Leadership
Wikus Schalkwyk
Senior Backend & Data Engineer | Systems, Pipelines & Automation
Wikus is a backend and data engineer with over 20 years of experience building systems that handle real load — from telecoms billing infrastructure and high-traffic e-commerce platforms to subscription data pipelines — with a consistent focus on the unglamorous work that makes everything else reliable.
About Wikus
Since August 2020, Wikus has been a Senior Developer at Hyve Mobile in Cape Town — owning Python/Prefect data pipelines, MySQL reporting and data analysis, and Node.js/NestJS application maintenance for high-traffic production volumes. He builds and maintains Grafana dashboards for subscription performance tracking and digs into business data to surface revenue insights.
Before Hyve Mobile, he spent over seven years as a Senior Magento Developer and Backend Lead across Runway (2017–2020) and Vaimo (2012–2016) — stabilising back-ends, building custom ElasticSearch catalogue indexing and APIs, integrating AWS SQS queues for order and email workflows, and delivering custom ERP integrations for high-load e-commerce platforms.
His foundation was laid at Vox Telecom (2008–2012) as a System Developer, building complex SQL in OLTP and OLAP environments, data mining and consolidation pipelines, and SOAP/JSON integration projects — and further back at Junk Mail Media Group and DelphiOnline, where he built and maintained web infrastructure from the ground up. He also serves as an instructor for the Vibe Hack 101 workshop, bringing practical AI-assisted development experience to the team.
Focus Areas
- Data pipelines & orchestration — Python, Prefect, Flink, Apache Kafka
- OLAP & analytics infrastructure — StarRocks, Redshift, TimescaleDB, MySQL
- Backend systems — Node.js/NestJS, Magento, AWS SQS, ElasticSearch
- LLMs & AI tooling in production backend workflows
How Wikus Works With You
- Brings 20+ years of production backend depth — from telecoms billing and e-commerce platforms to modern subscription data pipelines, he has operated at every layer of the stack across multiple industries and knows what breaks under real load.
- Focuses on the unglamorous work that makes everything else possible — clean data, reliable pipelines, and systems that don't page you at 2am. His instinct is toward robustness and operational stability, not just feature delivery.
- Actively bridges legacy depth with emerging tooling — currently exploring how LLMs and AI fit into production backend workflows with a pragmatic lens: less hype, more 'does this actually work in production?' He brings that same grounded perspective to the Vibe Hack 101 workshop.
Listen to Wikus's short audio introduction (coming soon).
Wikus's detailed CV and LinkedIn export will appear here.