Brian Omariba
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Brian Omariba — Digital Systems

I build digital systems

Design. Engineering. AI. Cybersecurity. Digital strategy.
From the interface a person touches to the infrastructure nobody sees.

View the work →
System status
Online
Current mode
Build
Focus
Technology / Security / AI
Local time
—

02 — The premise

You don’t need another website

Positioning

You need a digital system that makes the business faster, clearer and harder to ignore.

03 Disciplines
01

Design

Interfaces people understand. Clarity is a feature, not decoration.

02

Engineering

Systems that actually work. Data models, APIs, infrastructure, failure states.

03

Strategy

Digital experiences designed around outcomes, not around screens.

04 Systems deployed

Systems deployed.

Not screenshots. Each one is a problem, a system designed around it, and what the system does once it is running.

/01

GuardMyPhone Live

Mobile security product · Anti-theft & recovery

What happens after your phone leaves your hand?

System
Detection → capture → location → alert → recovery.
Stack
Node.js · nginx · Ubuntu · PM2
Role
System design · Engineering · Infrastructure
Status
Deployed
/02

Kidney Focus Kenya Live

WhatsApp AI health monitoring · Hypertension & diabetes

Chronic illness is managed between appointments, not during them.

Problem
Readings taken at home never reach the clinician who needs them.
System
WhatsApp reading → triage by severity → escalation → clinician view.
Stack
Python · Django · WhatsApp API · AI · M-Pesa Daraja
Status
Live
/03

School OS Live

School information system · Transport & fee collection

Problem
Transport and school fees run on paper, outside the student record.
System
Routes → assignments → invoices → M-Pesa → receipts.
Stack
PHP · MariaDB · nginx · Daraja API
Status
Live demo — open access
/04

PropertyOS Live

Rental property management · Landlords & agents

Problem
Rent, arrears, meters and maintenance tracked in four different places.
System
Lease → invoice → M-Pesa → reconciliation → forecast.
Stack
NestJS · Prisma · PostgreSQL · Next.js · Daraja
Status
Live demo — open access
/05

OmniPharmacy OS Live

Pharmacy retail & dispensing · Regulated supply

A till that refuses the sale is doing its job.

Problem
Prescription-only medicine sold like groceries, and a controlled register kept in a book.
System
Stock lot → interaction & POM check → licensed dispenser → sale → audit trail.
Stack
Django 5 · SQLite · PWA · Daraja
Status
Live demo — PIN sign-in
/06

OmniPOS Live

Offline-first point of sale · Retail & restaurant

The connection drops. The shop does not close.

Problem
A cloud till stops taking money the moment the line goes down.
System
Sell offline → queue locally → reconcile on reconnect → eTIMS invoice.
Stack
Django 5 · Service worker PWA · SQLite · eTIMS · Daraja
Status
Live demo — PIN sign-in
/07

Eventos Live

Event ticketing & access control · Gate operations

Problem
A screenshot of a ticket is a ticket, and the gate has no way to know.
System
Hold → payment → cryptographically signed ticket → single-use gate scan.
Stack
NestJS · Prisma · PostgreSQL · Next.js · Daraja
Status
Live demo — seeded events
/08

Commerce Operations Live

Dropshipping & fulfilment operations

Problem
Cash-on-delivery commerce run on spreadsheets and phone calls.
System
Order → confirmation → courier → rider → settlement.
Stack
NestJS · PostgreSQL · Courier APIs · Docker
Status
In production — Dropship OS
/11

Mwanzo Credit Live

Microfinance · Lending & loan origination

Problem
Borrowers can’t size a loan or start one without walking into a branch.
System
Product catalogue → loan calculator → guided application.
Products
Logbook & asset finance · Title deed · Business · Personal
Status
Live
/12

WooPesa Shipped

Payment infrastructure · Commerce ↔ M-Pesa

Problem
Checkout that stalls, and payments verified by hand.
System
STK push → callback → verification → order.
Stack
PHP · WooCommerce · Daraja API · Webhooks
Status
In production use
/13

Monitormate Build

Monitoring & alerting system

Problem
Brief — to confirm
System
Flow — to confirm
Stack
To confirm
Status
In development

Also built

Scroll →
/14

OSINT graph platform

Entity-and-relationship investigation tooling. Link analysis over open sources.

/—

More on request

Some systems are under client confidentiality and are shown privately.

05 Method

I don’t start with the interface.

I start with the problem. The interface is the last thing that gets decided, because it is the consequence of everything above it.

01Problem

What is actually broken — stated in the operator’s words, not in features.

02Research

Where the work currently happens: the spreadsheet, the WhatsApp thread, the phone call.

03System

The model. Entities, states, rules, and who is allowed to change what.

04Architecture

Data, services, integrations, failure behaviour and how it is deployed.

05Interface

Only now. The surface that makes the system operable by a human under pressure.

06Automation

Remove the repeated manual step. Every one removed is a class of error removed.

07Measurement

Instrument it. A system you cannot observe is a system you cannot improve.

06 Signals

The internet leaves clues.

Every digital object carries more than its content. A single file can describe the device that made it, where it was, when, and what it was edited with.

Photo
  • LocationGPS coordinates written at capture — a home, a workplace, a routine.
  • DeviceMake, model and lens. Ties separate files to one owner.
  • TimestampCreation and modification times, with timezone offset.
  • SoftwareThe app or editor in the chain, and its version.
  • NetworkWhere it was uploaded from, and what else shared that path.
  • BehaviourTiming and frequency across many files — the pattern, not the file.
Inference

Individually trivial. Correlated, they describe a person.

My interest is in understanding what those signals mean — and building systems that protect people from what they reveal. Security is not a feature added at the end. It is a property of how the system was modelled in the first place.

07 The lab

The lab.

Client work has to be finished. This doesn’t. The lab is where things are still being taken apart.

Where a language model genuinely replaces a manual step, and where it only appears to. Most of this work is deciding which of the two you are looking at.

AgentsRetrievalWorkflow automationEvaluation

Experiment write-ups — pending

Understanding exposure well enough to reduce it. What a system reveals in transit, at rest, and by accident — and what it would take to close that.

Metadata analysisHardeningPrivacyDefensive tooling

Experiment write-ups — pending

Most interesting systems are not one system. They are several, negotiating. Callbacks, idempotency, retries, and what happens when the other side is down.

RESTWebhooksM-Pesa / DarajaWhatsAppOAuth

Experiment write-ups — pending

Small pieces of software that delete recurring work. Reconciliation, notification, reporting — the tasks a person should not be doing twice.

SchedulersQueuesReconciliationNotifications

Experiment write-ups — pending

Running the thing is part of building the thing. Servers, reverse proxies, process supervision, certificates, and the boring discipline of making deploys repeatable.

LinuxnginxDockerCI/CDObservability

Experiment write-ups — pending

Code released publicly, and the reasoning behind it.

github.com/brianomariba →

Things that do not fit a category yet. Usually the most useful ones later.

Experiment write-ups — pending

08 The stack

The stack.

Grouped by what it is for, not by how long the list is. Everything here appears somewhere in the work above.

01

BuildInterfaces & services

  • JavaScript
  • React
  • Next.js
  • Node.js
  • NestJS
  • PHP
  • Laravel
  • Python
  • PostgreSQL
02

ConnectMaking systems agree

  • REST APIs
  • Webhooks
  • M-Pesa / Daraja
  • Payment systems
  • WhatsApp
  • OAuth
  • WooCommerce
03

IntelligenceSignal & protection

  • AI
  • Automation
  • Data
  • Cybersecurity
  • OSINT
04

DeployKeeping it running

  • Linux
  • nginx
  • Docker
  • Cloud
  • CI/CD
  • Infrastructure

09 — Point of view

Technology is not the product

Principle

The product is what technology makes possible.

09.1 Operating rules
01

Build with purpose.

Technology should solve something real. If the problem cannot be stated plainly, the software will not fix it.

02

Design for humans.

Complex systems should feel simple. The complexity belongs in the architecture, not on the screen.

03

Security by default.

Privacy and security are not decorations added at the end. They are decisions made at the beginning.

10 Origin

It started at a cyber café.

Before the frameworks. Before the APIs. Before any of it had a name.

There was a machine that wasn’t mine, an hour that was paid for by the minute, and the specific pressure of wanting to understand something faster than the clock allowed.

That constraint turned out to be the education. You learn to read a system quickly when you cannot afford to wander through it. Curiosity became design, design became development, and development kept leading one layer deeper — into the systems behind the screen, and then into the question of who else can reach them.

Based in Nairobi, Kenya. Building for African businesses and the infrastructure they actually run on.

The arc

01CuriosityStart
02Web designSurface
03DevelopmentLogic
04SystemsStructure
05AILeverage
06CybersecurityExposure
07Digital strategyOutcome

11 — Next

What are we building?

Start here

Have a problem worth solving? Let’s turn it into a system.

Elsewhere X TikTok