Scale & Leadership
20 years of building teams from zero, scaling organizations, and creating systems that multiply output. Here's how I think about growing engineering.
2
Startups founded
40+
Engineers at peak
3.9M
MAUs served
7
Squads directed
Building from Zero
Starting with nothing and creating teams that ship
TargetBeyond
2012–2017 · Brazil → LATAM & Europe
20+ products shipped
Founded and scaled a 20+ person consultancy
Started as a solo freelancer. Built a distributed engineering organization across Brazil, Argentina, and Portugal. Delivered 20+ software products to clients in banking, betting, and manufacturing. Managed everything: hiring, architecture, vendors, budgets, and client relationships.
Learned: How to build trust with clients, hire across borders, and deliver under constraints.
LivingOffset
2017–2018 · Dublin, Ireland
Full product from 0
Built climate-tech startup from first hire to MVP
Founded a carbon offsetting platform using blockchain for transparency. Recruited and led a 9-person cross-functional team (engineering, product, design). Developed Ethereum-based tracking integrated with verified carbon APIs. Shipped a polished MVP and ran pilot programs.
Learned: Lean validation, building conviction in a team when the path is unclear.
Scaling Teams & Systems
Growing organizations without losing speed or quality
Farfetch
2019–2022 · Porto, Portugal
3.9M MAUs served
Grew Identity engineering from 1 to 4 squads
Inherited a single team responsible for authentication and account management. Over three years, scaled to 4 squads with 15+ engineers. The platform grew to serve 3.9 million monthly active users. Launched unified Farfetch Login, reducing login-related support tickets by 50%. Implemented CI/CD automation for daily deployments.
Learned: Hiring senior engineers, creating team autonomy while maintaining coherence.
Primer
2022–2023 · London, UK (Remote)
40+ engineers
Directed 7 squads, ~40 engineers, 50% of company output
Led Commerce and Payment Experience—the largest engineering group at Primer. Re-architected checkout services to accelerate feature delivery by 80%. Authored engineering principles and progression framework adopted company-wide. Orchestrated a 33% org restructure without impacting delivery timelines.
Learned: Manager-of-managers craft, two-way decision making, remote-first culture.
Rauva
2024–2025 · Portugal
50% throughput increase
Restructured 20+ engineer org for 50% throughput boost
Joined as Head of Engineering to fix delivery bottlenecks. Decentralized leadership by promoting engineering leads. Shifted to iterative, decision-driven sprints. Implemented DORA metrics and quality KPIs. Result: 50% increase in team throughput and 66% bug reduction in one quarter.
Learned: Sometimes the fix is structure, not headcount.
Multiplying Output
Creating leverage through systems, not just adding people
Primer
2022 · London, UK (Remote)
15x faster onboarding
Cut third-party onboarding from 1 month to 2 days
Payment processors needed weeks of back-and-forth to integrate with Primer. Built developer-focused APIs and self-serve tooling. Reduced onboarding time by 15x. This unlocked faster partnership deals and reduced engineering support burden.
Learned: Developer experience is a multiplier for the whole business.
Farfetch
2020 · Porto, Portugal
90% faster releases
CI/CD automation for 90% faster release cadence
Releases were painful and slow—manual processes, fear of breakage. Implemented automated pipelines, testing gates, and deployment tooling. Moved from weekly releases to daily deployments. Engineers could ship with confidence.
Learned: Invest in the release process and everything downstream improves.
CWI Software
2007–2010 · Brazil
90% time saved
Built code generation tools that cut dev time by 90%
Early in career, noticed repetitive boilerplate across projects. Created internal tools that auto-generated standard code patterns. Introduced company-wide unit testing and CI. Started the habit of building tools that multiply team output.
Learned: Tooling mindset—always look for the repeatable problem.