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backIf you’ve ever found yourself asking what kind of media Moniepoint’s DreamMakers consume while they do deep work, you’re in luck. The thing is, the playlist of 3,000+ people is a lot of data to get through, so today, I’ll tell you about one data engineer.
Adeolu.
What do data engineers listen to?
Before my interview with Adeolu, I assumed it might be hours of tech talks, white noise playlists, maybe the occasional lo-fi beat. But that wasn’t the whole story. Not even close.
Now, I can tell you what’s in his ears during long builds, what he queued up the night before his first major launch, and which podcast episode made him rethink what data engineering really is.
This is Adeolu’s story, told through his watchlist, in no particular order.
The Rookie — Discipline meets curiosity
Adeolu calls The Rookie one of his comfort shows. The series follows John Nolan, a man who joins the police academy later in life and has to prove himself in a high-stakes environment.
When he joined Moniepoint in 2023, the data team was just four people. It was, in his words, “a lot.” Like Nolan, Adeolu had to learn on the job quickly, debug efficiently, and grow by being immersed in the thick of things.
Now the team has grown tenfold, from four to forty. The work has scaled with it, demanding structure and systems that can withstand complexity. For Adeolu, the transition echoes The Rookie’s progression: from novice urgency to disciplined, thoughtful craft. The work is no longer about surviving the day but about building processes that last.
The Big Bang Theory — Comfort in curiosity
The Big Bang Theory, a sitcom about scientists, friends, and their quirks, is really a show about curiosity. The sitcom’s genius isn’t its science but how it portrays curiosity as a way of life. It’s quirky and exaggerated, but it reminds you that being endlessly curious can still be enjoyable.
Adeolu calls himself “a citizen of YouTube,” forever seeking new perspectives, especially when it comes to data. Curiosity is the throughline of Adeolu’s career. He describes data as “a natural state of everything”, patterns, signals, stories waiting to be discovered. It’s that outlook that pushed him into engineering and fuels his daily work at Moniepoint.
As he put it:
“Data is one of the things that interests me because of its width, in terms of how everything is affected by data. Every arm in every organisation, everything has data about it in its natural state. And being able to work on that, being able to experiment with that, and more importantly, being able to get insights from that data can be fun, but it is also an endless list of use cases.”
Abbott Elementary — Comedy with stakes
Adeolu just wrapped season four of Abbott Elementary. A sharp, hilarious look at teachers navigating underfunded schools, it’s a satire that doesn’t shy away from reality.
Which is why, when Adeolu discusses the social causes that drive him, he immediately focuses on education. Like his podcast queue, his social commitments run long; you could stack them against the 17 SDG goals. But for him, it all starts with education. One student given the chance to learn can lift an entire family, and that belief anchors everything else he supports.
Founders Connect — Learning from builders
When Adeolu talks about Founders Connect, he recalls seeing Tosin on the show once. The podcast strips away the glamour of entrepreneurship and exposes the real work: pivots, failures, recoveries.
He saw that firsthand with the reconciliation project at Moniepoint, which his team helped build from the ground up. On paper, reconciliation sounds simple: matching transactions, checking balances. But in reality, it’s a delicate, high-stakes system where errors ripple across millions of lives.
The project demanded not just technical skills but collaboration. Adeolu found himself working closely with operations, finance, and product teams. Much like the founders on the podcast, he learned that building is less about heroics and more about listening, iterating, and keeping a bigger picture in view.
I Said What I Said — Grounded in Lagos
Adeolu listens to and would recommend I Said What I Said, a podcast rooted firmly in the everyday Lagos experience. His recommendation, however, really depends on your taste and needs.
That grounding matters because, in his work, Adeolu often operates at vast scales, involving systems that touch millions of transactions, abstract datasets, and backend flows. Podcasts like this remind him that behind every number is a human context, ie someone trying to pay for fuel, buy food, or send money.
TechCabal and Techpoint — Context is everything
Adeolu has followed Techpoint and TechCabal for about five years. He said that’s how he even discovered Moniepoint, back when it was called TeamApt. He kept up with them because he’s always been drawn to media and journalistic storytelling.
Insights from TechCabal and Techpoint connect his day-to-day engineering work to the broader Nigerian and African tech ecosystem. You hear stories of founders, regulators, and startups. It places your work in a bigger puzzle.
That puzzle comes alive in moments outside the office. When Adeolu sees a Moniepoint terminal at a pop-up or shop, it’s a node in a massive financial network that he is proud to be part of. Sometimes, friends or family call out a transaction reference ID, and he knows the systems behind the numbers. There’s pride in that because you see your work showing up in real lives. It’s not abstract anymore.
Trevor Noah — Humour as lens
Adeolu includes Trevor Noah’s podcast in his lineup because it mixes wit with sharp commentary. It shows that you can discuss serious things with a sense of humour. He calls Noah “one of the most politically informed comedians” with “an extensive guest list.”
Noah’s ability to frame complex issues for a global audience parallels what Adeolu has had to learn in his work, translating complexity into insights that non-engineers can use. Humour, clarity, context: different tools for the same goal of making sense of chaos.
The final episode: Beyond the base
Closing Adeolu’s watchlist feels like stepping away from a good conversation before it’s done. But the story isn’t complete without one last piece: Adeolu’s own podcast, Beyond the Base.
Born from his love for podcasts, Beyond the Base is his way of expanding the narrative around Gen Z — one thoughtful episode at a time. On the mic, Adeolu and his guests challenge stereotypes and provide insights that inspire young people to dream bigger, act smarter, and lead confidently..
It’s a natural extension of his watchlist. The same curiosity, the same intention, the same care. Together, his playlist and his podcast sketch out a way of moving through the world that’s thoughtful, grounded, and full of purpose.
And he isn’t alone. Every DreamMaker here brings their own rhythm, their own watchlist, their own story. If you’re looking for a place where your story can take shape, too, the door is open. Visit our careers page to get started.
