Oladele awarded Norget Awards in software engineering category

The Norget Awards have named Abeeb Oladele a winner in its Software Engineering Category, recognising an eight-year career defined less by titles than by outcomes: incident response times cut to zero, code reviews shortened from two days to four hours, banking tools used by more than 3,000 agents, and public-sector platforms handling over ₦1 billion in transactions.

The Kenya-based awards platform, which is peer-nominated and judged by an international panel, disclosed during the announcement that Oladele stood out under its core criteria of Impact, Integrity and Innovation. In a letter to the Nigerian engineer, the panel said his work reflected “engineering at scale” and praised his ability to translate complex architecture into systems that remove friction, increase trust, and unlock economic activity.

Rather than tracing a conventional career timeline, the judges focused on what changed because Oladele was in the room. At Stears, where he is currently Technical Lead, he guides a seven-person product team across backend, frontend, data, and DevOps to build Africa’s leading financial data and AI-research provider for global funds, investors, and corporates investing in Africa. There, he simplified an automated on-call incident support rota system, reducing incident response time to zero seconds, and built a merge-request ClickUp notifier that cut code-review turnaround from an average of two days to four hours. He also mentored two data engineers from intern to intermediate level.

His earlier work at Stears as Senior Mobile Engineer helped the app earn 4.7-star and 4.5-star ratings and top-three rankings on the App Store and Play Store. He integrated an iOS external link entitlement feature that saved the company from paying Apple’s 30% commission, orchestrated CI/CD pipelines that reduced deployment time to under seven minutes, and implemented Firebase Cloud Messaging push notifications that increased app engagement by over 75%. Unit and integration tests he wrote helped attain 80% code coverage.

The letter affirms that the panel also examined his impact beyond a single product. At CanaryTech Limited, he spearheaded the Parapay Digital banking Android application and developed the Parapay Agency banking application for Android OS-powered phones and POS devices used by over 3,000 agents. At WAEC, he led development of the first internally built WAEC mobile app, which has over 50,000 downloads on the Play Store, architected the WAEC Clinic App for managing clinic operations and billings across 39 offices, and delivered a cooperative society platform that facilitated over ₦1 billion in transactions. At PlutoTV, he led experiments on embedding Flutter into Android to reduce idea-to-product time by 40%, built an AR feature from scanned QR codes, and was part of the team that won the 2023 Paramount Ascent hackathon, earning $2,500 and a place in the incubator programme.

Norget judges were equally interested in how Oladele works. They noted his security-first designs, automated testing discipline, and evidence-backed validation, approaches that ensure solutions retain value over time. They also highlighted his commitment to mentorship and community. Oladele has mentored junior mobile developers at the Andela Learning Community 2.0 programme, where he was named a top mentor and won a Google Developer Advocate certification exam fee. He has held a fireside chat with TryKibo for young people entering tech, delivered a masterclass for students at Kibo School, mentored 300-level students there on industrial technical experience, and spoken at a Questlink Network event.

“This recognition is meaningful because it comes from people who understand the craft, peers, colleagues and industry professionals who have seen the work up close,” Oladele said. “Engineering is about solving real problems and creating opportunities. The zero-second response times and faster reviews matter because they free teams to focus on users. The mentorship matters because the next generation will build what comes next. I am grateful to every team I have worked with, and I hope this encourages young engineers across Nigeria and Africa to keep building.”

The Norget Award places Oladele among a growing group of African technologists whose work is being measured not by noise but by outcomes. As he continues to lead, innovate, and mentor, the judges’ citation makes one thing clear: his engineering is consequential.