Hello, I'm Edgar Chris Nahama Alochi

I build software that keeps working
as the business grows

I am a software engineer and founder with 14 years of experience. I help teams solve hard technical problems and build reliable systems that are easy to understand and ready to grow.

See how I solve problemsWork with me
14 years building softwareLeading a 9-person engineering teamBased in Münster and working across Africa and the USA

A bit about me

I grew up in Kenya and now live in Münster. I have spent most of my career working on software where reliability, scale, and good technical judgment really matter.

Over the past 14 years, I have learned that strong engineering starts with understanding the problem. From there, it is about making sensible choices, keeping the design clear, and building something the team can support with confidence.

I founded Tinker to give founders the kind of technical partner I felt was often missing. We help teams make better technical decisions, reduce risk, and build products that can handle real growth.

At a glance

Experience14 years
Team at Tinker9 engineers
MarketsEast Africa and the United States
Based inMünster, DE

How I work

A few simple ideas guide how I solve problems and work with teams.

See the full approach

Solve the right problem

I make sure we understand what is actually wrong before we talk about tools or architecture.

Keep the design clear

I prefer a system the team can explain and maintain over one that is clever but hard to change.

Plan for real growth

I design for the growth we can see coming without burdening the team with complexity it does not need.

Stay close to the team

The best decisions come from knowing the product, the people, and the business well enough to see the whole picture.

Selected work

A few projects that show the problems I have worked on, the choices I made, and what changed after the work was done.

01Payment infrastructure

Tinker Payments: Making Payments Traceable from Checkout to Ledger

Built with Go and Next.js, Tinker Payments unifies M-Pesa, Paystack, Stripe and many others behind one API, with staged routing, a double-entry ledger, reconciliation, durable webhook recovery and verified merchant onboarding.

Full-stack engineer · 2025–2026 · October 2025– Ongoing

Read the case study

Selected outcomes

1 request
Dashboard usage summary, down from 1 + N requests for N applications
7 checks
Backend-verified setup requirements guiding merchants toward payment readiness
02Product engineering

Talon: Turning Fragmented Hiring into a Clear Decision Flow

Led engineering for Talon, a Next.js, Go and Flutter hiring platform connecting employers, recruiters and applicants in one decision flow.

Lead engineer · 2026 · January–September · Next.js · Go · Flutter

Read the case study

Selected outcomes

11 days
Average time to hire across four businesses, down from 1–2 months
17+
Businesses using Talon
View all case studies

Tinker

I founded Tinker over 10 years ago, and I still lead the company today. We work closely with founders who are building ambitious products and need experienced technical leadership.

Tinker is now a distributed team of experienced engineers and designers working across East Africa and the United States. We help clients make good technical choices and build dependable software that can grow with the business.

We do not measure good work by how much code we ship. We measure it by whether the product works well, the team can support it, and the business is in a stronger position afterward.

Work with Tinker

Recent writings

Notes from the work. I write about system design, engineering decisions, and lessons that are worth sharing.

We Built Too Much. Our Users (Politely) Told Us So

Talon had the jobs, but job seekers weren't sticking around. So we asked them why. The answer: we'd built too much. Here...

Talon, Three Weeks In: The Jobs Are There. So Where Are the Job Seekers?

Three weeks into Talon, the jobs are there, employers and recruiters are joining, but job seekers have been surprisingly...

Building Talon MCP: Zero-Trust Security for AI-Driven Recruiting Workflows

Discover how Talon built a production-grade Model Context Protocol (MCP) service to seamlessly connect AI agents with hi...

Why AI Agents Need Executable Specifications, Not Better Prompts

AI agents are automating software development, but vague requirements lead to incorrect implementations. We must shift f...

View all writings

Start a conversation

I work with founders and teams who need experienced technical help, not just more hands. That often means sorting out a difficult architecture decision, improving a system that is starting to strain, or finding a safer way to deliver an important product.

If that sounds like the kind of problem you are facing, send me a message. I am always happy to have a straightforward conversation about it.

me@edgar.co.ke
Münster, Germany
Available for projects