I stay on the hook for what I build.
Claude O. Berko, also known as Claude Van Berko, and online as Tech Van-Ess. Full-stack developer in Accra.
- StackWave Limited
- Founder / Software
- Albatross Limited
- Co-founder / Cybersecurity
- IkoVaness Limited
- Co-founder / IT services
I have shipped twenty-three products across seven industries: housing, legal, fintech, education, hospitality, mobility and food. Most of them run for businesses in Ghana, and on most of them I am the only engineer, which means there is nobody to hand a problem to at five in the evening.
Several of these systems run businesses I have a stake in. Every shortcut I might be tempted to take, I end up living with. That turns out to be a useful thing to have at the back of your mind while deciding whether a balance update really needs a row lock.
I founded StackWave Limited, a software company in Accra, and co-founded Albatross Limited in cybersecurity and IkoVaness Limited in IT services. The client work spans legal publishing, hospitality operations, schools, ride-hailing and the public sector.
How I work
- 01
The schema outlives the interface
Screens are cheap to redraw. A data model is not, once there is a year of real customer records sitting on it. The model and the permission map get decided in week one, while changing them still costs nothing.
- 02
Money is never a float
Every platform I build holds money as whole pesewas, moves balances inside a locked transaction, and treats the ledger as append-only. Reversing a payment writes a new row. It never quietly edits the old one.
- 03
Hiding a button is not security
If a role cannot see an action, the endpoint behind it still refuses that role, and there is a test proving it. Anything else works right up until someone opens the network tab.
- 04
You should be able to fire me
Everything ships on infrastructure in your name, with credentials, runbooks and architecture notes written down. If you bring in someone else next year, they can pick it up without calling me.
Where I work
Picked for the job, not for the CV.
If a client is already paying for cPanel shared hosting, the answer is PHP and MySQL and a build that runs there. Not a Kubernetes cluster they cannot afford to keep.
- Front end
- React 19 · Next.js · TypeScript · Vite · Tailwind CSS · React Native · Expo
- Back end
- Node · Express · NestJS · Fastify · tRPC · Laravel · PHP 8 · Python
- Data
- PostgreSQL · MySQL · SQLite · Prisma · Drizzle · PostGIS · Redis
- Infrastructure
- Docker · Nginx · Caddy · PM2 · GitHub Actions · Cloudflare R2 · cPanel
- Integrations
- Paystack · Mobile Money · Socket.IO · Resend · Nodemailer · Google OAuth
- Practice
- Turborepo · pnpm workspaces · Vitest · Pest · Playwright · WCAG AA · Technical SEO
You see running software at every stage.
No three months of silence followed by a reveal. If something is going to slip, you hear it the week it starts slipping.
- 01
Scope
We write down what it has to do and, more usefully, what it does not. Fixed deliverables. Nothing appears in month three that was never agreed in month one.
- 02
Model
The data and the permissions get settled first. These are the decisions that turn expensive once there is real customer data sitting on top of them.
- 03
Build
Delivered in stages you can open and use. You review running software, not screenshots and a status report.
- 04
Harden
Tests on the paths that carry money or records. An accessibility pass, a security pass, and the error handling checked before anyone outside sees it.
- 05
Hand over
Deployed on infrastructure in your name, with the credentials, runbooks and architecture notes to match. You are never locked to me.