Basit Balogun

Software engineer, making myself a noob again on purpose - chip design, verification, firmware, learned live on stream. A little more on why I’m actually doing this →

I basically stream that process and the things I’m building live, and whenever something’s actually finished it turns into a write-up (and hopefully a walkthrough on YouTube as well). Here’s what I’m actually building →

Here's some highlights about myself ›

Professional experience

Digital Design & Embedded Systems Intern, ChipMango - Apr 2026 - Sep 2026

Embedded systems

  • Built and deployed remote SSH infrastructure giving 10-15 interns concurrent access to a shared BeagleBone Black lab board. It ran on a self-hosted Headscale control plane over WireGuard, hosted on a small cloud droplet with DuckDNS addressing and a scoped Tailscale SSH access policy. Key rotation, node cleanup, and backups ran as automated cron jobs, replacing the single-connection serial console.
  • Built a complete BeagleBone Black (AM335x) Linux system from source: a crosstool-NG musl cross-toolchain, U-Boot with SPL support, the Linux kernel, and BusyBox/Buildroot root filesystems.
  • Cross-compiled Linux for the BeagleBone Black and booted it over NFS. Wrote checkpatch-clean out-of-tree kernel modules, with parameters and patches. Extended the board device tree with new UART nodes, and implemented a misc character driver handling file operations, ioctl control, and data transfer between user and kernel space.
  • Built custom embedded Linux images with the Yocto Project for the BeagleBone. Wrote a custom layer and recipes, extended upstream recipes, defined a custom machine and image, and iterated on applications using the devtool workflow. Packaged the nInvaders arcade game as a recipe and fixed its legacy build failure under a modern toolchain.

Chip design

  • Independently researched and documented the interface contracts and system architecture for a 5-group, cross-team NFC voter-accreditation ASIC project, stepping in as de-facto system architect, becoming the reference every other group implemented against.
  • Designed, implemented, and verified that ASIC’s full data-retrieval & authentication pipeline in SystemVerilog (NFC protocol frontend, flash record-lookup, authentication) end-to-end; built the unit and full-system Verilator testbenches.

Software Engineering Intern → Software Engineer, Matt Young Media (MYM) - Apr 2023 - Feb 2024

  • Developed and shipped key features and bug fixes for a leads generation tool, reducing pre-launch crashes by over 20%.
  • Was instrumental in transitioning a large frontend codebase from JavaScript to TypeScript, significantly boosting code reliability and maintainability.
  • Deep integration with LinkedIn APIs on the backend to extract user data, automate connection requests, and analyze engagement patterns for lead generation and content optimization.
  • Implemented AI-powered features for content creation and personalization, enabling public figures and sales professionals to create high-converting posts and messages.

Web Developer, Synergy Network International - Mar 2021 - Jan 2022

Open source contributions

PostHog (open source all-in-one developer platform)

  • Feature ownership (i18n): Took the initiative to architect the end-to-end implementation of internationalization for Surveys - enabling global customers to manage a single survey across multiple languages, eliminating the need to create duplicate surveys and manually merge response data (issue #42154).
  • Backend & architecture: Designed a hybrid storage schema to ensure data integrity - mapped question translations inline to support reordering, while keeping global fields at the root level (#45096, merged as #47934).
  • Frontend & SDK: Built the translation panel/feature with input validation into the Surveys creation editor (#45281, merged as #52949), and drafted the client-side language detection logic and survey translations rendering for the JS SDK (#3004, merged as #3488).

PostHog/code (desktop AI coding agent)

  • Cross-platform reliability: Fixed a Windows-specific binary path resolution bug in the agent runtime (view PR), and resolved a sidebar layout issue affecting task navigation (view PR).
  • Session management: Shipped model-selection persistence, ensuring the agent retains the selected model across mid-task changes (view PR).
  • Keyboard navigation: Designed and demoed keyboard navigation and a jump-to-message picker for long conversations - the implementation was later recreated and merged by a maintainer, who credited the design directly in the PR (view PR).

Lightdash (open source BI tool)

Other contributions

Projects

Secure UART Peripheral (AI-HDL 2026) - Verilog, Cocotb, Yosys, OpenLANE · Jan 2026 - Apr 2026

  • Repository: github.com/Basit-Balogun10/team-farmceries-AI-HDL-2026
  • Designed and implemented a complete UART serial communication system with 4 configurable baud rates and a memory-mapped register interface for a RISC-V CPU.
  • Integrated an AES-128 hardware encryption engine directly into the datapath.
  • Developed comprehensive testbenches using Python and Cocotb to verify cryptographic transformations and serial data transmission.

Farmceries - React Native, TypeScript, Express.js, Redis, NativeWind · Jan 2024 - 2025

  • Links: Watch Demo
  • As the sole engineer, led the end-to-end technical development of an award-winning cross-platform mobile e-commerce app addressing socio-economic challenges for farmers, vendors, and consumers.
  • Single-handedly executed the complete product development lifecycle from conceptualization to production-ready state - market research, UI/UX design from sketches, full-stack development, and backend architecture.
  • Built a scalable Node.js/Express.js backend with Redis caching and session management, and developed the React Native frontend with NativeWind styling.
  • Took ownership of product strategy and customer-centric design, resulting in a user-friendly interface that generated significant pre-launch interest and waitlist growth.
  • Wore multiple hats (engineer, designer, product strategist) while collaborating effectively with non-technical team members.

Fuse - Cloud-Native Platform - Microservices, AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, Docker, Ansible, ELK Stack, PagerDuty · Nov 2024 - Jun 2025 (contract, private repo)

  • After delivering the web application, architected and implemented a complete, production-grade cloud-native ecosystem on AWS for a multi-service application, automating the entire infrastructure and deployment lifecycle from scratch.
  • Built a CI/CD pipeline with GitHub Actions, featuring dynamic image tagging, automated environment creation/teardown for PRs, semantic versioning, and integrated security scanning.

Hackathon achievements

Winner - ISQED Agentic AI Design Verification Challenge (April 2026)

  • Built a full agentic AI verification pipeline across all four competition phases - custom specialized agents for test generation, coverage-directed stimulus, waveform debugging, and autonomous end-to-end verification - spanning DUTs including AES-128, I2C, HMAC-SHA256, and UART, securing first place.
  • Proof: LinkedIn post

2nd Place Winner - GTCO Squad Hackathon 2.0 (March 2025)

  • Engineered the full integration of the Squad payment provider into the Farmceries mobile app, culminating in a powerful live demo that secured a 2nd place victory.
  • Proof: Winning Moment (Instagram)

5th Place Finalist - Cavista Hackathon “Pulse” (March 2025)

  • Demonstrated extreme resilience by pivoting from a mobile build blocked by a critical bug to rapidly prototype a new “Uber for Healthcare” web app in under 2 hours, securing a top 5 finish.
  • Links: Live App Demo Video GitHub

Round 2 Qualifier - Nigeria MATLAB Coding Challenge (November 2024)

  • Developed a “Crop Planner App” using MATLAB to help farmers optimize planting sessions, advancing to the Top 10 finalist round in a nationwide competition.
  • Links: App Pitch Deck Certificate Code Submission

Top 10 Finalist - Pipeops Hackops Hackathon (June 2024)

  • Successfully navigated a critical submission failure under pressure, ensuring the team’s project was evaluated and advanced to the Top 10 finalists from over 100 entries.

Global Summit Finalist - Hult Prize Challenge (“Farmceries”) (April 2024)

  • Propelled the Farmceries project onto the world stage by securing a spot as a Global Summit Finalist, selected from thousands of international applications.
  • Proof: Summit Invitation Letter

3rd Place Winner - Cavista Hackathon (“HealthAlt”) (April 2024)

  • Won 3rd place by building a full-stack, AI-powered health app in under 24 hours that suggests food alternatives and connects users with vendors.
  • Links: Live App Demo Video GitHub Devpost

1st Place Winner - FSI Innovation Challenge (“Farmceries”) (January 2024)

  • As the sole engineer, built the winning MVP for Farmceries in React Native on my first attempt with the framework in a professional setting, securing 1st place in my debut hackathon.
  • Proof: News Feature (Google Search)

Testimonials

“Basit was an absolute pleasure to work with. His remarkable work ethic was not only matched by his skill level but also by his ability and willingness to assist those around him. Basit would be a valuable addition to any team.”

  • Charles Leighton, Solutions Engineer, LucidLink

“His eagerness to constantly develop himself and nurture his knowledge have taken him from being an ordinary LeetCode problem-solver to mastering several technologies… He is, indeed, a four-leaf clover for whomever is lucky enough to have him in their team.”

  • German Cousillas Martinez, Former IT Director, Synergy Network International

“Basit helped create a website for my football coaching company. I was amazed by the standard and the quality… Basit is a great communicator and does exactly what you ask of him. I fully recommend anybody to try Basit and his quality work.”

  • James Makanjuola, Head/Founder, Titans Chelmsford

Education

Bachelor of Science, Electrical and Electronics Engineering University of Lagos | 2021 - 2027 (extended one year, nationwide academic strike)