Sole engineer on an end-to-end school management SaaS for Gardeners For Africa — a multi-school EdTech organisation. The platform handles student enrolment, class and subject management, staff administration, term-based reporting, and operational workflows that previously lived in physical records and spreadsheets.
How do you run a network of nursery, primary, and secondary schools without software built for the job?
Sole engineer on an end-to-end school management SaaS for Gardeners For Africa — a multi-school EdTech organisation. The platform handles student enrolment, class and subject management, staff administration, term-based reporting, and operational workflows that previously lived in physical records and spreadsheets.
Mapped the full school operational surface — enrolment, timetabling, staff records, assessments — before writing any code.
Designed the data model to support multiple school branches and levels under one platform without duplicating domain logic.
Built the API as the source of truth first; every frontend interaction is a documented contract, not an ad hoc query.
Self-hosted from day one with Docker, Traefik for automatic HTTPS, and Cloudflare at the edge — keeps costs predictable and infrastructure owned.
Laravel for the backend application, REST API surface, and domain logic.
MySQL for relational school records: students, classes, terms, staff, and assessments.
Laravel Queues for background report generation and scheduled notification jobs.
Docker + Traefik + Cloudflare for containerised deployment, routing, TLS, and DNS.
Replaced physical records and spreadsheets with a single operating platform across multiple school branches.
Gave administrators, staff, and students role-appropriate visibility into school operations.
Created a codebase the organisation can extend to new school levels and features without changing the core architecture.