Andrew O.

Python Backend Engineer | Django & FastAPI | API & AI Integration

Python backend engineer. Django REST Framework, FastAPI, and the third-party and AI integrations most people would rather not touch. Those are the ones I like. A third of my clients come back for a second project. Most backends are fine until they meet production. Then you find out the API you depend on documents a version that no longer exists. The integration nobody wanted to own starts failing at 3am, and the AI feature that demoed beautifully begins returning malformed JSON to paying users. Getting a project from "runs on my laptop" to "survives Monday morning" is most of what I get hired for, and it's the part of the work I enjoy. Where that shows up: a hotel-systems API integration where the client hired me for a short trial and then rehired me to build the whole thing. A FastAPI backend for a client's Python platform. The Diba Fintech API, built in Django REST Framework and running in production today. An AI product-attribute extraction system for a European retail client. Across that work I've picked up four client endorsements for quality, three for clear communication and two for accountability. Alerechi Ordu, lead engineer on the Diba Fintech build: "A great asset to the team, consistently delivering high-quality work with strong attention to detail." What I build: - Python REST APIs in Django REST Framework and FastAPI, with JWT/OAuth2 auth, role-based access, clean serializers and endpoints your frontend team can actually read - Integrations with property and hotel systems, ServiceNow, OpenAI and Google Gemini, including the webhooks, retries and failure handling that keep them alive - Celery, Redis, Django Channels and WebSockets for background jobs and real-time features - PostgreSQL schema design and query tuning, plus Docker, CI/CD and AWS On AI: the failure usually shows up three weeks in, when the model returns something nobody planned for and there's nothing underneath to catch it. I build the part that catches it. Structured outputs, retries and fallbacks, rate-limit and cost handling, background processing, and a record of what the model actually returned so you can audit it later. I've built my own, too: a health-analysis platform on Django 5 and the Gemini API, running 23 separate diagnostic prompts. I integrate AI as a backend engineer. I don't sell prompts. Who I work best with: founders with a live or half-built product, small teams inheriting a codebase nobody on staff wrote, and agencies with a Python gap. Scoped builds usually run $1,500 to $5,000. Longer engagements go hourly. How I work: the first conversation is about what you're building and why, before we get to a ticket list. You get trade-offs flagged before any code is written and regular check-ins so scope doesn't drift. Tested, documented code is the baseline, because what I care about most is whether the next person to open the codebase can follow it. I don't disappear mid-project. I also turn work down. If your project isn't a fit, I'll tell you and say why. Two ways to start: - Send me your spec or repo and within 4 hours you'll know whether I can help and how I'd approach it, with no obligation either way. - Or book a consultation and I'll write you a project plan: what to fix, in what order, with the risky parts marked. Andrew, based in Nigeria (UTC+1), working across US, EU and APAC hours.