About
Hi, I’m Pius Ngugi.
I’m a software architect with 17 years of building software for teams in Kenya, Germany and the US — the last seven at Microsoft, working on Windows.
Working on an operating system that runs on over a billion devices teaches you some things fast: every change carries risk, “it works on my machine” is not evidence, and good architecture is what lets large teams move quickly without breaking things.
Over the past two years AI coding agents have changed how I work every day. They are genuinely transformative — and they will just as happily leak a secret, ignore your architecture, or produce code nobody on the team understands.
Most Nairobi teams I speak to are either blocking these tools or using them with no structure. Both leave value on the table. Keel exists to close that gap: bringing big-tech engineering discipline to how Kenyan teams adopt AI, so they get the speed without the risk.
Career
- 2019 – nowMicrosoft · Nairobi
Software Engineer → Senior Software Engineer → Senior Software Architect - 2018 – 2019innRoad · New York
Senior Software Engineer — hotel management SaaS - 2016 – 2018livedooh GmbH · Karlsruhe, Germany
Software Engineer — digital signage platform, .NET Core migration - 2015 – 2017NovaQual · Salt Lake City, US
Software Developer — data collection and shipment management - 2009 – 2015Centrino Technologies, iSys Software, Verviant · Nairobi
Software Developer → Senior Developer
Credentials
Certifications
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals · Microsoft, 2024ID B57CE19D2DA9316B
- Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals · Microsoft, 2023ID B42914752486BB21
Recognition
- Microsoft Global Hackathon 2026 · The Microsoft Garage, 2026
- Microsoft Global Hackathon 2022 · Microsoft, 2022
Recent training
- Build with AI: Building a Project with the ChatGPT API · LinkedIn Learning, 2025
- Advanced Prompt Engineering Techniques · LinkedIn Learning, 2025
- Introducing Semantic Kernel: Building AI-Based Apps · LinkedIn Learning, 2023
- Developing CI/CD Solutions with Azure DevOps · LinkedIn Learning, 2022
How I work
Guardrails before speed
Adoption that creates audit findings or incidents is not progress.
Measure, don’t guess
Every engagement starts with a baseline, so we can show what changed.
You own the code you ship
Agents write code; engineers stay accountable for it. The workflows I set up keep it that way.
Leave the team stronger
The goal is a playbook your engineers own — not a dependency on me.
Next step
Let’s talk
Book a free 30-minute call. We’ll look at where your team is today and whether an assessment or pilot makes sense — no sales pitch.