Hello, I am
Henrike, a Software Engineer, a Passionate Designer, an Entrepreneur

Based in Cape Town

About Me

Henrike Basson

I am a Software Engineer at Bash, building cloud-native, event-driven backend services in Go. I work in the order management team, using Temporal for workflow orchestration, Kafka for event streaming, and Kubernetes for deployment.

I studied at Stellenbosch University, graduating in 2020 with a BSc in Mathematical Sciences — majoring in both Computer Science and Genetics.

Two fields that seem worlds apart, but they reflect how I think: analytically and creatively in equal measure. I am an obsessive planner, detail-oriented, and genuinely passionate about problem-solving and system design.

Since May 2025, I have made AI a deliberate part of how I engineer. I use Claude, Claude Code, and agentic tooling to accelerate architecture exploration, debugging, code review, and technical documentation and to co-author specs and ADRs. It has changed how I approach problems, reduced cycle time from design to implementation, and is a meaningful part of what I bring to a team today.

Education


Hoërskool Nelspruit

— 2012 - 2016

I graduated in the year of 2016 with a distinction and admission to University.


DUX (Head girl):

In my final year, I was elected as the chair of the council, serving as the President/DUX of Hoërskool Nelspruit. This was a significant achievement and a recognition of my leadership qualities.

My Tech Stack

Tools, languages, and platforms I use day-to-day. My core focus is cloud-native backend engineering in Go, with a strong layer of AI-assisted development on top.

Languages
Go TypeScript JavaScript Python SQL HTML / CSS .NET / C# Java C
Backend & Architecture
Temporal Apache Kafka PostgreSQL REST APIs Microservices SendGrid
Cloud, Infra & Observability
Kubernetes Docker AWS (Secrets Manager, S3, IAM) Confluent Cloud Azure DevOps Pipelines Sentry Prometheus Grafana
AI & Agentic Tooling
Claude Claude Code ChatGPT Cursor GitHub Copilot
Tooling & Process
GitHub Linear Notion Retool Slack Figma

My Experience

2022 - current

Bash

I am currently employed as an Intermediate Software Engineer at Bash (formerly TFG Labs), working within Supply Chain on the Order Management System - a platform critical to both customers and in-store operations. I design and maintain backend services, own monitoring and alerting for parts of the platform, and participate in the on-call rotation, contributing to a system that's helping reshape South African retail.

2021

Wedding Planner

Authored and published a wedding planner containing the A to Z (literally) on what to do before you say I do. Find more details here or click on the shop tab.

2021 - 2022

Code Collective

At Code Collective, I was a full-stack .NET Software Developer for 13 months. My work focused on developing and enhancing the Guidepost platform, which uses AI-powered personalised coaching to improve the lives of people with diabetes. Clinically trained coaches provide individual support to those with diabetes, which has been recognised by insurers and device makers for its benefits.

2017 - 2020

Stellenbosch University

I was a full-time student studying Computer Science and Genetics.

2020 - Current

Freelance

I created this website, experimenting with web-development.

2019

Hotel Manager

During the holiday season, I was in charge of managing the Augrabies Valle Guesthouse. My duties included handling reservations, financial transactions, and client administration.

2019

Nel Brothers

During the harvesting and packing season, I had the privilege of serving as an assistant in the office of Alkara, which is one of Nel Brothers' numerous farms. My duties included worker administration, which entailed logging their attendance, working hours, efficiency, and productivity on an Excel spreadsheet daily. This was essential in computing their compensation at the end of each month. In addition, I was tasked with keeping track of the number of pallets, boxes, and bags of grapes packed each day, as well as calculating the amount of grapes that would be used for raisins.

Featured Projects

A selection of work I have led or shipped at Bash.

2026 · current

Return Management Service (RMS) — Engineering Project Lead

Selected as Engineering Project Lead on a cross-team, supply-chain-wide initiative to build Bash's new Returns platform.

I own the end-to-end returns lifecycle - creation, courier collection, evaluation-center hand-off, refund processing, and customer communications - driving solution design, defining service contracts, aligning integration timelines across multiple teams, and leading architectural decision-making for a revenue-critical domain.

Engineering Project Lead Solution design Go Temporal PostgreSQL Kafka
2025

Logistics Integration (Last-Mile API)

Led Bash's integration with our logistics team, enabling reliable delivery coordination and parcel tracking at scale. I designed the event-handler architecture, implemented a type-safe domain model, and shipped rollout and event-correction tooling that gives engineers a user-friendly way to quickly and safely recover from upstream data issues.

Go Kafka REST APIs Retool PostgreSQL
2025

Warehouse Pack-&-Ship Migration to Temporal

Migrated our pack-and-ship workflows to Temporal, materially improving the durability, observability, and recoverability of one of Bash's most operationally critical pipelines. I designed the parcel state schema, implemented signal-driven event handlers, integrated with warehouse logistics APIs, and orchestrated a feature-flagged rollout that ran legacy and new pipelines in parallel for a safe, zero-downtime cutover.

Go Temporal Kafka
2024

Bash Admin — internal operations app

Designed, built, and shipped Bash Admin, a unified Retool-based operations platform now used company-wide to manage orders, customers, returns, parcels, payments, and comms from a single interface. I integrated internal microservices, third-party APIs, and complex database queries, and partnered directly with frontline teams (Customer Support, Operations) to ensure the tool measurably improves day-to-day operations - all while maintaining a clean, brand-consistent UI.

Additionally, I built self-service tooling that lets Customer Support resolve customer queries independently, eliminating routine engineering escalations.

Retool JavaScript PostgreSQL REST APIs UI/UX design
2024 · 2025

Transactional Communications Makeover

Rebuilt Bash's transactional customer email stack end-to-end. Translated Figma designs into responsive HTML/CSS templates in SendGrid, introduced Handlebars templating with structured JSON payloads for dynamic content, and built a payload-generation service with comprehensive audit logging and tooling that lets engineers and ops trace exactly when and which communications were sent - turning a previously opaque pipeline into a debuggable, observable system.

Go SendGrid HTML / CSS Figma
2024 · 2025

Platform Reliability & Tooling

Drove cross-cutting reliability and incident-response improvements across the order management platform: integrated Sentry across microservices for unified error tracking, embedded audit logging throughout operational tooling, and built manual-intervention endpoints for safe runtime recovery. Designed and built a Retool-based "medic" toolkit (app) that lets engineers solve edge-case issues, like editing and replaying problematic Kafka messages with full audit trails - significantly reducing incident recovery time while preserving accountability and reporting integrity.

Go Sentry Notion Retool MSSQL

Achievements

Top 10 academic achievers

2012 - 2016

I was ranked one of the top 10 academic learners each term for four years in High School and achieved an average above 90% each year.

Beyond Code

Outside of backend engineering, I run a small creative studio focused on wedding stationery and wedding websites.

Beyond coding, I'm a creative at heart with a strong appreciation for aesthetics and thoughtful design. I run my own one-woman brand, ForeverLikeTheMoon, which started in 2021 when I created my own wedding planner and turned it into something I could share with others.

Since then, I've designed and produced stationery, digital wedding resources, and websites for couples across South Africa. It's been a space where I get to bring ideas to life in a more visual way, while still applying structure, problem-solving, and attention to detail.

Henrike holding a wedding planner notebook
Henrike working on a laptop for ForeverLikeTheMoon
Close-up wedding stationery detail from ForeverLikeTheMoon

Get in touch

Call, write, or pop me a message.

Cape Town
Western Cape
7441

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