Where do things go when you “save them to the cloud”?

Before my interview with Mileke, I couldn’t have told you. But now, I can. I can also tell you where he goes when he’s in search of new adventures. Or, at least, where he’s gone this year. In just eight months, Mileke has visited eight cities across Africa and Europe. To understand how he can pull this off, you first have to understand the work he does.

Life in the cloud

Mileke is a Team Lead in Cloud Engineering at Moniepoint. If you’ve ever made a payment with a Moniepoint POS terminal or via Monnify, then you’ve come in contact with his work. Every time you process a payment via one of these channels, it travels through cloud systems that store the transaction data, connect with payment gateways and ensure everything stays secure. These systems are provisioned, maintained and secured by Mileke’s team. You may not see their work on the frontend, but it’s a key part of what ensures your payment goes smoothly, from the moment you punch in your PIN to the moment you hear the sweet beep of success.

“Every time I use a Moniepoint POS or see one in action, it feels amazing knowing that my work contributes to its success.”

A winding path

Cloud engineering wasn’t always in the cards for Mileke. His journey in tech has spanned the last 7 years and featured stints in frontend engineering, quality assurance and cybersecurity. But none of these felt natural to him.

“In October 2023, I realised I wasn’t enjoying the work I was doing. I decided to move into cloud engineering because I wanted to do something that supports developers and makes their work easier.”

This desire to support others didn’t spring out of nowhere; Mileke has a long history of helping others thrive. In his second year at university, he was elected class representative. While the position initially weighed on him, he soon realised that he genuinely enjoyed solving problems for other people. His peers realised it too, and two years later, they elected him president of his faculty’s student association. While in that role, Mileke noticed a gap.

“All the association’s activities were mainly focused on academics: tutorials and maybe the odd hackathon. I believed we needed something more student-driven and technology-focused, that would help people gain skills and widen their knowledge scope beyond the university environment. I applied to the Google Developer Group (GDG) on Campus program, and I got the license to start one in my university.”

A Google Developer Group is a community-led group of developers and tech enthusiasts who come together to learn, share knowledge, and build with Google technologies. Mileke’s vision for starting one was simple: to help people gain relevant skills and connect with the right opportunities to set them on the path to career success. What he may not have envisioned, however, was that it would play a pivotal role in his own path.

As a GDG organiser, Mileke had access to perks like cloud credits, learning resources and a network of experts. So, when he decided to pivot to cloud engineering, he already had access to resources that made it easier. It was a big leap, but one he considers the “best decision he’s made in his career”. Next to that on his list is deciding to join Moniepoint.

A place to belong

In 2023, we released a video about our culture—the 4Ms (Meaning, Mastery, Membership and Money) that make a career at Moniepoint worth it. It wasn’t an ad to convince people to join us, but we knew it would find the right people. And it did. Mileke was one of them.

“I saw that video and idea of work being guided by the 4Ms captivated me. I’m glad I’ve been able to live that experience since I joined. I know my work has meaning because I can go shopping and use a Moniepoint POS without any issues. I get to work with exceptionally brilliant people. I can genuinely say my team is one of the best teams anyone could work with. At Moniepoint, I’m not just challenged to be better. I’m given the support to ensure I can rise to that challenge.”

Bridging worlds

Earlier this year, Mileke was attending a Google Cloud event in Johannesburg when he learned something interesting: Moniepoint is Google Cloud’s largest customer in Africa, and Google Cloud is pretty proud of that. 

Mileke is a co-organiser of GDG Lagos, one of Africa’s largest developer communities. He also leads the Cloud sub-unit, and they had a problem.

“We’d noticed that participation from more experienced members of the community had dropped. For one thing, a lot of them had migrated but even those who were still around felt like most of our events were targeted at beginners. To solve this, we’d started thinking about creating a space for high-level conversations that these more experienced members could be a part of.” 

 The Johannesburg event helped Mileke see a path forward. If the high-level conversations were structured as a monthly physical event series, it would help experienced engineers participate and be more consistent with the community. Beyond that, they would get to connect with their peers, share experiences and exchange innovative ideas about cloud technology. 

Given Moniepoint’s relationship with Google Cloud and Mileke’s connection with Moniepoint, it was a no-brainer that this would be the perfect place for the event series to hold. By hosting the event, Moniepoint could give it credibility, provide access to expertise for attendees and play a part in ensuring that our core value of technical depth extends beyond our walls and into the communities that feed our talent pipeline.

Excited by the possibilities, Mileke reached out to Moniepoint’s Corporate Affairs team. All it took was a Slack DM to set the ball rolling and, a few months later, the first monthly meeting held in Moniepoint’s corporate office in Victoria Island, Lagos. 

Being a key part of making this happen is something Mileke is incredibly proud of. Not just because he could solve a problem for his community, but also because he could solve it a way that matters to his role at Moniepoint.

On the road with Mileke

Now to the big question you’ve probably been asking: how can he possibly pull this off?

The answer isn’t as complicated as you might think, and it’s also not endless leave days. We operate a work-from-anywhere policy at Moniepoint that allows our DreamMakers show up from wherever they are. This means that, whether he’s in Abuja or Amsterdam, so long as Mileke is connected to the internet, he’s connected to the team.

Remaining connected to people is incredibly important to Mileke. Not just at work, but in every aspect of his life. He’s a people-person through and through and this is what shapes how he leads and how he experiences the world. Whether he’s leading his team at work, anchoring a GDG Cloud session or experiencing a new city, he ensures that he’s guided by a concept that we value deeply at Moniepoint:  no ego.

So, where do things go when you save them to the cloud?

When you use a Moniepoint POS, you probably don’t think twice about what happens behind the scenes. But Mileke does. And, wherever he is in the world, his work is a key part of ensuring that those payments go through and that we continue to create financial happiness for every African, everywhere.

Join Mileke and 3000+ DreamMakers who are living the dream while powering dreams for people and businesses. Visit our careers page to get started.