About Me
“If AI can understand emotions, surely it can understand why my code works on localhost but breaks in production!”
I’m a senior full-stack engineer with over 15 years of experience, specializing in connecting complex AI capabilities with user-friendly interfaces. Skilled in front-end development (React, TypeScript, Next.js), I focus on making AI accessible and relevant.
From optimizing interfaces for humanitarian efforts in Syria to collaborating with researchers on audio processing, I balance technical skill with human empathy. I create applications that not only work seamlessly but also respond to user needs.
Work Experience
Engineering Leadership: Promoted to Principal Engineer and unofficial tech lead of one of the product teams. Led cross-functional teams while establishing technical vision for secure web applications. Besides my daily individual contributions to frontend and back-end codebases, I was also responsible for many other initiatives: defining engineering culture, technical stack decisions, maintaining excellence across teams, developing the technical parts of the hiring process, mentoring, and a few more things.
AI-Powered Solutions: Collaborated closely with AI researchers, ML specialists, and ETL data engineers to deliver user-facing applications leveraging complex AI capabilities. Integrated advanced audio processing systems for transcription, denoising, and translation across multiple languages, expanding into image processing solutions for humanitarian crisis response.
Frontend Architecture: Architected mission-critical applications using React, TypeScript, and Next.js with MUI components, focusing on Core Web Vitals optimization. Implemented React GL for complex geospatial interfaces, delivering interactive mapping solutions for humanitarian early warning systems.
Performance Optimization: Used standard frontend profiling tooling to detect performance bottlenecks, crucial for the resource-constrained environments our users face. Implemented code-splitting, lazy loading, and SSR/SSG techniques to reduce bundle sizes and improve application load times. Advanced React rendering optimizations were also implemented to create a great UX.
Progressive Web Applications: Engineered offline-first PWAs with sophisticated local-first, optimistic UI and RTL support. These optimized apps are essential for our users in Syria who face challenging environments with intermittent connectivity and operate on low-cost mobile devices.
Modern Development Stack: Migrated many repositories to modern JavaScrtipt developing tools like pnpm, Vite, and Vitest. Replaced a couple of GraphQL-based applications with NextJS, leveraging its server-side rendering and easy API integration between client and server.
Serverless Architecture: Designed and implemented distributed serverless applications using AWS CDK, SST, Serverless framework, and Terraform. This approach significantly reduced our operational burden, simplified compliance to security requirements, and increased our speed and agility.
As Eddisrupt’s ambassador, my goal is to promote our mission to disrupt the education sector by providing high-quality learning materials and mentoring programs for an accessible price. I produce content like blog posts, presentations, and workshops concerning software engineering topics. The best part is mentoring our students to become great software engineers and applying for their first jobs in the industry.
Founding Product Team Member: Selected as one of the first employees to establish the Lisbon office product team, solving real problems for VW’s customers and dealerships. Developed client relationships through effective written and verbal communication and applied critical thinking to complex dealership workflows. I completed intensive onboarding in Berlin with our experienced German colleagues and quickly adopted Extreme Programming (XP) practices, including test-driven development and pair programming.
Frontend Excellence: Architected responsive, accessible web applications using React and TypeScript with Storybook for component documentation. Significantly improved rendering performance by introducing and teaching MobX state management to the team, creating architecture patterns that were adopted across multiple teams.
Engineering Practices: Embraced DevOps culture with Infrastructure as Code, AWS cloud services, and GitHub Actions for continuous integration pipelines. Championed TDD with Jest and React Testing Library while implementing end-to-end testing with NightwatchJS to ensure cross-browser compatibility.
Technical Leadership: Conducted technical interviews through collaborative pairing sessions using TDD methodologies, coaching colleagues on effective technical assessment techniques to strengthen the organization’s hiring processes.
Full-Stack Development: Built robust backend services and REST APIs using Golang and Kotlin with PostgreSQL databases, applying domain-driven design principles. Additionally, I designed and developed the company’s first public website (vwds.pt), creating an engaging digital presence showcasing our software development capabilities and innovative approach.
Product Development Team
Interactive Data Visualization: Developed advanced reporting features for web applications with interactive graphs and data visualizations using React, Redux, and Recharts, which enabled customers to derive actionable insights from call center data. Reporting data asembled from SQL and NoSQL databases.
Full-Stack Implementation: Built responsive, data-rich interfaces in cross-functional teams using React, Redux Sagas, and Apollo Client (GraphQL) for efficient data fetching while also integrating with legacy BackboneJS components during the transition to a modern architecture.
Build System Optimization: Enhanced development workflows by configuring Webpack, Babel, and Gulp pipelines with continuous integration, resulting in improved build times and an enhanced developer experience.
Testing & Quality: Implemented comprehensive test suites using Jest, Mocha, and Enzyme, ensuring component reliability and preventing regressions in critical customer-facing features while meeting security requirements for enterprise software.
Design System Leadership
Component Library Architecture: Acted as the unofficial tech lead for the proprietary UI framework and Design System team by creating reusable, accessible React components that guaranteed consistent user experiences across enterprise applications.
Cross-Team Collaboration: Conducted onboarding sessions for product teams adopting the Design System, providing technical guidance and support while managing component releases and documentation. Applied critical thinking to establish technical vision for component architecture and minimizing upgrade pain.
Developer Experience: Documented components using Storybook to create interactive examples, accelerating adoption and maintaining design consistency throughout the organization.
Mentorship & Growth: Coached summer interns on frontend best practices and Design System implementation, guiding their project work and fostering professional development in a supportive environment.
Worked in the Enterprise Solutions division as a consultant. Mainly working with Java, JSF 2.2, Primefaces, JavaScript, and CSS. Using JBoss Stack.
In my 3 years in the company, I had 3 different roles: Adobe Air developer where we developed a mobile application for the Blackberry Playbook tablet.
Customer Support Engineer where we helped our customers migrate their digital publications from our platform to Adobes.
Mobile Web Developer specialist where we tackled all things web development for mobile devices. I also gave customers and partners training on how to develop performant interactive widgets and interactive single-page applications done with web technologies. Mainly working with DOJO, SAS & Web Canvas.
Part of an Agile Scrum team, mainly a Java developer using technologies like GigaSpaces, Spring, Hibernate, JDBC, and Maven. Deployment, customization, and extension of JCR CMS (Jackrabbit, Hippo 7, Magnolia, Alfresco). I started as an AIESEC Technical Trainee but got a temporary position after my term as a trainee was over.
Indie Apps
It’s a native Qt/Cascades BlackBerry 10 app made entirely by myself. From idea, design to coding. It’s main purpose is to upload Remember app data to Microsoft OneNote. It’s multi-threaded and relies on OneNote REST API. Yes, it was made on the road while I travelled the world.
It was an independent learning side project where some friends and I developed a native Qt/Cascades BlackBerry 10 app for multi touch image editing. I was the team leader and lead developer.
Skills
- Leadership
- Coaching & Menthoring
- Automated testing
- Public speaking
- AWS
- React
- NextJS
- TypeScript
- Javascript / ES6
- NodeJS
- HTML
- CSS
- Git
- Go
- Kotlin
- Java
Languages
- Portuguese (native)
- English (fluent)
- Spanish (basic)
- Dutch (basic)
Education
Java SE 6 Programmer
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Oracle Certified Professional
Bachelor, Computer Science
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Universidade de Brasília Brasília, Brazil
Volunteering
Teaching the basics of web development with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and their best practices. Also coached students in applying for job positions.
We were building a small kitchen for a elderly home in a poor neighborhood of town.
Part of the Talent Management team. Our goal was to help Brasília’s Local Committee members to have a great and full AIESEC Experience. I got training and practice with planning and creating personal development plan, giving feedback, mentoring and coaching.
Helped in the organization an planning of the weekend event. It wastwo days full of play, games, fun and care. This was my first volunteering experience and it has an striking effect on me. If it wasn’t for this experience probably I would not have joined other volunteering organisations.
Gap Year
My wife and I decided to do something extraordinary to celebrate our 30th birthday: fulfill our dreams! Our Bucket List took us on a worldwide journey that took 13 months, from February 2015 to March 2016. We did a lot of planning, preparations, and some sacrifices but it was worth it. It was a life-changing experience that taught us we can make our dreams come true. Some of our stories are in our travel blog Explorers 3.0.
Technical Skills & Leadership Qualities
Hard Skills
Software Development & Web Applications
- Core Technologies: TypeScript, JavaScript (ES6+), React, Next.js.
- UI/UX: Responsive Design, Accessibility (WCAG), Core Web Vitals Optimization, Semantic HTML, PWA.
- Component Libraries: MUI, Tailwind CSS, Bootstrap, Storybook.
- Build Tools: Vite, Webpack, Rollup, Babel, Gulp, Grunt
State Management & Data
- Libraries: Redux, Redux Saga, MobX, XState Store, React Hook Form
- Data Fetching: GraphQL, Apollo Client/Server, REST APIs, Axios
Testing & Quality Assurance
- Unit & Integration: Jest, Vitest, React Testing Library, Enzyme, Mocha
- End-to-End Testing: Cypress, NightwatchJS, Cucumber
- Methodologies: Test-Driven Development (TDD), Behavior-Driven Development
DevOps & Infrastructure
- Cloud Platforms: AWS
- IaC & Deployment: AWS CDK, SST, Serverless Framework, Terraform
- CI/CD: GitHub Actions, Circle CI, Jenkins, Continuous Integration
Monitoring: Sentry, Datadog, AWS CloudWatch. Google Analytics and Hotjar. - Security: Implementation of security requirements, Auth protocols, OWASP best practices
Backend & Full-Stack
- Languages: JS/TS, Node.js, Golang, Kotlin, Java.
- Databases: AWS Aurora, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB.
- Architecture: Serverless Applications, Event-Driven Architecture, Microservices.
- Performance Focus: Measuring performance bottlenecks across the stack, optimizing applications for challenging environments.
AI & Data Integration
- AI/ML collaboration: Partnering with data scientists and ML engineers.
- Integration: AI/ML model integration, ETL pipelines.
- Domains: Audio processing, large language models (LLM) for semantic change detection, and geospatial data.
Soft Skills & Leadership
Engineering Leadership
- Technical Direction: Architecture design, technology selection, standards setting, OKR setting and tracking.
- Team Building: Technical hiring, onboarding, mentoring junior engineers.
- Culture Development: Establishing engineering excellence, promoting best practices, and values discovery.
Cross-Functional Product Development
- User-Centric Design: Translating complex requirements into usable interfaces.
- Stakeholder Management: Working with product, design, legal, security, support, and research teams.
- Client Interaction: Understanding user needs, direct customer communication, and managing relationships.
Personal Attributes
- Adaptability: Quickly learning new technologies and methodologies.
- Communication: Strong written and verbal communication for technical and non-technical audiences. Public speaking.
- Resilience: Successfully delivering under pressure in mission-critical contexts.
- Problem Solving: Critical thinking, analytical approach to complex technical challenges, finding technical solutions for real-world problems.
- Attitude: Positive, inclusive, cheerful, active listener, and supportive when giving candid feedback.