Career Details
Big Data Analyst
ADM Informática (July 2021 - current)
WinForms, C#, NodeJs, AWS Comprehend, AWS Lambda, AWS S3
SQL Server, Postgres, MySQL, Firebird
Github, Jira, Git, Some AI
At ADM Informática I accepted the challenge to work with data migration, helping the company automate the process of onboarding new customers coming from competitors who wished to preserve their data.
The most interesting aspect of the job is "reverse engineering" other companies' databases, because Brazilian law says that companies are allowed to keep their data and move it to other platforms, but there is no specification about how to export such data. So what we get are full databases with no documentation or explanation of how anything is organized so I have to figure it out (and you'd be surprised at how tricky it can be to really understand how these DBs are "designed", most of them barely have relationships between tables).
So in the 2.5 years I've been there I have built internal tools to analyze data, sort it, clear out imperfections such as duplicated or invalid records and normalizing "type" fields. After creating a mapping model from a certain competitor to our systems then the tool is able to automatically generate the migration files (some xml, some custom formats) that the main application would then import.
The tools I build have enabled the company to onboard new customers much faster, a largely manual process that took 90 days to complete now takes 2, especially since I also built an automatic validator to check data integrity after the files are generated and imported on a test database.
I also built a proof-of-concept NodeJs server that used some Lambda functions and AWS Comprehend (a Machine Learning service from AWS) to extract personal data from legal documents such as real estate contracts. It worked out quite well, Comprehend is quite easy to use; so I can say I "worked with AI" for a little bit but it's not one of these new large language models.
Full Stack Developer
NFT Startup (March 2021 - July 2021)
Full Stack with TypeScript, Angular, NodeJs, Opensea API, Metamask
AWS Amplify, Lambda Functions, DynamoDB, S3, Git
I met an "NFT Influencer" on Twitter and helped them create an online marketplace for NFTs integrating with the Opensea APIs. It was looking nice for a while, working with AWS Amplify is really great to speed up development and publication, but the project soon fizzled as the NFT craze died down.
I was the sole developer, solution designer, and had to integrate with the browser wallet Metamask.
Senior Software Engineer
Liberty Insurance (November 2020 - March 2021)
Backend Services in .Net with C#
I was hired by Liberty Insurance to work on an "internal AI system" called "Solvo" that was supposed to be an AI tool that worked as a knowledge base for the company.
Turns out that the only thing AI about it was the name, the code was a bunch of "if" statements stacked to oblivion. After a couple months when I fixed the bugs they had on this thing they transferred me to regular backend development on their main website, and that was managed and published on Microsoft Sharepoint, a terribly outdated tool that was awful to work with.
I felt like I was swindled during the hiring process since they barely mentioned that I would be working on that sort of stuff, so I left.
Senior Software Engineer
Via Varejo (Brazilian Walmart) (November 2019 - November 2020)
Backend Services in .Net MVC with C#
Some NodeJs, Redis Caching, Agile Development, Git
I worked for Brazilian retail giant Via Varejo maintaining highly performant .Net APIs, dealing with thousands of requests per second enabling integrations with many different vendors. A lot of caching with Redis was used.
It was really cool during Black Friday week when the entire company would focus 100% on testing and performance, everything had to be tip top because request numbers would go up 5 to 10 fold in a period of about 10 days.
We worked with Agile development, everything was very compartmentalized, and I was complimented on my technical performance by colleagues and superiors a few times. Creating and optimizing APIs to deliver very high throughputs is an amazing challenge =)
I also created a custom NodeJs server to test our APIs, sending thousands of requests per minute with mock data to measure performance and test out integrations, especially when we had bad data incoming (handling exceptions is expensive). I did it in my "company spare time" without being asked to, and was praised for it.
AWS Senior Developer
Nomad Global - (March 2019 - November 2019)
Full AWS Stack: Lambda, DynamoDB, SQS, SNS, CloudFormation
TypeScript, NodeJs, Postgres Database, Git
I was hired to be part of the very 1st development team at brazilian fintech Nomad.Global, with a tech lead and another .Net developer. We started the solution in a .Net environment with a DDD architecture and things went fine for a couple months.
Then a new investor came in with a few more people and there was a big rift. We scraped everything .Net and moved to a full AWS architecture using every service we could get our hands on. At the time I had superficial AWS knowledge so to update myself a little I got the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification; after the conceptual new architecture was devised, we proceeded with TypeScript, NodeJs and Lambda microservices.
We managed to completely rewrite the solution in a couple months to some success, started integrating with the whitelabel banking APIs to actually process payments, but then another investor came in and they decided to fire a bunch of people, including the "original team" that I was part of.
Freelance Senior Developer
Minera Brasil & Gradual Investimentos (February 2017 - March 2019)
.Net MVC with C#, Angular Frontend, NodeJs with TypeScript
SQL Server Database, NodeJs Express, Crypto Mining integrations, Git
Between 2017 and 2019 I was a freelancer working on projects for Gradual Investimentos where I had previously worked (see below) and Brazilian crypto mining startup Minera Brasil.
With the crypto project the idea was to create a new type of Ethereum mining rig in an octogonal shape that would be enclosed in a shipping container and the whole thing sold for large farms. It was a great concept and the hardware team was superb.
I was the software lead, managing a junior developer and creating the solution that had two big parts: the integration with the miners' telemetry and the frontend for customers to buy the rigs - an online hardware store (that I also made the UI design for).
The telemetry aspect was a lightweight NodeJs Express server (made in TypeScript) to run on the Arduino controller inside the container units. It would connect to each machine via Telnet and save some data locally for redundancy while sending information to the main servers, made in .Net MVC with SQL Server.
The platform had near real-time display of telemetry data and ability to playback past data at will. The local Express servers had high redundancy because we were expected to install these rigs on places with spotty internet connections, so when connection was lost and re-established the container servers were capable of knowing what had been sent already and what wasn't in order to only resend what was needed.
For Gradual Investimentos I designed and built a couple more projects for them to sell financial products to their customers, using Angular and with a .Net MVC backend.
Digital Nomad Consultant
USA, Spain, Thailand, Bulgaria (August 2015 - February 2017)
App development with Angular and Ionic, Solidity Smart Contracts
Between August 2015 and February 2017 I decided with my then wife to leave Brazil and backpack around the World, being digital nomads - working remotely and living wherever the wind would take us.
This was an amazing personal experience where I worked with many different things, such as music production, podcast editing, DJing, and of course doing some coding and development.
At the time Ethereum came out and I was an early adopter of Solidity, and got super interested in it. I was immersed in the community and managed to get to know Vinay Gupta, whom I helped create his meditation app "The Cutting Machinery". I was the sole developer, designing the UI and coding it using Angular and Ionic, and we published it in partnership with The Future Thinkers, also good friends of mine at the time.
I ended up in Bulgaria where they were based and we worked together in a crypto accelerator called Plovdiv.Digital. I was a technical advisor for their ICO whitepaper, and built some proof-of-concept Solidity smart contracts. We ended up not getting funding mostly because at the time the issue of "are crypto assets securities?" scared away investors, understandably.
Senior .Net Developer
Gradual Investimentos (February 2010 - August 2015)
Full Stack development with C#, SQL Server Databases
.Net WebForms, HTML / CSS / jQuery, Git
In 2010 I was hired at Gradual Investimentos, one of the largest stock brokers in Brazil, to create a new Home Broker web application for them because what they used at the time was a Java Applet that was giving customers all sorts of headaches.
In about a month I designed the UI and a Javascript based windowing system using jQuery that mimicked really well the Desktop trading applications that the customers loved.
The backend was a .Net/C# server with lots of caching tricks to make it performant, and the frontend would poll it every second to get the latest stock trading data. This every-second dataset had higher resolution timestamps so we could update the windows every 300ms - displaying faster update rates, despite the real data being just slightly behind; it was a small gap, the users couldn't act on sub-second data, but it was a nice thing to watch.
After that initial project this product lived on for another 8 years, and I proceeded to create their new intranet, because their current customer support application was web-based but relied heavily on popup windows and had a very slow search function; so I created a new intranet from scratch, from the UI design to the custom template-based javascript framework that the rest of the team ended up using on this and other projects.
I also created a custom CMS for their frontend website, where the marketing department could create new pages, insert tabular and graph data, create translations for pages, all that with versions for both public viewing and for logged users.
It was my longest run at a company, staying for 5 years when I left to backpack the World. When I came back they asked me to do another project as a freelancer (mentioned above).
.Net Developer
Carrefour (January 2009 - February 2010)
Full Stack development with C#, SQL Server Databases
.Net WebForms, HTML / CSS / jQuery
I was hired by an agency to do two projects for Carrefour: the first was a web application to manage a drawing that they were doing for a contest, integrating with their sales data to generate tickets that would then give away prizes such as motorbikes, cars and houses.
The application was a backend tool to manage the automatically-generated tickets and once the marketing team inputted the official Brazilian lottery numbers on the database, the system would show the winners and the prizes they got.
The entire web application was made on a rush in about 3 months, and the contest ran for another five. Then I was directed to another project for Carrefour, which was about selling life insurance for customers at the cash register.
This second project was extremely complex because they had very little documentation of what was supposed to be done, there were five different agencies working on different aspects of it, many SOAP APIs to integrate with, and the turnaround of people was measured in weeks. Only I kept going so after some four months I was basically the only person that knew what was going on in a broader sense, making me an accidental project lead.
All sorts of crazy stuff happened... I would wait hours, sometimes an entire day just sitting at Carrefour's front desk waiting for a security clearance to get in despite everyone there already knowing who I was, one day I came into the office and all the desks and computers were gone, I contacted my manager only for them to tell me "sorry I was fired" on three ocasions, there was a DBA that when assisting me with some queries at 5pm just got up and left saying "I have grandchildren at home, I don't do one minute overtime", I saw the vice-president of IT yelling at people on the regular, I saw a project manager diverting money from other projects to pay my overtime because I was working 220+ hours every month, and at the end of about 8 months and a lot of hardship they just canceled the whole project.
.Net Developer, Codebase Maintainer
APB Prodata (November 2006 - November 2008)
Full Stack development with C#, SQL Server Databases
.Net WebForms, HTML / CSS / jQuery, MS Team Foundation Server
At APB Prodata I was a developer working on their bus fleet management web application. They are Brazil's biggest provider of urban mobility software solutions.
Looking back from 2024, those were really "stone age days". When I started there the .Net framework had just been adopted, the source control was made with Visual Source Safe, and the Javascript to put the frontend together was... wild.
After about a year there the codebase was so insane that the company was grinding to a halt: every one code change broke five other things, the web application was installed on customer's servers so there was no auto-updates, and when a customer really needed an update they were scared to install the new versions because they knew stuff would break, since their own development branch probably had custom bug fixes. Their "development branch" was a backup folder in one of the team's developers, and we had to guess who and pray that they hadn't deleted it if we needed to see what was up.
So amidst the chaos at a certain point I suggested that we should first adopt a coding standard, because it was every man for themself and every developer was doing things their own way and also we should adopt "this new thing called Team Foundation Server" because it was a source control system that was integrated with Visual Studio, it had task management (which we were doing with spreadsheets and emails) and also it didn't lock up the files when two people wanted to use the same file at the same time (we had a LOT of issues with that).
To my surprise, our manager told me "alright Luciano so you'll be responsible for all that". Wide-eyed, young me took the challenge. In a week they gave me an entire new server (no cloud computing back then, folks) to install Windows, SQL Server, Team Foundation Server, set it all up, create the users and groups, and write a coding standard for the team to follow.
I did so, we had another meeting to make sure everyone was on board with the coding standard, and from then on every commit had to be approved by me (with some custom flows on TFS that I created) to make sure that the practices were being followed, we had an integrated intranet page that pulled data from the version control system into changelogs and those were attached to customer's install base information. So in a few months we went from total chaos to full control: code quality improved a lot, and we managed to put most customers in the newest versions without much hassle (despite convincing them they could trust us to do so).
After that whole process, I worked on another project at the same company to automatically update marketing media to run on thin clients that were installed on public transportation buses. We created a media center type application to create and edit playlists, those were uploaded to a central server, and at night when the buses went back to the garages they would get the new content for the next day. This worked out well in testing and the software stack was alright, but at the end of the day (or should I say the night) it flopped because the garages were huge, the Access Points couldn't cover the entire area, and as the buses moved around between sections of the site (refueling, cleaning, maintenance) the wi-fi on the thin clients would drop and media downloads would be corrupted. After a lot of trial and error the company figured out that paying a guy with a bunch of USB sticks to update the thin clients by hand on each bus was a lot more reliable and quite a cheap solution, so they did that.
.Net Developer
CSU CardSystem (September 2005 - November 2006)
Full Stack development with C#, SQL Server Databases
.Net WebForms, HTML / CSS
Worked for a credit card company creating backend systems for client companies to manage their white label credit card solutions: printing, issuing, canceling, etc.
Created a high performance service to integrate data from CISC systems into SQL Server Databases (crazy stuff, using sendkeys basically... submitting tab tab enter pgdown enter tab to an emulator).
VB6, Web Design, Shoe Stocking
Boldcron, Aldo Shoes (November 1999 - November 2006)
VB6, ASP before .Net
Access / HTML / CSS / Javascript on IE 5 ;)
I started programming in 1999 when I was 17 in an internship working with MS Access; the first Matrix movie was a big influence too.
I learned HTML, CSS, Javascript, and VB6. In the year 2000 I sold my first desktop application, an appointment/client management system for a dentist.
Then I did some web design for an e-commerce company called Boldcron between 2001 and 2004, that's when I got good at Photoshop and creating 13 different versions of a website for art directors that didn't know what they wanted (the internet was quite different then).
In 2004 I went to England to live in London and I worked there at Aldo Shoes on Oxford Street stocking up shoe boxes. That's when my English got good. I stayed a year then came back to Brazil. Fun times. Love the brits.
Timeline
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Big Data Analyst
@ADM Jul 2021 - Current -
Full Stack Developer
@NFT Startup Mar 2021 - Jun 2021 -
Senior Software Engineer
@Liberty Nov 2020 - Mar 2021 -
Senior Software Engineer
@Via Varejo Nov 2019 - Nov 2020 -
AWS Senior Developer
@Nomad Global Mar 2019 - Nov 2019 -
Freelance Senior Developer
@Minera Brasil Feb 2017 - Mar 2019 -
Digital Nomad Consultant
@The World Aug 2015 - Feb 2017 -
Senior .Net Developer
@Gradual Invest Feb 2010 - Aug 2015 -
Senior .Net Developer
@Carrefour Jan 2009 - Feb 2010 -
.Net Developer
@APB Prodata Nov 2006 - Nov 2008 -
.Net Developer
@CSU Cardsystem Sep 2005 - Nov 2006 -
Pre-history: Web Design, ASP, VB6
@Boldcron, Aldo Oct 1999 - Oct 2004
Design Portfolio
Previously in my career - up until 2010, give or take - I was more of a frontend developer that also did UI/UX, so I've made some logos and sites designs over the years. These are but a few:
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De Au a Miau - Veterinarian search and scheduling
Logo, site design & .Net coding -
120 Minutos - Movie based social network
Logo & site design -
Gradual Home Broker - Stock trading platform
Platform design & .Net coding -
Gradual Quick Cart - Financial product purchase
Site design & .Net coding -
Split ETH - Smart contract generator
Logo, site design & Angular coding -
Grupo Companhia - High living media conglomerate
Site design
