The Man Behind the API: An Introduction (Finally)

So you've landed on my website. Maybe you were looking for something technical. Maybe a recruiter sent you here. Maybe you just clicked a link and now you're committed. Either way, welcome, I'm glad you're here, and I figured it's about time I introduced myself properly.

Not just the resume version of me. The actual me.

The Kid Who Wanted to Break Everything

Let me take you back.

I was in secondary school when someone showed me a computer for the first time. Normal kids probably thought "cool, games." I thought: what is happening inside this thing?

I've always been that person. Phones, TVs, gas cookers, irons, if it does something I don't fully understand, I want to know what's going on behind the scenes. It's less curiosity, more compulsion. My brain simply refuses to accept "it just works" as a satisfying answer.

So naturally, when I got my first laptop, I did what any completely reasonable person would do.

I broke it.

Not by accident either. It developed a fault, and instead of taking it to a repair shop like a sane human being, I thought, I'll open it up and fix it myself. Reader, I did not fix it. I made it significantly worse. I turned a repairable laptop into a very expensive paperweight.

But here's the thing: I wasn't even that upset. I was fascinated. I had just seen what was inside. And that fascination never left.

How Backend Engineering Became the Love of My Life

When I got to tertiary school, I had to choose between two majors: network engineering and software engineering. I picked both, because apparently I enjoy suffering.

Eventually I had to commit to one. Software engineering won, and the reason was APIs.

I know, I know. Most people don't have an emotional origin story about APIs. But when I first understood that you could take raw data, manipulate it, store it, connect it to completely different services across the internet and have them talk to each other seamlessly, something clicked. It felt like magic with an instruction manual. And I've been chasing that feeling ever since.

Backend engineering is perfect for me because it's all about what happens behind the scenes. The thing nobody sees. The thing that, when it works, nobody notices, and when it breaks, everyone notices immediately. It's thankless, high-stakes, and endlessly complex.

I love it.

The Flash Drive Incident of 20 Something

Every engineer has a story they tell with a pained laugh at their own expense. This is mine.

Early in my career at Superflux, I built a UI that I was genuinely proud of. We're talking proud proud. The kind of proud where you're mentally rehearsing how you'll present it to your engineering manager. You've already imagined his face lighting up. You've already accepted the imaginary applause.

There was just one small problem.

I hadn't pushed it to Bitbucket.

It was sitting on a flash drive. Just vibing there. Completely safe. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

I lost the flash drive before I got to work.

And then, because the universe has a sense of humor, my laptop's drive also decided that was a good week to give up on life. The system engineer had to do a full reset. No recovery. No old files kept. Nothing.

I had to walk in, sit down, and rebuild the whole thing from scratch with absolutely zero acknowledgment of what had just happened internally. I swallowed my shame so fast I barely tasted it.

The lesson: commit your code. Push it. Push it again. Then push it one more time. Flash drives are not a deployment strategy.

When I'm Not Writing Code

Here's where it gets interesting.

I am a food experimenter. Not a chef, an experimenter. There's a difference. A chef has training and technique. I have curiosity and confidence, which turns out to be an equally effective combination. I cook things I've never cooked before, combine ingredients based on vibes, and somehow somehow it always turns out well. I don't know why. I've stopped questioning it. The kitchen is my second terminal.

I also have an opinion on football clubs despite not watching football. This confuses people. But here's my theory: you don't need to watch the matches to understand the culture, the history, the drama. Football is really just distributed systems with jerseys. There are nodes, there are failures, there are latency issues (looking at you, certain clubs' transfer windows). I can hold my own in any football conversation. I just can't tell you what happened last Saturday.

And gadgets. Oh, gadgets. Not just any gadgets, good gadgets. If it's well engineered, satisfying to use, and solves a real problem elegantly, I want it. This is not a hobby. This is a lifestyle with a shopping cart.

What I've Been Building

These days I'm a Senior Backend Engineer with over 10 years of experience across fintech, Web3/DeFi, and AI-integrated systems. I've built infrastructure that serves millions of users, shipped production AI agents, and gone deep into agentic AI, including a live MCP (Model Context Protocol) server right here at mmolayemi.com, which lets AI assistants like Claude access real health intelligence tools directly.

If you want the full technical picture, the rest of this site has you covered.

One Thing I'd Tell My Younger Self

You're going to want to quit. Many times. And honestly? You probably will, for a day, a week, maybe longer. That's okay.

I'm not going to pretend I've been relentlessly driven every single day for ten years. I've given up on problems, on applications, on interviews, on nights where nothing compiled and nothing made sense. I gave up regularly. I just kept coming back.

Persistence isn't the absence of quitting. It's the decision to come back after you do.

And if you're just starting out: build something for yourself. Not because you need it for a portfolio. Not because someone told you to. Build it because one day you'll look at it and it'll remind you of who you were when you made it, and what you were capable of even then. It becomes a keepsake. It becomes proof.

That means more than any interview result ever will.

Anyway. That's me.

I'm glad you stopped by. Look around, explore the MCP API if you're technically curious, and if you want to build something together, the contact form is right there.

— Michael