Maya Okafor

Staff Software Engineer

Now at Tidewater Logistics

Backend and platform engineer with nine years of experience building logistics and healthcare systems that move real things on time. I lead small teams through messy infrastructure work, from splitting up a monolith to running on-call for a 40-service platform, and I care about clear writing and calm incident response.

Email Phone

Highlights06

Now

Staff Software Engineer

Tidewater Logistics · 5 yrs 8 mos

Lead the six-engineer routing platform team that handles 1.2M shipment events a day across 14 regional carriers.

Growth

Tidewater Logistics

  1. Staff Software EngineerJun 2023 – Present
  2. Senior Software EngineerMar 2021 – Jun 2023
Change6.4× faster

900ms→140ms

P95 latency

Kestrel Health · Feb 2021
Leadership
6

six-engineer routing platform team

Staff Software Engineer

Tidewater Logistics · Jun 2023
By the numbers
  • 31%cut late-delivery reassignmentsTidewater Logistics
  • 50kreadings per secondFerrous Labs
  • 12services ahead of the company's firstKestrel Health
Milestones
  1. 2015First place, Cascadia Health HackCascadia State University
  2. 2018Joined Kestrel HealthSoftware Engineer II
  3. 2021Joined Tidewater LogisticsSenior Software Engineer
  4. 2023Staff Software EngineerTidewater Logistics
  5. 2024Event sourcing without the regretSeattle Go Meetup
  6. 2024Engineering Excellence AwardTidewater Logistics

Experience03

Tidewater Logistics

Seattle, WA · 5 yrs 8 mos

  1. Staff Software Engineer

    Jun 2023 – Present
    • Lead the six-engineer routing platform team that handles 1.2M shipment events a day across 14 regional carriers.
    • Designed an event-sourced dispatch service that cut late-delivery reassignments by 31% in its first two quarters.
    • Started the incident review program now used by nine teams; median time to mitigate fell from 48 to 19 minutes.

  2. Senior Software Engineer

    Mar 2021 – Jun 2023
    • Moved carrier rate quoting from a Rails monolith to Go services on Kubernetes with no customer-facing downtime.
    • Built the GraphQL gateway behind the shipper web app and two partner APIs.

Kestrel Health

Portland, OR · Remote · 2 yrs 7 mos

  1. Software Engineer II

    Aug 2018 – Feb 2021
    • Owned the appointment scheduling APIs used by 300+ clinics and brought p95 latency from 900 ms to 140 ms.
    • Shipped audit logging across 12 services ahead of the company's first SOC 2 Type II audit.
    • Mentored four new-grad engineers through the onboarding rotation.

Ferrous Labs

Seattle, WA · 2 yrs 1 mo

  1. Software Engineer

    Jul 2016 – Jul 2018
    • Wrote the first sensor ingestion pipeline, handling 50k readings per second from factory floors.
    • Introduced Terraform for all AWS infrastructure and retired the hand-built environments.

Projects02

harborlight

Open-source load testing tool for gRPC and GraphQL services. 2.3k stars on GitHub.

  • Go
  • GraphQL
  • Docker
github.com/mokafor/harborlight

The On-call Handbook

A free field guide to calm incident response, used by engineering teams at more than 30 companies.

  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
oncall.mayaokafor.example

Education & credentials08

Education

  • B.S. in Computer Science

    Cascadia State University · GPA 3.8 · Magna cum laude

    2012–2016

Certifications

Awards

  • Engineering Excellence Award

    Tidewater Logistics · For the dispatch service rollout.

    Dec 2024

  • First place, Cascadia Health Hack

    Cascadia State University · Built a clinic wait-time predictor in 36 hours.

    Apr 2015

Languages

English Native·Spanish Professional working·Igbo Conversational

Skills17

Languages

  • Go
  • Python
  • TypeScript
  • Rust

Frameworks & data

  • React
  • Node.js
  • GraphQL
  • PostgreSQL
  • Redis

Infrastructure

  • AWS
  • Google Cloud
  • Kubernetes
  • Docker
  • Terraform

Practices

  • System design
  • Incident response
  • Technical writing

Talks & writing02

Volunteering01

  • Volunteer mentor, Bridge to Code

    Teach a weekly backend fundamentals session for career changers.

    Jan 2019 – Present
Updated Oct 2026 · Made with Scrybe · Report

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