Muthomi Kathurima MK/NBO/2017 Connect on LinkedIn

Record MK/NBO/2017

Confirmed.

500,000 school meal transactions settled every school day on Tap2Eat, the platform Victor Muthomi Kathurima leads at Food4Education.

Daily, by 1 p.m. · November 2026

Capacity built for 1,000,000 a day, with service latency down 30% through the 40-minute lunch rush.

2023 – 2026

60,000 parents and 1,500,000 transaction records migrated off a third-party provider, with no lost meal.

12 weeks, 2022
Connect on LinkedIn Read the writing

This record is current as of November 2026. Every figure on this page carries its own date.

Building Tap2Eat at Food4Education

Entry 01 · the platform · Food4Education

I lead Food4Education's Technology team. That starts with the strategy, architecture and scaling of Tap2Eat, our flagship platform: the backend services, mobile tools, payments integrations and cloud infrastructure on GCP and AWS that keep hot school lunches flowing, built to reach one million meals a day. It also covers IT operations and tech support for staff, kitchens and schools, plus the security, policies and automation that keep the organisation running.

  1. 01

    Parents top up

    Parents add money to their child's wallet with M-Pesa.

  2. 02

    Children tap

    At the school food station, a child taps an NFC wristband.

  3. 03

    Meals are served and counted

    The meal is paid for instantly and logged as real-time data.

500K+

daily school meal transactions on Tap2Eat, on infrastructure built for 1M+

Food4Education has served 200M+ meals since 2012, across 15 counties.

About Food4Education
  • Scaled Tap2Eat from 100K to 500K+ daily transactions while improving reliability and latency.
  • Cut service latency by 30%+ and raised user satisfaction by 60%+ in low-network environments.
  • Led infrastructure evolution across GCP and AWS with near-zero-downtime migrations.
  • Delivered secure, offline-first mobile tools used across hundreds of schools.
  • Lead IT operations, tech support and security for staff, kitchens and schools, alongside the platform.
  • Represented Food4Education at the Microsoft Global Hackathon 2023, and won.
A child taps an orange Tap2Eat wristband against a phone at a school food station
A Tap2Eat wristband tap at a school food station
With the Microsoft ADC Kenya team outside a Food4Education school serving centre
With the Microsoft ADC Kenya team at a Food4Education serving centre
4 years+ building, and the motivation is one less child suffering classroom hunger. 200M+ meals later, we are only getting started.
Muthomi Kathurima · on Food4Education passing 200 million meals served

What the work actually covers

Entry 02 · scope of work · 8 lines

My work sits where platform reliability, product execution and operational impact meet. I lead delivery across backend services, mobile tools, payments and cloud infrastructure — and the IT operations that keep an organisation running alongside it.

  • Distributed, event-driven systems

    Services that stay consistent when thousands of schools transact in the same 40-minute window.

  • Platform scalability and performance

    From a single VPS at 350,000 meals a day to cloud infrastructure built for a million, including JVM and heap tuning along the way.

  • Payments and identity

    M-Pesa STK Push, QR and automated reconciliation, NFC wristbands, and USSD for parents on feature phones.

  • Cloud, CI/CD and observability

    Infrastructure on GCP and AWS, with migrations run at near-zero downtime and monitoring that finds problems before schools do.

  • IT operations, support and security

    Tech support that keeps staff, kitchens and schools working, backed by IT policy, access control, leaver processes and backups, and informed by Kenya's Data Protection Act 2019.

  • AI adoption and automation

    Getting tools into daily use across an organisation, not just buying licences: training, internal Slack and AppSheet automation, and a WhatsApp assistant for parents.

  • Cross-functional delivery

    Working across engineering, operations and programmes, with the governance and documentation that make field adoption smooth.

  • Mentorship and technical leadership

    Growing engineers and an engineering culture, from a two-person team to a platform organisation.

Winning the Microsoft Hackathon Kenya 2023

Entry 03 · recognition · Microsoft Africa Development Centre
Holding the carved Hackathon Nairobi trophy in front of the Microsoft logo

Food4Education's first tech hackathon, hosted by the Microsoft Africa Development Centre. Our project set out to deepen the feeding programme's impact across the 300+ schools we served. Many of them sit in low-network areas, so the problem was keeping data consistent in one location without losing the value of being connected.

  • Teamwork is essential. No one wins a hackathon alone.
  • No idea is wrong. Each one is a building block, and the best projects are often cumulative and unexpected.
  • Have fun and network with people who care about technology, society and impact.

Read the LinkedIn post

The Food4Education team with the hackathon trophy at the Microsoft Africa Development Centre
Demo table at the Microsoft hackathon, with orange Tap2Eat wristbands beside a laptop

Statement of record

Entry 04 · 2017 → November 2026

Building technology in Kenya since 2017, from internships and my own software lab to leading software, IT and support for a national school feeding programme.

Top skills

  • Spring Boot
  • Web services and APIs
  • Large-scale systems
  • Google Cloud Platform
  • People management

Education

Graduation portrait in cap and gown, holding a degree certificate
  • Multimedia University of Kenya
    BSc, Software Engineering
  • Lenana School
    High school diploma

Recognition

  • Winner, Microsoft Hackathon Kenya 2023, hosted by the Microsoft Africa Development Centre
  • Publication: Introduction to Laravel
  • Publication: HNG Internship by Zuri Team

  1. Food4Education

    1. Aug 2025 to presentHybrid

      Senior Manager, Software

      Lead the Technology team across Tap2Eat, IT operations, tech support, infrastructure and security. Tap2Eat supports 500K+ daily transactions across schools nationwide.

      8 entries
      • Drive cloud infrastructure, observability, CI/CD and performance work to prepare the platform for 1M+ daily scale.
      • Lead IT operations and tech support for staff, kitchens and schools, including an on-duty support rotation.
      • Own IT governance: organisational IT policies, user access and leaver controls, and backups.
      • Designed centralised CCTV monitoring across a multi-site estate, over mixed fibre and LTE connectivity.
      • Lead AI adoption across the organisation, pairing new tools with training so they get used day to day.
      • Built internal automation: a consolidated Slack request bot, an AppSheet and Slack integration for kitchen operations, and improvements to SemaTap, the parent-facing WhatsApp assistant.
      • Built team operating processes: hiring scorecards, structured performance reviews and documentation practices.
      • Guide delivery across engineering, operations and programmes so new features land smoothly in the field.

    2. Jan 2024 to Aug 2025Hybrid

      Senior Software Engineer

      Led technical development of the core Tap2Eat services, improving platform performance and reliability.

      4 entries
      • Oversaw the late-2024 migration from a single VPS, which had served up to 350,000 meals and over 1,000,000 transactions a day, to Google Cloud Platform.
      • Reduced latency by 30%+ and increased user satisfaction by 60%+ during high-traffic service windows.
      • Delivered secure mobile and NFC workflows and M-Pesa integrations: STK Push, QR and automated reconciliation.
      • Supported the multi-cloud move across GCP and AWS with near-zero downtime.

    3. Jan 2023 to Feb 2024

      Software Engineer

      Scaled the platform from 250K meals and transactions a day toward the goal of one million a day by 2027.

      2 entries
      • Kept mobile and API services up through the 40-minute lunch rush, with no outages, while serving 100K+ meals a day.
      • Represented the organisation at the Microsoft Hackathon Kenya 2023, its first tech hackathon, and won. The team's solution kept meal data consistent for schools in low-network areas, across the 300+ schools served at the time.

    4. Mar 2022 to Jan 2023

      Junior Software Engineer

      One of the first two engineers. Moved the product off a third-party provider and scaled it to 100,000 meals a day.

      6 entries
      • Built the payments API behind 5,000+ daily M-Pesa transactions, raising payment efficiency by 75%.
      • Created and maintained the Tap2Eat core, cutting transaction time by 50%.
      • Built the NFC wristband mobile platform that identifies students and processes meal payments at Ksh 15 a meal, lifting transaction volume by 60%.
      • Built internal analytics and data platforms, increasing data-driven decision-making by 40%.
      • Built a USSD platform so parents on feature phones, over 90% of users, could reach their information.
      • Migrated 60,000 parents and 1.5 million transaction records in 12 weeks.

  2. 4M Consulting

    1. Jun 2017 to Jun 2022Freelance

      Founder

      Ran a software lab that helped small and medium-sized businesses scale without adding staff.

      2 entries
      • Built a chauffeur business a driver app with Google Maps pick-up points, Slack reminders, performance tracking and automated trip assignment.
      • Built a travel business a portal with activity tracking, one-time and monthly payments via Flutterwave and Stripe, and Twilio SMS and email reminders.

  3. Kurasa Africa

    1. Jan 2022 to May 2022

      Software Developer

      Full-stack developer on CBC like a breeze!, a CBC assessment and school management platform, using Laravel, JavaScript, Postgres and CouchDB.

      3 entries
      • Built user activity reports that let the company and its customers make metrics-driven decisions.
      • Set up real-time error tracking for faster fixes, and integrated vendor APIs such as Slack.
      • Shipped the features scheduled for the first half of 2022.

  4. Institute of Certified Safety and Security Professionals of Kenya

    1. Dec 2019 to Dec 2021Contract

      Software Developer

      Built the e-learning and subscription membership platform, with card payments through iPay and M-Pesa through Daraja, in JavaScript and React.

  5. Safetyplus Consulting

    1. Sep 2019 to Dec 2019

      Engineering Intern

      Worked on a TypeScript and Node.js platform for the public to report road safety incidents, with labelling and dashboards.

  6. Advance HR Connections

    1. Apr 2018 to Sep 2018

      Engineering Intern

Notes from the lunch rush

Entry 05 · all articles →

Things I put out

Entry 06 · open source & side projects

Small tools I maintain for developers building in East Africa, and things I build to explore an idea.

Open the next entry.

I care about building mission-critical technology that improves lives at scale, with teams solving real-world problems through engineering excellence. I'm always glad to compare notes.

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