Yekeen Ajeigbe is the head of engineering at Deimos, beginning his career at a startup, he quickly embraced the multifaceted demands of building a business, developing a wide range of skills while navigating the challenges of early entrepreneurship. One skill that stood out and ignited his passion was engineering—using simple keyboard commands to solve complex problems. This fascination became the driving force behind his career in tech.
Motivated to refine his expertise, he pursued opportunities with some of the best engineering teams globally. His journey included working with a pioneering Nigerian company delivering innovative solutions worldwide, contributing to the success of Konga, and, for the past six years, playing a key role at Deimos, where he continues to create impactful engineering solutions.
In this exclusive conversation, he reflects on the journey that shaped his career and the impact of Deimos across the African continent.
What inspired your journey into engineering, and how did it lead to your role at Deimos?
I started my career at a startup, where I had the opportunity to develop a diverse range of skills—something that’s essential when building a business from the ground up. While the journey was marked by challenges, including some born from naivety, it provided a valuable learning experience. One key skill I discovered and fell in love with during that time was engineering—the ability to use simple code or keyboard commands to solve complex problems. This passion became the foundation of my career in tech.
Motivated to deepen my expertise, I set out to work with some of the best engineering teams globally. I gained experience with a notable Nigerian company providing solutions worldwide, spent time at Konga, and eventually joined Deimos, where I’ve been for the past six years, contributing to impactful engineering projects and driving innovation.
Can you tell us about Deimos and its mission in Africa’s tech ecosystem?
Deimos is a leading cloud solutions partner, collaborating with organizations across Africa and beyond to tackle cloud technology challenges and related issues. We specialize in assisting businesses with software engineering needs and offer a dedicated Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team to address infrastructure-related challenges, ensuring organizations maximize the potential of their cloud investments.
Our capabilities extend further with a dedicated security team and engineering team, providing comprehensive solutions tailored to the needs of enterprises across Africa. Beyond our services, we partner with the world’s largest cloud hyperscalers, including Google Cloud Platform—where we are the largest Google Cloud partner in Africa and the first Google Cloud Security Specialization Partner on the continent. We also maintain partnerships with AWS, Microsoft Azure, Huawei Cloud, and others.
These collaborations enable us to support African companies in optimizing their cloud strategies and technology investments, ensuring they achieve the best outcomes in a competitive digital landscape.
How does Deimos differentiate itself in the cloud native and software engineering space?
Deimos proudly boasts some of the best engineers across Africa. What sets us apart is our full-service approach to cloud solutions. Unlike many cloud partners who primarily handle invoicing or professional services organizations that lack direct relationships with cloud providers, Deimos offers end-to-end support tailored to our clients’ needs.
As a company built in Africa—with roots in Nigeria and South Africa—we deeply understand the unique challenges and opportunities of growing businesses on the continent. This local insight, combined with a team of exceptional engineers, strong partnerships with leading cloud providers, and highly skilled operators, ensures that we deliver unparalleled value to our clients.
What role does engineering play in driving Deimos strategy goals?
Deimos is an engineering-first organization, and this principle shapes everything we do—internally, in how we collaborate with our clients, and even in how we work as a team. We leverage the latest and most advanced engineering tools and build internal solutions to enhance efficiency and productivity. One of our core values, work smartly and focus on what matters, drives us to constantly innovate. For instance, we maintain an internal data warehouse that aggregates insights from all our teams and engagements, enabling continuous improvement and smarter decision-making.
This engineering-driven mindset also defines our client engagements. We’ve worked with industry leaders like the Central Bank of Nigeria, Jumia, Mukuru, Moniepoint, Kuda, and many others. These clients turn to us because they recognize that we not only understand the complexities of modern technologies but also excel at mastering and deploying them effectively. At Deimos, we don’t just talk about engineering excellence—we live it.
As head of engineering at Deimos. What’s your approach to building and leading high-performing teams?
The first and most important step in building a high-performing team is selecting the right individuals. While traditional metrics like experience and educational background often take center stage, I’ve found that true success is driven more by attitude and soft skills. Look for individuals who possess strong communication skills, are self-motivated, and demonstrate a commitment to excellence. High-performing individuals who are driven and proactive can be upskilled easily, and their presence elevates the entire team.
Once you’ve assembled the right team, the next critical task as a leader is providing clarity. Everyone should clearly understand the team’s objectives and goals. High-performing individuals don’t want to be micromanaged or work on tasks that lack purpose—they want to know that their efforts are meaningful and impactful. It’s essential to foster a collaborative environment where team members feel empowered to achieve their best work.
Ultimately, my goal for every team I lead is to help them become self-managing. A self-managing team is one that understands its responsibilities, consistently delivers high-quality results on time, and operates with minimal oversight. This kind of team doesn’t rely on micromanagement or constant prodding—they thrive on ownership, accountability, and the shared satisfaction of executing at a high level.
What’s the most challenging engineering decision you’ve had to make, and how did you handle it?
Over the years, I’ve had to make several critical decisions in challenging situations. One particularly memorable instance involved a client facing an extreme Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. They were under a sustained attack at an unprecedented scale, and their existing tools and infrastructure were not equipped to detect or mitigate the issue effectively.
The situation was further complicated by the timing—it happened over a weekend, with limited personnel and resources available to address the problem. We were pulled into the crisis at the height of the event and tasked with not only restoring their services but also ensuring the client’s platform remained operational without significant disruptions.
While it was an incredibly stressful experience in the moment, it became an insightful learning opportunity afterward. Successfully navigating the situation required quick thinking, creative problem-solving, and implementing robust cloud controls to safeguard their systems. It underscored the importance of resilience and adaptability in managing complex technical challenges.
What emerging technologies or trends are you most excited about?
As you pointed out, the answer seems obvious—AI is the standout. What excites me most about AI is its potential to drive exponential progress. If we look at human history, there have been pivotal innovations that transformed society. Tools like the hoe or plow revolutionized agriculture, the printing press enabled widespread knowledge sharing, and the industrial revolution drastically increased productivity. These moments, though not always obvious at the time, became clear turning points for human advancement in hindsight.
AI represents one of these transformative leaps. Beyond the entertaining use cases like generating cool videos or fun text, the true power of AI lies in its ability to amplify human capabilities. It has the potential to double, triple, or even 10x the output of a single individual. This isn’t just about replacing jobs, which is a common concern—it’s about unlocking new levels of productivity and innovation.
At Deimos, we recognized AI’s potential early and integrated it into our operations. I’ve seen firsthand how AI has elevated great engineers to even greater heights, serving as a powerful multiplier. This is why I’m so passionate about AI—not only for its broad range of applications but also for its ability to empower individuals and enable us to achieve much more with less effort. It’s an exciting frontier that is already reshaping what we can accomplish as a society.
How does Deimos approach balancing innovation with reliability and security in your solutions?
I think at the moment, the shift in focus on security is crucial. For instance, if you’re in fintech or any financial institution, whether traditional or a new fintech company, security itself is an innovation. With the rise in fraud and increasing compliance issues, simply having robust security measures in place is an innovation in and of itself. Similarly, reliability is key. Especially in places like Nigeria, we experience a lot of challenges with banking systems—cards don’t always work, and transfers happen when they feel like it. Banks are fine until they’re not, right?
For security, it’s best to build it in from the beginning. It’s much easier to implement security and reliability measures from the start than to add them into a poorly designed architecture later on. When built in from the beginning, security provides the safety rails that allow for faster innovation.
Some ways to do this include setting up a strong web application framework, like Cloudflare, to mitigate some risks. You also need to design a solid architecture and be proactive with your observability. Don’t wait for issues to happen—don’t let your customers be the ones to discover problems. Many of these practices can be implemented early in the application development, giving you more flexibility and allowing you to innovate faster.
Going back to the original point, the way we balance security and innovation is by ensuring that security is baked in from the start. Of course, more often than not, we work on projects that aren’t greenfield—they’re projects where we come in halfway through. But if you can inject security measures at the very beginning, at a high level, your team can rapidly iterate and innovate while still maintaining the necessary safety measures. This enables you to differentiate your business while keeping everything secure.
What challenges does your team face working in a diverse and evolving tech landscape like Africa?
There are the typical African challenges—issues with the internet, power, logistics, and working with colleagues across 9 or 10 countries, many of which face variations of these problems. On an individual level, these are recurring hurdles. But a bigger issue we’ve noticed within many African organizations, especially in the tech landscape, is that they often invest more in marketing than in the technologies that actually power their operations. As a result, many organizations are essentially building houses of cards.
There’s also the significant problem of brain drain. Many of the best engineering talents leave Africa, seeking opportunities abroad. This means that after investing time and resources to groom these individuals, they often don’t stay to contribute to the local technical landscape. This leads to a shortage of high-level talent within Africa, which creates challenges for remaining organizations trying to find skilled professionals. Recruitment becomes increasingly difficult, and competition for top talent becomes more intense.
How do Deimos address the issue of talent scarcity and upskilling in the African tech ecosystem?
To revisit what I mentioned earlier about engineering-first organizations, the best engineers I’ve worked with are usually highly collaborative. They enjoy helping those around them grow, and as an organization, that’s something we actively promote. Our structure is designed to empower everyone to contribute. Each team member has a learning budget, and there’s a strong focus on self-development. We want our people to constantly progress.
We’re talking about very good engineers, and our goal is to help them become even greater. This is one of the ways we focus on growth. We believe that Africans are best positioned to solve African problems, so we make it easy for our people to work across multiple countries. We’ve been remote since day one, and we partner with organizations like * to sponsor programs that build the next generation of technical talent in Africa, offering a home and opportunities for growth to emerging talents.
What’s your vision for the future of cloud-native technology in Africa?
I think the beauty of cloud-native technology is that it gives us a significant edge in Africa, where infrastructure challenges exist. While setting up our own data centers and similar initiatives are possible, they are also difficult and resource-intensive. Leveraging the cloud, however, allows us to bring African-oriented solutions to life—solutions that are homegrown, African-specific, and designed to empower local communities.
That’s my vision for the future of the cloud. I believe it’s only going to keep growing. Africa already has some of the best engineers, many of whom are moving at an accelerated rate to European countries. If we can retain some of this talent and encourage them to focus on solving the pressing problems we face here, using the cloud, we could see a future where African solutions thrive and address local challenges.
How does Deimos plan to scale its impact across the continent?
At Deimos, we have been the fastest-growing IT company in Africa for the past two years. But we’re also looking beyond Africa now. We are actively expanding into the Middle East and have already made strides in breaking into traditional markets like the U.S. and beyond.
Organizations outside Africa are recognizing the value we provide and the solutions we offer. They face many of the same challenges as our clients—issues related to infrastructure, security, data, and engineering. We’re excited about bringing African solutions and African engineers to tackle these problems for some of the biggest companies around the globe.
So what advice would you give to aspiring engineers who want to work on innovation projects like Deimos?
My primary advice to engineers is simple: get good, and get even better. Unfortunately, I’ve seen too much mediocre engineering, and that’s a common challenge. Cloud engineering, in particular, is one of the fields in Africa—and globally—where you can truly excel because the resources you need are widely available.
There are plenty of books, articles, and open-source code on platforms like GitHub to learn from. You can essentially stand on the shoulders of giants by exploring the source code of some of the biggest projects in the world, like those from large organizations or high-profile projects.
Often, engineers focus too quickly on other priorities, whether out of necessity or financial constraints, instead of focusing more on honing their skills and becoming exceptional at what they do. My advice is simple: get really good at your craft, and everything else will follow.
What’s the one piece of technology you believe will define the future of engineering?
Back to the AI conversation, I believe AI is one of the key technologies that will truly define the future of engineering. But there are also some incredibly exciting emerging technologies, like quantum computing. Until recently, quantum computing was mostly an abstract concept, but with the advancements we’re seeing now, it could become a massive game changer. It’s still early days, but the potential of quantum computing is definitely something to watch. There are some fascinating concepts coming to the table, and it’s exciting to think about where this could lead.
Thank you for talking to us
Its a pleasure, thank you for having me.
