I build the systems companies trust with money, students, and members — across InsurTech, EdTech, and AI, in Johannesburg.
Right now I run engineering across three ventures at once:
- Cleverly AI — Cofounder & CTO. AI-assisted grading platform for South African schools, colleges, and universities. LLM provider layer, prompt engineering, RAG, tiered OCR.
- 123tutors — CTO. Led a full platform migration (Bubble → Next.js/TypeScript) and shipped an AI Tutor feature powered by Claude via AWS Bedrock.
- uTap — Cofounder. University campus commerce and access platform — React Native/Expo app, NFC card emulation, Paystack payments.
Plus full stack work across Alpha Group (insurance, hospitality, fitness), working closely with the Alpha engineering team on a centralized SSO authentication gateway, claims forms modernization, broker onboarding, and billing automation — and client work, including a full cinematic website build for Friends of Cinema, an independent film production company.
Frontend Next.js · React · TypeScript · Tailwind · Framer Motion
Backend Node.js · Express · FastAPI
AI / ML Claude · AWS Bedrock · RAG · Prompt Engineering · OCR pipelines
AWS Lambda · EventBridge · Cognito · DynamoDB · S3 · KMS · SES/SNS
Databases PostgreSQL · Supabase · MongoDB · DynamoDB
Auth OAuth2/PKCE · SSO gateway design · JWT
Security Kali Linux · Nmap · Metasploit · Burp Suite
DevOps Docker · Kubernetes · CI/CD · Vercel · Render
- 🎓 AI grading engine — evidence-linked, rubric-aligned marking with teacher-in-the-loop review, built to be trusted by teachers, not just accurate on paper
- 🔐 Centralized SSO gateway — architected and collaborated with the Alpha engineering team on the single login serving every app across an insurance, hospitality, and fitness ecosystem
- 🤖 AI Tutor — real-time streaming chat with intent classification and generated interactive mindmaps
- 📄 Legacy forms modernization — architected an in-browser system replacing hundreds of Adobe-only PDF forms with browser-native, mobile-accessible web forms and e-signature support
- 💳 Campus tap-to-pay — turned a student ID into an NFC payment card
- 🎬 Cinematic client site — art-house film studio website with a custom cursor, film grain hero, and Framer Motion transitions, live in production
- 📊 Akur8 UAT Runner — built a full-stack bulk-testing tool validating Alpha Insure's actuarial rating API before every pricing deploy
More detail (real problem → build → outcome case studies) on my portfolio.
🔭 Building AI-native products and identity infrastructure 🌱 Exploring applied security alongside development — Kali Linux practice lab, production security audits 📫 Reach me at herij46@gmail.com or LinkedIn