The breeze blowing off the Atlantic carried a hum of excitement as employees of Guaranty Trust Holding Company Plc (GTCO) gathered at Plot 1 Water Corporation Drive, Oniru, Victoria Island, Lagos, the company’s signature Food and Drinks venue, for the 2025 Tech Retreat. It was a corporate affair steeped in innovation, collaboration and forward thinking, but one moment stole the spotlight. The moment Olufemi Titus Oluyomi took the stage.
Oluyomi, a Senior Network Core and Security Engineer at GTCO, delivered a presentation that many in attendance would later describe as transformational. Titled “Merging SRE and the IT Command Center for 100 Percent Uptime,” the session cut through the day’s technical jargon with a clear and actionable roadmap to eliminating system downtimes in one of Nigeria’s largest financial institutions.
In a hall filled with senior engineers, IT managers and business executives, Oluyomi’s voice was measured and firm. His message was clear. If GTCO was to remain at the forefront of digital banking, it had to reimagine its infrastructure through the lens of Site Reliability Engineering, SRE. Not as a buzzword, but as an operational standard. His argument was simple. The future belongs to institutions that can guarantee uninterrupted services, and GTCO must build systems that are resilient by design.
“We need to stop treating uptime as a bonus,” Oluyomi said during his presentation, “and start delivering it like a product.”
Using case studies, system architecture samples and data pulled from performance monitoring tools like Grafana and SolarWinds, Oluyomi walked the audience through a high-level yet practical vision. One where IT Command Center operations are tightly interwoven with SRE metrics like SLIs and SLOs to drive proactive decision-making. His ideas ignited intense engagement from the audience and earned him the coveted Best Presentation of the Year award.
Attendees say the proposal was not just technically sound but timely. “Olufemi articulated what many of us have been thinking,” said one member of the network team. “He provided a framework that’s not just about stability but about scaling with confidence.”
Beyond the accolades, Oluyomi’s presentation has sparked internal discussions on how GTCO can begin to align its infrastructure model with global best practices. One executive described his pitch as “the kind of thinking that shifts culture.”
What sets Oluyomi apart is not just his technical prowess but his approach to leadership. Colleagues describe him as grounded, collaborative and deeply invested in the success of the team. His clarity of thought and ability to connect backend systems to front-end customer experience is what, according to many, made his presentation resonate far beyond the technical audience.
For a company whose digital footprint touches millions daily, system reliability is not a luxury. It is the backbone of customer trust. Oluyomi’s proposal reflects that understanding. By blending engineering depth with strategic foresight, he has demonstrated that the future of infrastructure is not just in innovation but in intentionality.
Insiders say that steps are already underway to evaluate the feasibility of his ideas in live environments. Whether as a pilot or full-scale adoption, one thing is certain. Olufemi Titus Oluyomi has left an indelible mark on GTCO’s tech playbook.