issuing ACH Correspondent banking SWIFT gpi
Scripting & Secondary Backend Python Django
Legacy & Past Experience PHP Ruby on Rails (Exposure)
Frontend Angular HTML CSS Bootstrap JavaScript
DevOps & Infrastructure Docker Linux (Oracle Linux) Nginx HAProxy Keepalived Ansible GraalVM Jenkins CI/CD
Databases & Observability MariaDB MySQL PostgreSQL MongoDB Oracle DB ProxySQL Prometheus Grafana
Tools & Collaboration Git GitHub Agile Swagger / OpenAPI Kafka Code Review Technical Leadership

Projects

Enterprise systems and engineering solutions built across banking, integration, and infrastructure domains.

Core Banking & Financial Systems

Multi-Tenant Core Banking Solution
Scalable core banking platform supporting multi-entity financial operations and account processing.

Financial Reporting Platform
System for generating structured financial reports (balance sheets, statements, regulatory reports).

Enterprise API Gateway
Centralized routing layer for microservices, enabling secure and controlled service-to-service communication.

Messaging & Integration Systems

SWIFT MT ↔ ISO 20022 MX Converter
Built transformation engine for converting legacy SWIFT MT messages to modern ISO 20022 MX format using XML processing and validation rules.

SFTP Integration Platform
Automated file transfer and processing system for banking message exchange and scheduled ingestion pipelines.

Mobile Money Integration Middleware
Integration middleware layer connecting SACCO core banking systems with mobile money platforms. It enables real-time financial operations including deposits, withdrawals, loan disbursements, and loan repayments. The system ensures reliable transaction processing, data consistency, and seamless interoperability between core banking systems and external mobile money providers.

API Manager System
Integration middleware between external channels and the Finacle Core Banking System. It handles request orchestration, converts JSON ↔ XML formats, enforces idempotency to prevent duplicate transactions, and performs validation and message transformation before forwarding requests to the core banking system. The system operates behind an API Gateway which handles external traffic routing and security at the entry layer.

Infrastructure & High Availability Systems

High Availability Banking Infrastructure
Configured load-balanced and fault-tolerant systems using HAProxy, Keepalived, and multi-node deployment architecture.

Additional Engineering Work

SACCO Data Migration & Onboarding Platform
Designed and deployed an end-to-end migration system used to onboard SACCOs onto core banking platforms. The system automates data extraction, transformation, validation, and migration processes to ensure seamless transition of legacy SACCO data into production systems. It also supports structured onboarding workflows and provides technical enablement through documentation and training for implementation teams.

Loan & Transaction Processing Services
Backend services for automated financial processing workflows including validation, scheduling, and reconciliation logic.

Task & Utility Systems
Various internal tools and applications built using Spring Boot, Angular, Python, and PHP for automation and operational support.

Want the detail? The engineering write-ups go deeper on the systems above.

See selected work Full resume