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About

Get to know a bit about me.

Hya, my name is Hazel T Chikara, a Honours Holder in Information Systems with Midlands State University and a Master of Science in Big Data Analytics with Chinhoyi University. I am currently working with  Spring Boot for aggregator integrations and doing personal Laravel projects. I am also dwelling in Data analytics projects just doing algorithms using libraries like Streamlit to do computational statistical analysis.

I first got acquainted with PHP using Laravel deploying projects on Linux servers which was much simpler according to me at the time and got the job done for my passion projects. It was also helpful in deliverables as I was a full stack developer and project management consultant whose task was to oversee all software projects and ensure the deliverables were achieved and stakeholders were satisfied.

Two years later I was engaged in a fintech department which was doing aggregator implementation using JAVA and Spring Boot in onboarding clients. I am still with the department and each and every day bring unique challenges and mold me into a better developer & engineer. Here and there I document some of these challenges in the most basic way for people who may face the same challenges. 

I will still remain an enthusiastic learner and I have amassed an array of skills through experience, mentorship and knowledge gathering over the years. These include OOP in JAVA & PHP and Typescript and JS frameworks with SOLID principles at the core since I started working with Laravel. Over the past couple of years, I've had to learn and work with, JavaScript, and CSS are amongst my experience. MySQL, MSSQL, and PostgreSQL for relational databases and have worked with MongoDB.

After I completed my honors in 2017, I decided to venture into Data Analytics and completed a Masters in Big Data Analytics with Chinhoyi University. Having brought to the attention of just how many silos of data the tech space have kept with information and materializing, there can be patterns that may help generate more and new revenue streams and help reduce the cost of production, marketing , ensures security etc. I will always be willing to go the extra mile to make these algorithms & models come to life. With how it has been progressing, I am inclined there as a field I am so willing to keep exploring. I also discovered that Data Science, Machine Learning and Analytics can be done using JAVA, you can imagine how excited I am in learning new concepts to grasp every concept and apply it into real life problems. 

I am however still using Python for analytics projects. My ideal environment for deep learning and ai is anaconda & since some libraries can now gather valid statistical solutions like Streamlit, I developed a dashboard for statistical summary which you can upload your dynamic repo on EDA Zim (Exploratory Data Analysis), a free analysis tool hosted on Heroku.

My mantra will always be, IF IT IS TO BE, IT IS BY ME!

Software Engineer

Data Enthusiast

DevOps & Project Management

Java, Python & PhP FullStack Developer

What moved me into getting into Software Engineering as an African Female?

Just being female in a stereotypically male-dominated world has not only led my path to continuous learning it aided a spark of ambition in me. When I landed a technical role it changed my perception of software engineering to a different new level.

I was also privileged to be engaged in a national project that was doing interministerial data collection and distribute information in form of comprehensive dashboards. Being part of the team which created a big project moved me. I knew then, that I may be fulfilled by knowing that I am part of great software solutions that help make lives better for other people. When I moved to Edutech in 2018 to 2020 at a startup called Muzinda Hub which was training digital skills, it further sparked an unquenchable thirst to become a  serial developer to help shape a story that is moving enough for the younger generation of Women in Tech. Not only did it stop there, I am in FinTech now integrating of remittances with various partners (you can check out some service providers I worked with here) I see the little I contribute goes a long way in enabling transactions all over the world. To me, it gives me insight that I helped some girl child out there to get her school fees from her parents who are in the diaspora. This keeps me motivated especially when I am bugs or learning a new technology. I really love what I do and I will become an experienced software engineering expert.

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Industries I have worked in & Which Programming Language was I using?

2018 in Consulting Project Management in EduTech (Technology in Education), I was using PHP using CodeIgniter and I later learnt Laravel because I discovered that it is widely supported and Enterprise. For both the frameworks I would embed MySQL as the Database. I still use it upto today for my passion projects. For deployment I was using basic Linux Servers, Cent being my favorite. I am however dwelling towards cloud hosting. 


From 2020 upto now, I have been in FinTech (Technology in Finance) using a verbose programming language JAVA creating microservices aggregated in Spring Boot and usually PostgreSql and MySQL for database languages. The applications are deployed on Linux OS on cloud servers. For queuing I use RabbitMQ, for logging I use Log4j, Authentication I use KeyCloak and Git for versioning. 


I am fascinated by Data Science and Analytics and for Data Science Projects I use Anaconda to access my Jupyter Notebooks and or R studio, Pandas, Numpy, TensorFlow for image recognition, Matplotlib. 


I aspire to become a fully fledged solution Architect for big ML Projects so I am acquainting myself with DevOps as well, I use Python for automation scripts, I am still perfecting my Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, Jenkings, Prometheus skills amongst other DevOps automation, optimization and monitoring tools. 

I may not be where I want to be as yet but not a day goes by without briefing myself to know one thing more on becoming a world class lead engineer. I make mistakes but I keep trying until I am 100% confident that I have internalized the skill. It is a difficult journey but it is worth it and that is what I love doing.