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Hi, I'm Gift
A Software Developer

I design and build scalable, cloud-native applications

About

Gift Banda

Gift Banda - Professional headshot of a software developerI'm Gift Banda, a Software Developer with 6+ years of experience turning messy, complex problems into cloud-native systems that just work, reliably, at scale, for the businesses and people who rely on them.

Right now that means building and maintaining enterprise-grade applications at Standard Bank Group that thousands of people depend on every day. I led the migration of 7 on-premises applications to AWS, an experience that taught me more about scalability, cost trade-offs, and stubborn legacy systems than any course could.

I take ownership of the full lifecycle, not just the code. I write CI/CD pipelines so deployments aren't a nerve-wracking event, close out penetration test findings instead of letting them linger, and show up when production systems need attention. I also run internal knowledge-sharing sessions because the best engineers I've worked with were generous with what they knew, and I try to pay that forward.

Day to day, I'm building with Angular, TypeScript, Java (Spring Boot), Golang, and Node.js, working across Kafka, RabbitMQ, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB while deploying cloud-native solutions on AWS and OpenShift.

I'm 3x AWS certified, 2x Azure certified, and Salesforce certified, and I'm currently completing a Postgraduate Diploma in Computer Science because I believe the best engineers never stop learning. That's the mindset I bring to my work every day, always aiming to leave every system and every team a little better than I found them.

Technical Skills

Frontend

JavaScript TypeScript Angular HTML5 & CSS3 Bootstrap SASS / SCSS Jasmine

Backend

Java Spring Boot Node.js Express.js Golang Gin JUnit

Databases

MySQL PostgreSQL MongoDB Redis

DevOps & Cloud

AWS Docker OpenShift Terraform Jenkins GitLab CI/CD

Tools & Others

Git GitHub GitLab Apache Kafka RabbitMQ Nginx Jira Confluence Swagger Postman REST APIs Microservices

Resume

EXPERIENCE

Software Developer

Standard Bank Group, Johannesburg

Feb 2021 - Present

  • Built, launched, and maintain two enterprise web applications end‑to‑end using Angular, Golang, and Java (Spring Boot), including online.dinersclub.co.za — ensuring 99.9% uptime and secure operations.
  • Led migration of seven on‑premises applications to AWS ECS, improving scalability and reducing infrastructure costs.
  • Designed and implemented CI/CD pipelines using GitLab CI/CD, significantly reducing deployment time.
  • Remediated penetration test findings and hardened application security across multiple services.
  • Proactively monitor and resolve production incidents, maintaining high availability for thousands of users.
  • Lead internal engineering knowledge‑sharing sessions to improve engineering practices and adoption of new technologies.

Software Developer

Shaper (The Digital Academy), Johannesburg

Dec 2019 - May 2020

  • Contributed to the conception and development of “Novelty”, a web app for entrepreneurs, offering business plan assistance, ABSA funding insights, and website‑building resources.
  • Designed and developed a Single Page Application (SPA) using the MEAN stack and Docker.
  • Developed custom REST APIs and a robust back‑end in Node.js.
  • Created and optimized a relational database using MySQL.
  • Designed UIs and crafted web pages using Angular with Material Design and MD Bootstrap.
  • Successfully integrated Google OAuth, a domain availability checker, and multiple third‑party APIs into the application.

SUMMARY

Gift Banda

Software Developer with 5+ years of experience shipping cloud-native, full-stack systems in enterprise environments. Strong in system design, CI/CD automation, and AWS migrations — takes ownership from architecture to production.

EDUCATION

Postgraduate Diploma: Computer Science

Tshwane University Of Technology

Expected Dec 2026

Focus areas include data science & big data analytics, artificial intelligence, software engineering, cloud computing, new technological trends, and advanced research methodology.

Advanced Diploma: Computer Science

Tshwane University Of Technology

2022 - 2024

National Diploma: I.T (Software Development)

Tshwane University Of Technology

2017 - 2019

CERTIFICATION

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional AWS Certified Developer - Associate AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Azure Administrator Associate Azure Fundamentals Salesforce Certified Platform App Builder National Certificate: Banking (SAQA Accredited NQF Level 5)

Projects

A mix of professional and personal projects that showcase my skills across full-stack development, cloud infrastructure, and problem-solving.

Diners Club Online

Enterprise Full-Stack Development

Diners Club Online is a secure, web-based corporate card management portal serving Diners Club South Africa. The platform supports 7 user roles with dedicated dashboards, role-based access control, account and card management, statement downloads, travel abroad notifications, and self-service registration with OTP verification. I developed and maintain this platform end-to-end using Angular, Golang, Java (Spring Boot), and AWS. Key contributions include building CI/CD pipelines, migrating from on-premise to AWS ECS, remediating security vulnerabilities, and ensuring 99.9% uptime.

Takealot Web-Scraper Price Monitor

Web Scraping and Automation

Built a cron job that web-scrapes product prices on Takealot and sends real-time email alerts when the price drops to a target threshold. A practical automation tool that sparked strong engagement on LinkedIn. Takealot Webscape Price Monitor

Step-by-Step Guide To Hosting A Static Website On AWS

AWS and DevOps

I recently hosted my giftmbanda.com portfolio website on AWS using S3 for storage, CloudFront for content delivery, ACM for SSL/TLS certificates, and Route 53 for domain name management. Join me in this tutorial article as I walk you through the process of hosting a static website on AWS. A Step-by-Step Guide to Hosting a Static Website on AWS.

AWS CodePipeline and ECS IaC (with Terraform)

AWS and DevOps

This project showcases my use of Terraform to architect and provision a highly available and scalable infrastructure on AWS. The infrastructure includes a CodePipeline for CI/CD and an ECS cluster for deploying containerized applications, with a load balancer, CloudWatch, multiple availability zones, public and private subnets, NAT gateway, autoscaling group, and internet gateway. The CodePipeline automatically integrates and deploys code changes to the ECS cluster through CI/CD. The ECS infrastructure, as well as the rest of the infrastructure, is designed to scale based on demand and provide high availability and fault tolerance across multiple availability zones. If you'd like to read more about this, please visit my article on Medium at giftmbanda.medium.com.

Global Covid-19 Live Tracker

Web Development

A Global Covid-19 Live Tracker app developed in React offers live global covid-19 stats and individual country's stats. The source code is available for review on my Github.

Novelty

Web Development

We often have a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs who want to start a business with only an idea and have to deal with the complexity involved with starting up a business. Novelty walks the user through evaluating their business idea, helps the user find the right team for their technical tasks and offers marketing strategies and ways to get funding for the business. Novelty is a product of The Digital Academy in partnership with ABSA. The project was developed using MySQL, Express, Angular, and Node.js.

WhatsappOrder

Web Development

A lightweight HTML5, CSS3, and vanilla Javascript food ordering website allow customers to place food orders and forward the order via Whatsapp to the Whatsapp linked to the site, which is ideal for small fast-food businesses. The site is accessible here, WhatsappOrder.

MyStudyLife

Web Development

A student attendance register system, the web app, allows students to log their class attendance via a GPS-enabled smartphone. The student turns on GPS/Location on their device,logs in, and selects "Attend" for the module being lectured that they present at. The system checks the student's Device GPS Coordinate against the assigned venue's GPS coordinates. It checks the student's Device GPS Coordinate ping time against the Subject's designated attendance time and then processes the attendance. This project is developed with Laravel, Bootstrap, HTML, and CSS and uses the MySQL database. The source code is available for review on my Github.

Contact

Open to new opportunities and collaborations. Whether you have a role in mind, a project to discuss, or just want to connect — I'd love to hear from you.

Usually respond within 24 hours