tobi afolayan
KW—1998
US—2014
7K-30+
US—2014
7K-30+
backend systems → backstage expereinces
portfolio + narrative
Full-Stack Software Engineer +
Creative Strategist,
2019-Present
By day, I build infrastructure for systems that serve millions—federal platforms, enterprise applications, the kind of backend architecture where one misconfigured token can break everything. Right now, I'm engineering risk management systems for the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, building modern web frameworks on cloud-native Azure architecture, redesigning authentication flows so analysts can actually do their jobs without the system fighting them. Before that, I spent four years at Microsoft shipping production code for the Windows Driver Kit—the invisible scaffolding that lets your computer talk to printers, cameras, and every piece of hardware you plug in. It's the kind of work where you measure impact in milliseconds and user satisfaction scores, where "it just works" is the highest compliment you'll ever get.
By night, I'm on a rooftop in Dallas or a warehouse in Brooklyn, watching a thousand people move to the same beat. That's Apollo Wrldx—the live music platform I co-founded in 2023 with a simple belief: culture needs infrastructure just as much as code does. We've produced over thirty events across three cities, built a community of seven thousand people who trust us to deliver nights that feel like home, and paid thirty-five grand directly to the DJs, artists, and vendors who make it all real. We're not just throwing parties. We're building a model—one that starts in Dallas, scales to New York and Atlanta, and eventually plants roots in Lagos.
I moved to America when I was fifteen. Kwara State to Dallas, Nigeria to Texas State University, where I studied Computer Science and Mathematics because I loved problem-solving but my parents only believed in Engineering, Medicine, or Law. A professor once told me, "Mathematics is problem-solving with numbers; Computer Science is problem-solving with code." That stuck. Turns out, event production is problem-solving with people, logistics, and energy. Same muscles, different canvas.
At Microsoft, I learned how to ship at scale. At Systone, I learned how to meet federal security standards while keeping systems fast and usable. At Apollo, I learned that the best infrastructure is invisible—it just lets the experience happen. When you're coordinating vendors, managing ticket flows, negotiating with venues that weren't even doing private events until you convinced them otherwise, you realize that systems thinking applies everywhere. The Spring Boot authorization logic I write during the day isn't that different from the HubSpot workflows I build at night to track audience retention and lifetime value. Both are about making complexity feel simple.
What excites me now is the gap I see in the music industry—especially for African and diaspora artists. Streaming numbers go up, but infrastructure stays fragile. Artists sell out stadiums in London but can't tour sustainably in Lagos because there are no mid-capacity venues, no reliable power, no training pipelines for local crews. I've watched this firsthand, growing up in Nigeria and now building Apollo across three cities. The talent is there. The demand is there. What's missing is the middle layer: the systems, the venues, the operational playbooks that turn one-off spectacles into sustainable circuits.
That's why I'm applying to NYU Steinhardt's Music Business program with a concentration in Music Technology. I want to formalize what I've been learning by doing—touring economics, international markets, how to use data to make better decisions without losing the culture that makes the music matter. My thesis research will focus on venue infrastructure gaps in Sub-Saharan Africa, and by 2027, I'm planning pilot events in Lagos to test what actually works. Apollo started with twenty people in a borrowed studio. Now we're figuring out how to take that same community-first, infrastructure-later model and scale it across continents.
I don't see engineering and event production as separate careers. They're the same project with different tools. Both are about building things that let other people do their best work. At Microsoft, that meant faster driver installs for developers. At Systone, it means secure dashboards for federal analysts. At Apollo, it means stages where artists can take risks because they know the sound system won't fail and the check will clear on time.
From Kwara State to Dallas to New York, from backend systems to backstage moments, I've been chasing the same question: how do you build infrastructure that disappears so the magic can happen? Whether that's a login flow that just works or a venue that feels like home, the principle is the same. Make it solid. Make it scalable. Make it human.
If you're building something that needs both—the rigor of code and the soul of culture—let's talk!
assist@tobiafo.com • (817) 881-0335
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