Exceptional Promise - Review Needed

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Hello,

I want to thank everyone on this forum for your contributions, as they have really helped me shape my evidence.

A bit of context: I’m a Data Engineer with 2 years of experience across e-commerce, agri-tech, and fintech. My first full-time data role was in May 2024, after graduating from the university in 2023. Some of my achievements happened before my first data role. A significant part of my career has been built on community involvement in the African data space, including hackathons, speaking engagements, judging roles, and open-source contributions.

Here’s what I’m submitting, with enough detail that you can tell me whether each piece is actually strong enough:

Mandatory Criteria
MC (International Prize): Two hackathon wins. The first is a 4th-place finish ($2000 prize) in April/May 2022 at an international marketing hackathon with 500+ participants from 5 countries in 3 continents, backed by coverage in high-traffic news publications (traffic verified via SimilarWeb) and photos with government dignitaries at the prize ceremony. We were required to provide tech solutions to solve marketing problems. I have screenshot to prove this requirement. The second is a 2nd runner-up (200,000 naira alongside other complementary prizes) finishing in June 2022 at a national AI and data hackathon with 800+ participants across all 36 states in my country, sponsored by Nvidia and Africa’s Talking, with our virtual demo streamed on YouTube and our team listed on the published leaderboard. All these can be proven by screenshots and links.

MC (Assessment of Others’ Work): Two hackathon judging roles, neither of which I sought out. The first was an invitation in June 2025 from an EdTech company, where I evaluated 7 teams alongside another judge against a defined scoring rubric to determine the top 3, evidenced by the invitation email, my acceptance, the scoring sheet with team scores, and a LinkedIn post from one of the participants naming me as a judge. The second was an invitation in October 2025 from one of the largest data communities in Africa to review submissions for their annual datathon alongside other judges. We reviewed 58 solutions and helped identify the top 5 teams. I received a Certificate of Appreciation signed by the community co-founder. The top teams went on to present at an event attended by 1,000 people. I included the scoring rubric, the submissions sheet, the invitation email, the appreciation email, and the certificate.

MC (Product-led Growth): My current role at a unicorn fintech, which I joined in April 2025, where I was tasked on my onboarding call with building an assurance module that didn’t exist yet. Because of the nature of my team, this is a product for the internal business teams, not external customers. I have the document that states the project objectives as evidence. I designed the pipeline architecture myself. By September 2025, I hit a major milestone in having the product ready for use. Then I highlighted a challenge: a slow-loading problem lasting up to 23 minutes as business users used the product. By August 2025, I had proactively diagnosed and resolved the issue, bringing loading times back to seconds. I have commit history, Slack messages, code screenshots, screenshots of the product interfaces, proof that shows the effect of my contribution, taking the loading times from minutes back to seconds, and a message from my VP confirming the update as evidence.

I also plan to include a reference letter from the Chief Finance Officer that describes my individual contribution and its impact on the business.

Optional Criteria

OC2 (Open Source): Contributions to two projects. For a US energy data open-source project, starting from early 2024, I contributed to extracting and transforming an energy dataset, resulting in 38 commits and 21 files changed. The PR was merged in June 2024. The dataset has 25K+ downloads. My contributions to the project led them to bring me in as a contributor under Google Season of Docs, and I made additional documentation contributions.

For the second open-source project (a Metadata management project), I discovered it at work and started contributing in September 2025. One of my PRs involved formatting fixes across almost all pages of their API documentation, resulting in 57 files changed and 62 commits. The team then invited me to speak in a community webinar in September 2025 on contributing to their project, which had 255 registered attendees according to the Meetup page. The documentation site had 23K+ visits in March 2026, according to SimilarWeb.

I can prove all these with screenshots and links.

OC2 (Conference Speaking): Two events. The first was an international tech conference in August 2025, where I submitted a proposal that was accepted for the main hall after a competitive review process in which 7 of 10 submissions were rejected. My talk was a technical session on embedding personalized dashboards into a web application using a web framework and a BI tool, grounded in a real project I had built. I have the acceptance email, the conference schedule showing my talk, the organizer’s post-event social media post about my talk, an email from the organizer confirming 200 attendees per day, and an image of event attendees in front of the event banner to show the breadth of attendees. The second was a panel session in October 2025 at a major pan-African data event, where I spoke as an invited panelist on leveraging hackathons and community engagement for career growth. In the news media, it was stated that the registered expected attendees were 1000+. I don’t have the exact figures, but there’s a recorded session on YouTube that shows the breadth of the audience. To prove their reputation, they recently published a report stating they have 15,900 members across 40 African countries. I have the invitation email, the speaker schedule, the organizer’s LinkedIn post tagging me, and the YouTube recording.

For these two events, I also showed screenshots of their sponsors to prove that my employers were not involved.

OC3 (Significant Contribution at a Startup): From May 2024, I was the first and only data engineer at a Food-tech startup funded by an international development organization on a contract basis. This development organization had a UK donor. I designed the full data stack from scratch using open source tools to keep infrastructure costs low, built the warehouse schema, designed the ERD, and wrote the dbt models. In this evidence, I demonstrated that I went beyond my job description by recommending simple solutions to a data-collection problem before the developers had built the product. Then I built the pipeline to bring that data into the warehouse. Between June and December 2024, registered farmers more than doubled, and the platform reached over 7,500 active customers. These results were covered in a Guardian article and on the funder’s website, with data cited as a core technology behind the achievement.

My name wasn’t mentioned, but I was the only data engineer (amidst a few data analysts) in the company, so that should count, right? I have screenshots showing the architecture diagram, ERD, code screenshots showing my name as author.

OC3 (Significant Contribution at a Larger Company): From May 2024, at a major e-commerce company in Nigeria on a full-time basis, I identified a legacy reporting system that had been failing for over a year, sending automated apology emails to the C-suite when reports didn’t arrive. I proposed migrating to a more capable orchestration tool, hit a blocker when Docker wouldn’t run on the Windows-based VM, pivoted to Kubernetes after speaking with the infrastructure engineer, and by October 2024, had completed the migration of 55 cron jobs at no additional cost. The VM hosting the legacy application was decommissioned. Monthly infrastructure costs dropped by $7,000 the month the migration was completed and stayed below the previous baseline in subsequent months. I have GitLab commits, a Google Sheets task tracker, and the cost data (although this is on a Google sheet and not on the cloud provider dashboard, as they migrated away from the cloud provider that I used after I left the company).

Recommendation Letters

  • CEO of the Food-tech startup I worked at (for OC3)
  • CTO of the E-commerce startup I worked at (for OC3)
  • CTO of my current company (for MC)

My concerns

  • The only reference letter I have to back my evidence in the optional criteria is the reference letter from the CFO in the mandatory criteria. Is this good enough?
  • If you noticed in my listed evidence, I worked at two companies at the same time (May 2024). One was contract and remote. The other was full-time and on-site at some point, then it became hybrid. Will this be a problem? I plan to add my employment letters as additional evidence to show that I didn’t falsify this, but in these letters, the work times were both stated as 8am to 5pm. Will this make the reviewers skeptical that I should not have worked in 2 companies at same time?
  • Will having Google Sheets as some of the evidence in the OC3 be a problem?
  • Will the reviewers think that the impact numbers in terms of farmers and customers in OC3 are not substantial?
  • Will they count some of my achievements before my first full-time role as invalid? My first achievement was in 2022 as a student who was already learning data. But my first role was in 2024 after graduating in 2023.

In general, what do you think about my evidence? Is this good enough? Is something missing or not clear? Can you confidently say I met and proved the minimum criteria?

CC: @Raphael @Akash_Joshi @pahuja

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You can only use 2 optional criteria, since your OC1 is open-source that fits well into OC2, use it there.

I’m applying for Exceptional Promise too and I’m usung open-source as part of my evidences.

For OC3, I’ve read a lot of rejection there and i think your last two optional criteria would go into innovation instead.
You can prove innovation more easily than impact so look for a way to combine your 4 optional evidence into OC1 and OC2 that works best for you.

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Thank you @Daniel15568. I will take that into consideration. I think I didn’t properly label the evidences which might be misleading. I will edit the post now to properly label where I intend to fit them into for the sake of clarity

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The guide explicitly lists “significant expert role participating on panels or individually assessing the work of others” as MC-qualifying evidence. Two structured invitations, scoring rubrics, and 58 reviewed submissions from a named co-founder is credible at Promise level. The hackathon awards are weaker - student-era prizes from marketing and AI competitions are hard to frame as recognition of potential leading talent in the sector.

For your two optional criteria, OC3 and OC4 form the tightest pair. Both have direct quantifiable outcomes - doubled farmer base at the food-tech, $7k monthly cost reduction at the e-commerce company. The challenge with OC3 is the Guardian article doesn’t name you, so your CEO letter needs to explicitly bridge that: it must state you were the sole data engineer responsible and that the growth was enabled by your work. If the letter doesn’t make that connection, an assessor can’t make it for you.

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Hello @Akash_Joshi,

Thank you. The competitions were not student-based. The participants were professionals. The reason I referenced being a student while I got them was because I hadn’t gotten my first full-time role before i got the awards and wanted to know if that is a problem with the timing.

1 Like
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@Nancy_Amandi

Starting with your narrative: as a Data Engineer with 2 years of experience across e‑commerce, agri‑tech, and fintech, it logically appears you worked in each area for roughly 8 months or at the same time. This can be a common practice but for established experts. This weakens your application narrative as someone with just 2 years sector experience. To position yourself well for Exceptional Promise, clearly state that you have less than 5 years of experience in technology, but had a longer career in another field with transferable and relatable skills that have helped you contribute to the sector through your hackathons, speaking engagements, judging roles, and open‑source contributions.

MC: Coming 4th is not a winning indication, it is simply a fourth position count, which can be weak. The 2nd runner‑up can be okay. Also, an international marketing hackathon for a Data Engineer providing tech solutions to marketing problems sounds vague and more like you built something for the marketing sector. A narrative such as an AI‑powered data analytics framework for the marketing sector will be more coherent and reduces the risk of the international marketing hackathon being dismissed as not sector‑focused.

MC (Assessment of Others’ Work): The EdTech company is likely a profit‑making organisation. If they organised a hackathon for 7 teams most likely their staff for what purpose? For promotion or what exactly? This may also not be sector‑focused. For MC, assessing the work of others shows recognition when they are your peers; that’s peer review. Reviewing submissions for the annual datathon alongside other judges can be okay. You need to show the invitation letter that states you were invited as an expert for the judging role, demonstrate the judging activities and how it impact the sector through metrics and reach.

MC (Product‑led Growth): This can be okay, but not with the narrative “I designed the pipeline architecture myself.” You want to show how you led the development or growth of the product. The leadership element is what shows recognition.

The other items you listed are too descriptive and activity based. I’m happy to give strategic suggestions if you can share what you are actually submitting.

All the best.

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Hello @Raphael,

Thank you so much for a detailed review. I worked in both at the same time. For the hackathon where I got fourth, it was an AI solution and i indicated that. I also assumed that since prizes was mentioned in the criteria, it could count since the 4th position still came with $2000.

The hackathons were both data based, I also indicated that.

I will truly appreciate your strategic suggestions, how can I get my submission documents to you please?

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@Nancy_Amandi You built an AI solution? Whilst it’s possible, it’s not a Data Engineer’s primary responsibility to develop or build solutions. It’s better you present it as something that can be quickly related to your discipline, like ETL/ELT pipelines, or you designed a data model or framework.

Also, winning a hackathon shows recognition of your expertise, you were recognised among your peers, and it has little or nothing to do with the amount won. And I think fourth position will not show the kind of recognition MC requires.

It’s good that you indicated they were both data based, but Tech Nation relies on evidence, not just what you say. And that evidence must be validated by a reputable person, platform, or organisation. “International marketing hackathon” does not appear to be data based unless you missed out something important. If that is the case, add it to it

for instance “International marketing hackathon - Building ETL/ELT pipelines”

I’m saying all this because your narrative is just as important as the evidence you present.

If you can share them here or contact me directly, I can give more targeted and strategic guidance. Kindly note that any engagement outside this platform falls under my consultation service, which is a paid service.

All the best.