Staff Software Engineer with 10+ years building and operating production-grade distributed systems, most recently building AI-driven growth tooling. I tie engineering work to business outcomes: opened a self-serve revenue stream with Stripe subscriptions, improved an unbalanced Elasticsearch cluster to cut its cost by 41%, halved new-engineer ramp-up time and reduced customer onboarding from 2 weeks to 1 day. Specialized in backend architecture (monolith-to-microservices), cloud infrastructure (GCP, AWS, Terraform, Kubernetes), CI/CD and data platforms (PostgreSQL, Kafka, Elasticsearch, BigQuery).
“The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size.”
Experience
Quander Accel
Maker of Hypesonic, an AI growth platform that runs marketing and distribution continuously: testing creative, targeting audiences and optimizing ad spend without human bottlenecks.
6 mos · Remote
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Senior Software Engineer
May 2026 - Oct 2026 · 6 mos
- Observable agent: Added Langfuse tracing for the Sonic in-product agent and moved its prompts into Langfuse, so runs could be inspected and prompts managed outside the code.
- Agent sessions that survive: Made agent sessions recover after a reboot and rehydrate on cold start, and fixed retry, stale-response and attachment problems so the agent kept its context.
- Tools for the agent: Gave the agent tools to read Meta performance data, search TikTok ads live, and search ads by demographics and creative dimensions.
- A sourcing agent for the ad library: Built an agent in the background workers that collects ads into a global library, scoped by a declare-scope tool, with media re-hosted on S3 and analyzed with Gemini.
- LLM-written reports: Built LLM narration for the weekly performance report with a provider abstraction, a validator and prompts, saving each result with its validator warnings.
- Self-serve revenue: Built Stripe subscriptions, a paywall and credit top-ups, with agent token use priced and debited atomically, so customers can sign up and pay on their own. Before this, B2B customers were billed manually.
- Meta sync rebuilt: Rebuilt the Meta ad sync around a per-ad model that cut Meta API cost about 25x, with daily demographics, checkpointed and resumable runs, and an ETA that only falls.
- Ad publishing: Built the Meta Ad Launcher, a step-by-step wizard for batch publishing with copy variants, dynamic creative and fix-and-relaunch, plus the TikTok advertiser connection and ad sync.
- Observability: Built a shared logger and an OpenTelemetry bootstrap with trace propagation, RED, LLM, ffmpeg and data-sync metrics, and a shared PostHog package.
- Video editor: Built the video editor and its engine as a workspace package, with Whisper transcription, caption templates and cost telemetry.
- Closing the loop with users: Joined beta tester calls and walked through onboarding in the platform to see where users struggled, asked what they expected, and guided them to features that covered what they called missing. Also joined twice-weekly calls with an agency using the platform and turned its feedback into fixes and features.
- TypeScript
- Node.js
- Next.js
- LLM APIs
- AI Agents
- LangGraph
- Vercel Eve
- Langfuse
- OpenTelemetry
- Gemini
- Whisper
- Remotion
- PostgreSQL
- Prisma
- BullMQ
- Docker
- Railway
- Vercel
- Stripe
- Meta Marketing API
- TikTok Ads API
- PostHog
- Grafana
Vendoo YC W22
Multichannel Listing Tool and Inventory Management Software for online sellers.
3 yrs · Remote
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Staff Software Engineer & Solutions Architect
May 2024 - May 2026 · 2 yrs 1 mo
- Cut Elasticsearch spend by 41%: Rebuilt an unbalanced Elasticsearch cluster (oversized shards, outdated version, no index lifecycle policies) and documented a roadmap for further savings.
- Scaled to 90k+ daily listings: Led the migration from a Node.js monolith to event-driven microservices on Kafka, reducing listing latency by 300ms, cutting failed marketplace syncs and speeding up new marketplace integrations.
- Halved new-engineer ramp-up (6 to 3 weeks): Launched internal Tech Talks (10+ sessions) and a structured 1:1 mentorship framework to close system knowledge gaps.
- Faster, lighter releases: Re-engineered build and deployment pipelines (GitHub Actions, CircleCI), shrinking Docker images by 70% (1 GB to 300 MB) and shortening deployment cycles.
- Infrastructure ownership: Owned GCP/Kubernetes infrastructure via Terraform and Helm (cluster provisioning, service mesh, environment promotion) and built the observability stack that caught performance bottlenecks before they reached users.
- Learning from users directly: Joined customer success calls to understand user issues, then collected metrics and logs in real time to diagnose and fix them.
- React
- Node.js
- TypeScript
- Kafka
- PostgreSQL
- GCP
- BigQuery
- Elasticsearch
- Terraform
- Docker
- Kubernetes
- Helm
- CircleCI
- GitHub Actions
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Senior Software Engineer & Tech Lead
Jun 2023 - Apr 2024 · 11 mos
- Found the cause of low signup rates: Led the investigation and found that referral campaigns sent users straight to a signup page with no information about Vendoo or its features. The growth team's A/B test confirmed that users landing on a custom page converted at a higher rate.
- Fixed subscription billing integrity: Found and fixed a bug that kept 1% of paying users marked as active after they had cancelled, restoring accurate subscription and revenue data.
- Led a team of up to 5 engineers: Designed, built and shipped backend services end-to-end, aligning technical decisions with product and business goals.
- Stable, predictable releases: Owned release cycles and CI/CD (CircleCI), enforcing test coverage gates and automated deployments.
- Technical Design: Drove data model and API design decisions, set coding standards and unblocked engineers on complex backend work.
- Stakeholder Coordination: Worked with product and business stakeholders to scope sprints, define acceptance criteria and align engineering effort with company strategy.
- Node.js
- TypeScript
- PostgreSQL
- CircleCI
- Docker
Paerpay Techstars
Mobile payment integration platform for the restaurant industry.
11 mos · Remote
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Senior Software Engineer
Jul 2022 - May 2023 · 11 mos
- Cut partner support tickets by 30%+: Built a real-time transaction monitoring pipeline on BigQuery, giving partners instant visibility into payment statuses.
- Onboarded national restaurant chains: Designed adapters for multiple SOAP-based POS systems and REST payment gateways, unlocking integration with major national chains.
- Sub-second payments at peak: Scaled backend services on Firebase and GCP to handle high-throughput payment processing during peak hours.
- React
- Node.js
- TypeScript
- Firebase
- GCP
- BigQuery
- Docker
EMB Software Engineering
Software consultancy delivering cloud-native backends for data-heavy applications.
8 mos · Remote
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Senior Software Engineer & Architect
Sep 2021 - Apr 2022 · 8 mos
- Repeatable client infrastructure: Owned end-to-end AWS deployment with Terraform (VPCs, ECS clusters, RDS, CDN), reused across multiple client projects.
- Shorter delivery cycles: Led API-First technical design, defining data models and interface contracts up front so teams could build in parallel and integrate with less friction.
- Technical Leadership: Managed the full backend lifecycle from specification to production, mentoring engineers and removing blockers across sprints.
- Python
- Django
- React
- Node.js
- AWS
- Docker
- Sanity CMS
- Shopify
- Terraform
- Redis
- PostgreSQL
Citruslabs Techstars
Clinical-trial recruitment platform connecting patients to research.
2 yrs 9 mos · Remote
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Senior Software Engineer
Jan 2019 - Sep 2021 · 2 yrs 9 mos
- Cut customer onboarding from 2 weeks to 1 day (93%): Redesigned the MySQL data model so new trials and customers were set up through configuration instead of custom development.
- Lowered patient recruitment cost: Built automated funnel tracking pipelines (1,000+ responses per trial) that exposed a 10% drop-off, which drove funnel changes that reduced recruitment cost.
- 70% faster time-to-market: Designed and implemented CI/CD workflows with GitHub Actions on AWS, increasing deployment frequency.
- Python
- Angular
- Node.js
- MySQL
- AWS
- Docker
- GitHub Actions
Higglers
Very early-stage London startup. A SaaS platform for event organizers and traders: one place to create an event, find traders, negotiate and pay to be at the event.
8 mos · London, United Kingdom
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Lead Software Engineer
Feb 2018 - Sep 2018 · 8 mos
- Re-designed the architecture: Led the redesign of the software architecture to meet evolving requirements and a new set of features.
- Led the engineering team: Guided and supported the team so tasks shipped on time and to a high standard.
- Wide ownership at a very early stage: Owned large parts of the product and reported directly to the CEO.
- Code reviews and new features: Reviewed code to catch flaws and bugs before they reached the project, and designed and built new features.
- Node.js
- React
- Redux
- Docker
- Heroku
- AWS
- CircleCI
- Git
- PostgreSQL
cloud.IQ PayPal
London startup that uses AI to help online sellers increase sales. I worked on site in the London office.
1 yr 5 mos · London, United Kingdom
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Software Engineer
Oct 2016 - Feb 2018 · 1 yr 5 mos
- From support to development: Started in the support team, learned the product and how clients configure it, then moved into the development team.
- Client self-service dashboard: Part of the team that designed and built a new dashboard so clients could handle their own configuration.
- Simpler setup for clients: Used what I learned in support to build a proof of concept for the new client portal that simplified the configuration process.
- MySQL and MongoDB at scale: Developed against MySQL tables with millions of rows and did data research for reports, plus MongoDB work. This was development and data research, not infrastructure.
- Hiring: Contributed to technical interviews to evaluate candidates.
- Node.js
- React
- Redux
- Apollo
- GraphQL
- Python
- Docker
- GCP
- MySQL
- MongoDB
Critical Software
Software company in Coimbra, Portugal. I worked on a mission-critical project, MobiCS, a short-term car rental system, and on Certitools, a safety and security engineering management application.
1 yr 7 mos · Coimbra, Portugal
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Software Engineer
Feb 2015 - Aug 2016 · 1 yr 7 mos
- Mission-critical delivery: Gathered client feedback and designed features to meet their expectations on a mission-critical project.
- Payments and international invoicing: As MobiCS expanded to Latin America and European countries, refactored the existing payment and invoicing system to support international requirements on both the payment and the invoicing side.
- Revenue kept flowing: Built a custom standalone tool in Java on short notice, so the client could keep charging users while new payment providers were onboarded overseas. Ran it and delivered a results report to the client.
- PostgreSQL, SQL and PL/SQL: Wrote SQL and PL/SQL on PostgreSQL across both projects.
- Java EE 6 and 7: Built features and fixed issues in Java EE 6 and 7 applications using EJB, JPA/Hibernate, JMS and JBoss.
- 24/7 on-call: Resolved production issues and was available for on-call support around the clock.
- Hiring: Worked with the recruitment team to evaluate programming tests for candidates.
- Java
- Java EE
- EJB
- JPA/Hibernate
- JMS
- JBoss
- PostgreSQL
- PL/SQL
- SOAP
- REST
- Maven
- Ant
- JavaScript
- jQuery
Education
MSc in Software Engineering · University of Coimbra · Attended
2013 - · Coimbra, Portugal
BSc in Computer Science · University of Coimbra
2009 - 2014 · Coimbra, Portugal
Languages
- Portuguese - Native
- English - Professional proficiency · Used in daily work communication.
- Spanish & French - Basic proficiency · Able to understand common phrases in professional settings.
Technical skills
- Programming
- Python (Django, FastAPI)JavaScript / TypeScript (Node.js, React)JavaPHPC
- Cloud & Data
- GCPAWSBigQueryKafkaElasticsearchDockerKubernetesTerraform
- Databases
- PostgreSQLMySQLMongoDBRedisFirestore
- CI/CD
- GitHub ActionsCircleCIJenkins
Social skills
- Communication
- Bridging the gap between complex backend architecture and business metrics.
- Leadership
- Led and mentored engineering teams, fostering high-scale engineering cultures.
Interests
IoT problem solver and Arduino enthusiast; home brewing enthusiast.