Dec 2025 – Aug 2026
Columbia Business School
Certificate in Business Excellence
Hello, I'm
Lepres K.
Chief Technology Officer
Teams • Architecture • Production
For ten years I have designed software and led teams. CTO at Akieni. Before that, I co-founded Cowema.
ABOUT
Leading teams and production systems
I joined Akieni as the first engineer on site. The team grew to 18 engineers, then to a division of 20. Before that, I co-founded Cowema and led the technology for three years, for more than 40,000 users.
Three national platforms are in production: tax, health insurance, and social security. I am also responsible for payments and identity on a public program. In parallel, I lead Akieni Academy, which grew from 30 to 200 learners, with 60% of graduates employed.
I take part in design and code reviews, and I develop in Laravel, Python, TypeScript and C#. To build a team or address a technical matter, write to me.
10
Years of experience
20
Team size
100K+
Users
30+
Projects in production
EXPERIENCE
Professional experience
June 2026 – Present
Chief Technology Officer
Akieni • Brazzaville
- • Member of the executive committee, responsible for the technology budget
- • Leadership of a division of 20, including internal IT
- • Roadmap definition and priority decisions across programs
- • Responsible for payments and identity on a national public program
- • Code review and testing maintained as part of daily work
Leadership
Budget
Architecture
January 2026 – Present
Operations Manager, Akieni Academy
Akieni • Brazzaville
- • Free technical training program, run alongside the CTO role
- • Five tracks, from candidate selection through to the teaching tools
- • Supervision of three teaching coordinators and the mentors
- • Growth from 30 to 200 learners in one year, from more than 2,600 applications
- • 60% of graduates employed
Curriculum
Mentorship
Hiring
February 2025 – May 2026
VP of Engineering
Akieni • Brazzaville
- • Team grown from 7 to 18 engineers, organized into four teams
- • Hiring and onboarding managed end to end
- • Four engineers promoted to team lead
- • Three national platforms in production: tax, health insurance, and social security
- • E-invoicing, offline biometric enrollment, document management, and payments
Hiring
Squad leadership
Delivery
April 2024 – February 2025
Engineering Manager
Akieni • Brazzaville
- • First engineer on site, with the team built to 7 people in 10 months
- • Onboarding and training for every member of the team
- • A system blocked for more than two years, resumed at 30% completion, then released to production
- • 99.9% availability for more than 100,000 users
- • Cloud migration and a 30% reduction in infrastructure costs
High availability
Cloud migration
Team building
September 2023 – March 2024
Technical Officer, Data and Operations
WHO Regional Office for Africa • Brazzaville
- • Budget and data tools for the 47 countries of the African region
- • Report production time reduced by 40%
- • SQL Server performance improved by 35% through indexing
- • Power BI dashboards for senior management
- • 95% of regional support handled within 48 hours
SQL Server
Power BI
Data pipelines
March 2020 – May 2023
CTO & Co-founder
Cowema • Brazzaville
- • Congo's first marketplace at that scale, under my technical leadership
- • More than 40,000 active users and 99.5% availability, with a team of three
- • Android and iOS applications, a vendor app, back office, and mobile money
- • Three developers trained from junior to senior
- • Internal tools that reduced manual work by 70%
Android
iOS
Mobile money
June 2016 – December 2019
Fullstack Developer
Freelance • Pointe-Noire
- • More than 20 projects released to production, for clients in Congo and abroad
EDUCATION
Education
2013 – 2016
École Africaine de Développement
Professional degree, Networks and Telecommunications
SERVICES
What I offer
Advice and implementation, through to production.
Technical strategy
Architecture
Monolith or microservices, a stack change, a migration: I help choose the option that fits the context. I have done this for government agencies, a marketplace of more than 40,000 users, and enterprise platforms.
Engineering management
Team growth
At Akieni the team grew from 7 to 18 engineers. At Cowema I developed junior engineers to senior level. Relevant when building a first team, or once the organization passes ten people.
Architecture and migration
From the existing system
To modernize an application or prepare a migration, I start from what is already in production. I have split monoliths, and I have kept others intact when splitting them added nothing.
Interim CTO
Operational work
I step in as CTO or VP long enough to put the basics in place: hiring, a delivery pace, and the blocked work. The engagement is not limited to presentations.
Technical advice
Technical opinion
When a technical decision is blocked, I review the architecture, examine the code, and recommend the tool. I draw on systems I have already taken to production.
SKILLS
Technologies and practices
Management
- Hiring and onboarding
- Coaching
- Roadmap prioritization
- Technology budget
- Diagnosing blockers
Backend
- PHP / Laravel
- Python / Django
- Node.js / NestJS
- ASP.NET Core / C#
Frontend and mobile
- TypeScript
- React / Next.js
- React Native
- Flutter
Data
- PostgreSQL
- MySQL/MariaDB
- SQL Server
- Redis
- RabbitMQ
Infrastructure
- AWS
- Docker
- Kubernetes
- CI/CD
AI tools
- Claude Code
- Codex
- Cursor
- LLM pipelines
PORTFOLIO
Projects
A selection of delivered projects.
Enterprise
ABIS: Biometric Identification System
A production biometric identification system I architected and built on proven open-source components, delivering enrollment, 1:1 verification and 1:N identification at a fraction of the cost of commercial ABIS platforms.
dotnet
C#
PostgreSQL
Biometrics
Fintech
Cross-Border Payments Platform
A cross-border B2B and B2C payments platform I designed and built end to end, moving money across underserved African corridors in under 24 hours.
nextjs
PostgreSQL
NestJS
E-Commerce
Cowema E-Commerce Platform
A Congolese e-commerce ecosystem that grew to 40,000+ users: a marketplace, a commission reseller app, and admin back-offices, with mobile money and delivery built in.
Laravel
Kotlin
Mobile
Full-Stack
E-Commerce
Fintech
Mobile Money Wallet
A full mobile money wallet (send, pay, deposit, withdraw, agent network, KYC) that I rebuilt end to end, taking a broken app and a non-transactional backend to a professional, trustworthy product.
React native
PostgreSQL
NestJS
Desktop
Freeze POS: Offline-First Point of Sale
A desktop POS that keeps selling when the internet doesn't: a full back-office for African SMBs, usable like a pro in an afternoon.
React
Enterprise
typescript
Electron
MySQL
ARTICLES
Articles
Writing on engineering teams, architecture, and release to production.
Architecture
14 August 2026
•
19 min
Everyone Talks About Digitalization. Almost Nobody Talks About What It Runs On
Digitalization is announced everywhere and explained nowhere. Underneath the word sits a payment layer, and it is not an app with a payment API inside it. It is a set of guarantees made to parties who do not trust each other and still have to agree on who owns what.
Read article
Backend Development
27 July 2026
•
7 min
Fingerprint Verification in ASP.NET Core with SourceAFIS (1:1 Matching)
Adding fingerprint matching to your own backend is easier than it looks. A hands-on walk through 1:1 verification in ASP.NET Core with SourceAFIS: image to template to match score, wrapped in a minimal API, plus an honest look at what a production biometric system really needs.
Read article
Architecture
19 July 2026
•
5 min
The BFF Pattern: Your API Token Has No Business in the Browser
The Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) pattern keeps your API token off the browser and kills CORS. Here is how it works, illustrated with the Next.js App Router, plus a small library that removes the boilerplate.
Read article
CONTACT