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backWould you trade a full-time role for an internship?
For most people, the answer is a resounding no. You’re supposed to climb the ladder upward and hold tight to every bit of progress you've made. An internship is ideally where careers begin, not where they continue.
But when Celestina left a full-time role to join Moniepoint as an intern, she saw it differently. She wasn’t taking a step back; she was making an intentional decision to build the career she really wanted.
The five-month lock-in
Celestina is no stranger to making radical decisions. Before Moniepoint was even in the picture, she was already rewriting her story. She studied Health Education at university, but during her National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) year, she came across an opportunity that made her rethink her career path. Someone posted a message in a community she was in. They were looking for a DevOps engineering intern, and that post opened her eyes to different paths her career could take.
Celestina decided tech was where she wanted to be, and if she was going to do it, she was going to do it properly. So she set a goal for herself: learn everything she needed to know to pivot into a career in DevOps. She treated learning like a full-time job. Every morning, she’d leave home for a workstation at 9 AM and return at 5 PM. Her approach was methodical: set attainable goals, break them down, and focus on one thing at a time. No distractions, jumping between fields or chasing trends.
And it paid off. In five months, Celestina gained skills and certifications that secured her a DevOps internship, and then a full-time role. But her story wasn’t over yet.
The decision
Even with a full-time position, Celestina knew she was just getting started. She immediately began mapping out the next few years of her career, figuring out which skills she needed to develop and whether her current job would let her grow at the pace she wanted. It became clear she needed an environment that would challenge, stretch, and deepen her technical understanding.
So when she came across Moniepoint’s Women in Tech Internship (our program created to help women gain hands-on experience and mentorship in technical roles), she paid attention. On the surface, applying for an internship after holding a full-time job might have seemed like a step backwards. But for Celestina, it was a calculated move to build the kind of practical experience she knew would define her next chapter.
What drew her in most was Moniepoint’s infrastructure. Our systems are built to handle massive scale, offering an environment where she could learn more in months than she might in years elsewhere. The opportunity promised real growth, and that was all the reason she needed to take the leap.
So Celestina applied, scaled through the selection process, and joined Moniepoint as a Cloud Engineering intern.
The proving ground
Our Women In Tech internship isn’t the typical internship program where interns get food or coffee. The program aims to provide participants with the skills, tools and resources they need to build and scale their tech careers. The application and selection process is rigorous to ensure the best people get in to do the best work. The program itself is 6 months of hands-on training that lets the interns work on real projects and build mastery.
For Celestina, this meant learning to apply the skills she’d picked up from her previous role in a production environment where the stakes are high and systems must stay up around the clock. She began with the fundamentals: troubleshooting infrastructure issues and learning the systems inside and out. Then, she automated repetitive work wherever she could, creating space to dig into more complex problems. When she wasn’t sure about something, she spoke up so she could find the documentation or the person who could help her understand it better.
This approach to learning reflects two of our core values at Moniepoint: candour and no ego. Candour is about communicating honestly and openly. No ego means we prioritise getting the job done over our ego, keeping that honesty productive. These values allow people to ask for help, take feedback, and keep improving without defensiveness. They empower our teams to build mastery and paved the way for Celestina to grow into her role. Like all DreamMakers, she took end-to-end ownership of projects and saw them through to completion.
Among these projects, one stood out and marked a turning point in Celestina’s journey at Moniepoint. We were migrating our secrets to a new secrets management platform, and Celestina was tasked with working on the project. It was a high-stakes one that touched multiple teams and required deep technical understanding.
P.S. For the uninitiated, “secrets” refer to sensitive information like passwords, API keys, or access tokens that systems need to function but must stay hidden from unauthorised people. Secrets management systems help store and protect this information securely, making sure only the right systems or people can access it when needed.
Celestina became a subject-matter expert, conducting training sessions for internal teams and external partners. She wrote the runbooks that would guide everyone else through the process. She took something complex and made it manageable. The grit she'd built during those five months of locking in, combined with the technical depth she’d gained at Moniepoint, started to compound.
Today, Celestina is a Team Lead in Cloud Engineering on our Payments team. Her days are split between deep technical work and team leadership. She troubleshoots infrastructure-level issues that keep transactions flowing smoothly. She provisions systems, monitors services, and works to ensure that when someone processes a payment through Moniepoint, it goes through without a hitch. And when her team members hit a technical wall, she's there to guide them through it, share context, or work with them to find a solution until they've figured it out together.
The Dream Team
Celestina’s growth at Moniepoint is proof of what is possible when you combine grit with an environment that thrives on membership. While she may have joined for the infrastructure, the people are a key part of what has made the journey so far truly rewarding.
She attributes a lot of her success to having great managers who identified her strengths early and nurtured her to develop them. They trusted her with challenging work and guided her without micromanaging. This balance of trust and support gave her the confidence to take ownership, make decisions, and learn through real responsibility.
It also shaped how she now leads her own team. As a team lead, Celestina prioritises creating a space where people can grow, experiment, and deliver their best work without fear of failure.
At Moniepoint, we make four promises to our DreamMakers. We call them the 4Ms, and they represent what we ensure our people get out of working here. They are meaning, mastery, membership, and money.
In her time here, Celestina has found all four. She’s found meaning in the work we do to create financial happiness for Africans everywhere, and she plays a key role in ensuring we continue to deliver on our mission. She has found mastery by helping to build and manage complex systems, solving high-stakes technical problems, and continuously sharpening her skills. Through her managers and her team, she’s found membership: a sense of belonging, trust, and collaboration that has made her growth possible. And money… well, that’s something you might just have to join us to see for yourself.
Celestina made a career move that looked unusual on paper. But she knew the promise of growth was real, and that for someone willing to lock in and do the work, it would pay off. She believes it has, and we’re inclined to agree.
If you’re looking for an environment that challenges you to build mastery while doing your best work, check out our open roles.
