Senior Mobile Engineer at Smile ID Google Developer Expert for Android · Co-organizer, droidconKE × flutterconKE
I build mobile SDKs, write about Android, and spend a lot of time in rooms full of developers in Kenya.
At Smile ID, I work on the mobile SDKs that power KYC and identity verification across Africa, spanning Android, iOS, Flutter and React Native. Most of my day goes into camera and capture pipelines, CI/CD, and keeping four platforms at feature parity.
Outside the day job I co-organize droidconKE and flutterconKE, Africa's largest mobile developer conference. I was previously a co-organizer of Android254 and Kotlin Kenya from 2019 to 2022.
📍 Nairobi, Kenya
| Area | What that means in practice |
|---|---|
| Camera & capture | CameraX, AVFoundation, ML Kit, real-time on-device vision |
| Cross-platform SDKs | One feature set shipped four ways, without four codebases drifting apart |
| Architecture | Compose, unidirectional state, offline-first, server-driven UI |
| Release engineering | Gradle plugins, GitHub Actions, Firebase App Distribution |
| AI in Android | Gemini in Android Studio, Firebase AI Logic, agent-assisted workflows |
Numbers via the GDE program: 35 talks · 6.2k attendees · 5 workshops · 344 trained · 16 mentees. GDE since October 2021.
| Date | Session | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Sep 2026 | Get Started on Android in 2026 | GDG On Campus Baraton |
| Jun 2026 | Inside KotlinConf 2026: Kotlin, Compose & Multiplatform | Daystar University, Nairobi |
| May 2026 | Offline First Architecture | Android Developers Office Hours |
| Apr 2026 | Portfolio Development and Landing Your First Internship | Nairobi |
| Mar 2026 | From Hello World to Earning | Nairobi |
| Mar 2026 | Building Intelligent Camera Experiences on Android (workshop) | Kisumu |
| Nov 2025 | Mastering Text Input in Compose | Mombasa |
| Jul 2025 | What's New in Android 2025 | Nairobi & Nyeri |
🎥 Offline First Architecture on the official Android Developers channel is the one I'm proudest of. 7.2k views and counting.
Earlier talks and sessions
- Recomposition Roundup: All You Need to Know — DevFest Pwani. Why optimizing recompositions matters, unstable classes and lambdas, LazyList performance, and how modifiers affect recomposition behaviour.
- Now In Compose — Droidcon Uganda workshop on unidirectional state management, testing, performance, navigation and theming in production Compose.
- Devfest Nairobi Android Keynote
- Now In Compose — I/O Extended, GDG Kisumu
- KotlinConf '23 — Transforming Farmers' Lives Using Android in Kenya — offline-first, low-memory devices, and server-driven UI with Compose at Apollo Agriculture.
- Kotlin Conf '23 Overview — Android254 & Kotlin Kenya, Nairobi edition
- Getting Started and Growing as an Android Developer — GDSC USIU
- A Deep Dive and Building an Outstanding Career in Mobile Development — with Valentine Rutto, Lux Academy
- View Models, States and Flows in Jetpack Compose — GDSC Mount Kenya University
- Jetpack Compose: Display Lists and Material Design 3 — GDSC Kabarak
- Getting Started with Jetpack Compose — GDSC Meru & Chuka
- From Android Developer to Published Author — GDSC Kabarak
- Google I/O First Impressions Livecast — Kodeco
- SSA Students Summit 2023: Career Panel on Android — with Eric Ampire and Beatrice Kinya
- How to Become a GDE: Making it in Tech — with Hannah Olukoye and Wayne Gakuo
- Balancing Technical Accuracy and Simplicity in Technical Writing — Technier School
- IndustryExpertsTalk: Technical Writing 101 — Lux Tech Academy
Also: Android254, Kotlin Kenya, Kotlin Everywhere, droidconKE, DevFest Nairobi / Kisumu / Eldoret / Dar es Salaam, Apps:Lab Tech Tours across 6+ Kenyan universities, GeeksTalkThursday, and I/O Extended events worldwide.
|
Packt, 2024 Build beautiful, responsive and accessible UIs with Compose. Explore app architectures and optimize them. Write unit and instrumentation tests. Publish, monitor and improve performance on Play. Set up CI/CD with GitHub Actions and Firebase App Distribution. |
raywenderlich.com / Kodeco My first book. Everything you need to know about persisting data on Android, locally and remotely. |
Courses & tutorials — Kodeco
Video courses
- Your Second Kotlin Android App — materials author. A task-list app entirely in Kotlin and Compose: composables, lazy layouts, saving data, navigation.
- Deep Links In Android
Written
- Save User State — DataStore, Android Files and Room, and how to pick between them.
- Maps Compose Library Tutorial for Android
- Material You in Jetpack Compose
- Android App Bundles: Play Feature Delivery
- Integrating detekt in the Workflow
- Scheduling Tasks With Android WorkManager
- Deep Links in Android: Getting Started
- Paging Library for Android With Kotlin
- Database Views with Room
- Beyond the Basics with Sealed Classes
Articles — Stream
Articles — Medium
- Technical Writing: How Do I Get Better at it?
- A Day with an Elephant in the Room: Configuring Gradle Plugins
- Kotlin One Year After: Lessons Learnt
- What's New in Android #1 · #2
- Android Paging Library With Kotlin Coroutines
- Building the droidconKE App
- Android Background Services
- Are you Productive or Just Busy?
Where my work has been featured
- #TheAndroidShow — joined Madona S. Wambua, Ahmed Tikiwa, Annyce Davis, Zarah Dominguez and Dinorah Tovar to talk about what being a GDE actually involves.
- Google Developer Journey, November 2022 — featured in the #DevJourney series.
- Women Techmakers and Google Devs, February 2022.
- KotlinConf '23 Confersations — interviewed by Huyen Dao.
- Built In Africa — my journey as an Android developer, written up by Nathan Hastings-Spaine.
Building in public from Nairobi. If something here is useful to you, that is the whole point.