Inside Cadana: Meet Frankie

Can you tell us a bit about your journey and what brought you to Cadana?

My name is Franklyn Nnanna Ogbonna. I’ve been passionate about technology from a young age, and I pursued a university education with the goal of acquiring the skills needed to thrive in the tech industry.

I officially began my tech career in 2018 as part of the pioneer cohort at Decagon. Just a month later, I received an offer to join Interswitch and made the decision to leave Decagon. My time at Interswitch provided the foundation I needed. It introduced me to the corporate world and exposed me to structured, industry-standard software development practices, as well as Big Data technology.

Following my experience at Interswitch, I joined Andela and was placed with Remitly. There, I worked extensively on country expansion projects, integrating with various global remittance partners across Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Africa. My work at Remitly gave me deep insight into international remittances and the complex systems behind global money movement, which further fuelled my interest in the fintech space.

After Remitly, I had a brief stint at Moniepoint, where I contributed to the current Monieworld application that enables remittances from the UK to Nigeria. I later joined Cadana in late 2024, continuing my journey in building impactful financial technology solutions and especially honing my leadership and managerial skills and taking my career to the next level.

What attracted me to Cadana is its ability to simplify a challenge I’ve faced for years. Having worked remotely for U.S.-based companies over the last five years, accessing my earnings in local currency or directing them into investment opportunities often required juggling multiple services. Cadana offers a seamless, all-in-one solution, eliminating those extra steps and making financial access and management far more efficient.

What’s one project at Cadana that really made you think differently?

My first major project at Cadana was a payments integration that unlocked new corridors for the business. While I’ve worked on numerous integrations with financial providers across the globe before this, what stood out with this one was the level of end-to-end ownership I had. From setting up the GitHub repository, configuring CI/CD pipelines, and provisioning the database using CloudFormation templates, to implementing the core business logic, every aspect of the process was handled solely by me.

Previously, I have worked on a more monolithic setup, where major components were already in place and you only needed to plug in the provider-specific logic. Both approaches work, but having full control over the entire stack in this case was especially fulfilling. Although I have done something similar in my personal projects, but doing it at this scale is good to reckon.

How do you make sure your technical choices also make sense for the business?

I ensure that my technical decisions align with business goals by maintaining a strong and continuous dialogue with stakeholders across product, business, and design. I start by deeply understanding the problem we're solving - what success looks like for the customer and how it translates to business value.

With that context, I evaluate technical options not just based on elegance or scalability, but also on time-to-market, cost, maintainability, and risk. I favour pragmatic solutions that deliver value early, can evolve over time, and don’t lock us into unnecessary complexities. When appropriate, I present trade-offs transparently so the broader team can make informed decisions together.

Ultimately, my goal is to bridge the gap between engineering excellence and business impact, delivering solutions that are technically sound and drive measurable outcomes for the business.

What’s something about Cadana’s engineering culture that stands out to you?

One of the things that really stands out to me about Cadana’s engineering culture is the architectural approach, particularly the use of the event sourcing paradigm. Event sourcing offers several key advantages: it promotes loose coupling between services, ensures non-blocking asynchronous processing, and provides a clear audit trail of all changes in the system. This not only improves scalability and maintainability, but also enhances fault tolerance and makes it easier to debug and reason about system behaviour over time.

Another aspect I appreciate is the consistency and structure across Cadana’s codebases. The standardised project structure, development patterns, and CI/CD processes make it incredibly easy to onboard and start contributing meaningfully. Once you've worked on one repository, it becomes much simpler to ramp up on others, which significantly boosts developer productivity and encourages cross-functional collaboration.

What do you enjoy most about being part of the team here?

As a customer-centric engineer, I take pride in building solutions that deliver great values to customers. What makes being part of the Cadana team even more meaningful is that I’m actively contributing to a product that directly impacts my own life and career. I’m not just building for others, I’m also helping to shape and improve a product I personally use regularly. That personal connection to the product creates a deeper sense of ownership and motivation in the work I do every day.

Looking back, what’s one lesson or piece of advice that has shaped how you solve problems today?

Early on, I perceived programming as something almost mythical, complex, intimidating, and nearly impossible to master. I once shared my ambition of studying Computer Science with an older friend who was already in the Polytechnic. He recounted how difficult programming was, saying even Computer Science students were not able to make sense of it. That conversation almost dampened my resolve, but deep down, I remained curious and determined.

When I eventually got into the University, I carried that fear with me, believing programming was an uphill battle. Then I met Kingsley, a friend who shared the same ambitions. He had an old Pentium laptop and had just started learning Visual Basic. One day, he proudly showed us a simple calculator he had built. It took input from two text fields and displayed the sum on a label. I still remember his code: DIM num1 As Integer. We were in awe, we hailed him. To us, Kingsley was a gods.

But beyond the admiration, something clicked for me: if Kingsley could learn programming, that mean, I could learn it too. That moment gave me the confidence to pursue my path in tech with renewed energy and belief in my potential, and the rest they say is history.

To this day, whenever I encounter a difficult problem, I remind myself of that lesson: “If Kingsley could figure it out, so can I”. And more importantly, I’ve proven to myself time and again that I can.

What’s one piece of advice you’d share with someone just starting out in tech today?

Hmm, tech is quite different now compared to when I started, but the core principle remains the same-solving human problems through technology, making life better, and enabling global connectedness. Today, there are countless opportunities and tools available to help you pursue your dreams. The truth is, if you believe in yourself, you can achieve anything you set your mind to.

One key piece of advice is to pay close attention to is AI and Web3. These are no longer just tech buzzwords, they are part of today’s reality. Some jobs, even within the tech space, are already being replaced by AI. So be intentional about what you choose to learn, ensuring it won’t become obsolete just when you've mastered it. Stay informed about trends, but don’t get swept away by the hype.

What’s one thing you wish more people understood about working in tech?

I often tell my friends that my career has made me a better version of myself because of its inherently strict nature. For instance, my code must at least be syntactically correct to compile. That has made me very meticulous. If something isn’t working, you can be sure something is wrong, and it's rarely the computer. Sometimes, I find myself talking aloud while working tirelessly to fix just one issue. An average person could give up along the way.

Tech, like any meaningful pursuit, demands tenacity, grit, and sometimes an unconventional lifestyle to succeed. It’s not all glamorous as it may seem from the outside. Nevertheless, I still derive my greatest fun from it.

Outside of work, what’s something people might be surprised to learn about you?

I’m a car enthusiast and I love driving, anytime anywhere. I love WWE as much too. Bill Goldberg is my all-time champion.

If you could learn one non-tech skill overnight, what would it be?

The art of great salesmanship