Jeff Theuri · Nairobi --:--EAT
Solutions · Telecom · Software · Founder

I play the whole board.

Solutions engineer, telecom engineer by training, software builder and founder. Most days I'm at a whiteboard, a chessboard or a trailhead.

White to move · tap a piece—
jeff.engine 1.0depth 221.4M npsline —
+0.0
    Game record

    The opening so far.

    A career written as a scoresheet. White is me; black is whatever the market played back. Annotations follow chess convention: ! good move, !! brilliant.

    1.e4e5
    BSc Telecommunications Engineering, JKUATOpened with the physical layer: radio, networks and signals.
    2.Nf3 !!Nc6
    Employee #001, Zoho Kenya · Dec 2020Joined before there was a team to join.
    3.Bc4 !Bc5
    Team leadScreened and led the hires who came after me.
    4.O-ONf6
    Senior Solutions Engineer · nowCastled into enterprise CRM/ERP, integrations and pre-sales. The safe king position everything else builds from.
    5.d4 !exd4
    Opened the centreBuilding my own products in parallel, UiPath RPA certification, Strathmore's AI Professional Programme (2026) and a talk at Zoholics Kenya 2026.
    Case files · played in full

    Six games, analysed.

    Each build opens as a working lab. Run the real flow, see the constraints and read the decisions that made it hold up. Pick a file.

    Njabini Hotspot

    Live

    Pay-as-you-go WiFi for a rural town, sold by the minute through M-Pesa. No vouchers and no attendant.

    Problem
    Mobile data is costly upcountry. One 5G line at a car wash could serve the whole street, if it could be sold and shared fairly.
    My role
    End to end: network design, router configuration, captive portal and M-Pesa integration.
    Stack
    MikroTik RouterOSHotspotAirtel 5GM-Pesa DarajaLinux

    Decisions that mattered

    1. Swapped the router. The site's RB260GSP runs SwOS, which cannot host a captive portal. A RouterOS hAP-class device took the job.
    2. The router enforces the clock. Each payment creates a hotspot user with limit-uptime, so paid time holds even if the portal server goes down.
    3. Walled garden first. The portal loads before login. The internet opens only after the M-Pesa callback confirms payment.
    4. One line, shared fairly. Per-user rate limits stop one phone's updates from starving everyone else on the backhaul.
    Lab · captive portal to routersimulation · clock 60× · example tariffs
    NJABINI-WIFIportal
    Buy internet time
    
      
    
      
    UserPlanTime leftQueueLoad
    
      
    Uplink · Airtel 5G—
    
    
    
  
    

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

    




    
  
    
    
    More positions
    Also on the board.
    
    
    Shorter games, same principles. Each card is marked with the piece that did the most work.
    
  
    
  
    
    
    Queen · AI♛︎
    Align
    A master agent coordinates four sub-agents (Meeting Scout, Requirements Resolver, Demo Strategist and a Cliq notifier) to plan client demos.
    Zia Agent StudioZoho CliqMulti-agent
    
    
    Queen · AI♛︎
    RAG evaluation suite
    Test harness for a Kenyan banking FAQ assistant: 60 labelled cases, fairness checks and adversarial red-teaming, reported as a PDF.
    ChromaDBDeepEvalGPT-4o-mini
    
    
    Rook · Solutions♜︎
    Safari operator platform
    22 modules covering a tour operator from quote to operations, synced to accounting with idempotency guards so nothing posts twice.
    Zoho CreatorDelugeBooks API
    
    
    King · Founder♚︎
    WebHosters Pro
    Premium web hosting with automated billing, provisioning and local payment gateways. webhosterspro.com ↗
    WHMCSWordPressPayments
    
    
    Knight · Hardware♞︎
    Smart mirror
    Two-way mirror on a Raspberry Pi showing calendar, music, news, traffic and weather, with a camera and cloud storage behind the glass.
    Raspberry PiLinuxCamera
    
    
    Bishop · Software♝︎
    Liquid Online Shop
    Marketplace for physical and digital goods, with M-Pesa checkout and Google Maps delivery. My first M-Pesa integration.
    PHPMySQLM-PesaGoogle Maps
    
  
    
  
    Jeff's Zoho implementation was a game changer—we moved from scattered tools to a seamless, automated platform.
    Client · logistics sector
    
  
    
    Client sites: dashwinesandliquor.com ↗ · prgmotors.co.ke ↗ · multigrow.com ↗ · nairobikenpokarate.com ↗
    Code: github.com/jefftheuri ↗
  
    

    


    
  
    
    
    Off the board
    Gaining altitude.
    
    
    The pawn's way: one square at a time, never backwards. When I'm not at a keyboard I'm usually on a mountain, flying a drone over one, or logging the climb on a Garmin.
    
  
    
  
    
    
    
      
      
    Mount Kenya, Chogoria route · approximate altitudes in metres
    
    
    
    
    
      
    Mount KenyaChogoriaThe scenic eastern approach, past Lake Ellis and the Gorges Valley.
    
      
    Satima, Aberdares≈ 4,000 mHighest point of the Aberdare Range, through moorland and bamboo.
    
      
    In the airDroneBrushless quad with obstacle avoidance, for the view from above the ridge.
    
      
    On the matMartial artsSame lesson as the board and the mountain: balance first, then pressure.
    
      
    Over the boardChess.comPlays as thunder_dk. Challenges accepted.
    
    
    
  
    

    


    
  
    
    
    6. ?
    
    
    Your move.
    
    
    Hiring for solutions engineering, AI implementation or enterprise architecture? Building something that needs M-Pesa, WhatsApp and the books to agree? Or just want a game?
    
  
    
  
    
    
    Email
    jeff@jefftheuri.com
    
    
    Chess.com
    thunder_dk
    Challenge me
    
    
    LinkedIn
    in/jeff-theuri
    Connect
    
    
    GitHub
    jefftheuri
    View code
    
    
    Based in
    Nairobi, Kenya · EAT (UTC+3)