Rafael Gaino
Software Engineer and Leader
About
I have been creating software since 1996, starting in Brazil, then San Francisco, then London, and now back in Brazil where I call home.
My career spans from Engineer to Engineering Manager, and I am currently the CTO and Founding Engineer of scooch.pet.
Even though during my long career I have worked in the whole stack of dozens of applications, I am passionate about working on the Backend. I am skilled in building systems from simple monoliths to complex distributed systems that provide high scalability and performance. Some of the technologies I leverage for this are: AWS, PostgreSQL, Redis, DynamoDB, RabbitMQ, SQS, Kafka, Temporal, and many others. In the frontend my current expertise is in React.
Finally, I also have demonstrable experience in building and fostering teams, both as a technical leader and also as an engineering manager. I've established processses and good practices for teams of 3 and up to 70+such as CI/CD pipelines, code standards, architecture, communication, security, QA and testing, hackathons, performance metrics, etc.
Writing
Work Experience
Scooch is a pre-seed startup in the pet space. I joined as CTO/Founding Engineer, and I am building our pet health platform. Apart from hiring a lean and mean team to build our React/NextJS app and to maintain our Shopify store, I have build the backend as the sole Backend Engineer using NodeJS with TypeScript and Prisma, utilizing PostgreSQL as the main relational database, Redis for caching and API rate limiting and DynamoDB as session token storage, along with integrations with Shopify, Recharge, Sendgrid, Segment, Mixpanel, etc.
I joined Motorway in 2018 as their 3rd Engineer. I've worked on every part of the platform, from React/NextJS frontends to NodeJS backends on a distributed microservices architecture. Besides writing code, I worked with infrastructure and building the company's culture, growing the team, and establish processes for code quality control, tests, hiring, disaster recovery, etc. Along with an incredible team, I helped the company reach its recent $1bn valuation.
In 2021 I was promoted to Tech Lead and remained focused on the Backend and supporting my pillar. I remained focused on the backend, working with NodeJS on a distributed microservices environment hosted on AWS.
In 2022 I was promoted to Engineering Manager.
Assina.ai is a recurring payment platform I built, as founder and sole senior engineer.
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Built the platform using NodeJS/MySQL on the backend and React/Redux on the frontend.
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Selected, interviewed, hired and trained a junior developer to help push the MVP forward.
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Built wireframes and a simple design for the devs to work on, while the designer was being sourced.
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Selected, interviewed, quoted and contracted a brand and interface designer to create the brand and interface for the MVP.
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Worked with the other founder on building a business plan for the first 5 years and the pitch deck, and presented to investors.
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Went live in August 2018 but quickly sold the product and moved to the next opportunity.
As head of the interactive team, I lead the execution and delivery of all digital projects produced for our clients in Brazil, including Nike, Coca-Cola, Subway, Ambev, and others.
Responsible for production of digital campaigns and project management of internal projects. Working closely with the creative team and clients, I was responsible for overseeing the agency efforts to deliver award-winning campaigns for clients such as LG, AT&T, Activision, Lucasfilm among others.
Responsible for implementation of VeriSign's messaging hub product at clients in all of South and Central America. Working closely with sales engineers, the development team and the clients (in Portuguese and Spanish), I was responsible for having VeriSign's clients connected to the messaging hub and allowing its customers to send and receive SMS and MMS messages with all other carriers in the world. One key project I helped deliver was the integration of Telcel, the biggest Mexican carrier with 70 million customers.
inCode Wireless is a consulting company focused in telecommunications which started operations in Brazil in August of 2004. I acted exclusively in customers abroad, mainly in the USA, as a Senior Consultant in Openwave Products (MMSC, MAG, MX, ODM, WebEdge), working in Telefonica’s data center in Miami, supporting their MMSC platform which servers 10 countries in Latin America.
I also acted as a developer in the Wireless Barometer product, that measuses signal quality for the customer carrier. Front-end development in PHP/Apache and interaction with geographic maps using MapServ and a PostgreSQL database, and as Senior Consultant for Apacheta, developing front-end solutions in C# for handhelds and back-end server development in Java.
I also acted as Project Manager for NII Holdings (former Nextel) for the analysis of their provisioning tool upgrade and integration with billing system and for the upgrade of their MMSC platform, managing provisioning tests, as well as their new Mobile Content Distribution Services, Single Sign-on, and WDM (central provisioning repository) upgrade and optimization.
Developer for the Geneva software, deployed at the customer site, Brasil Telecom. Java development using XML and XSL for high performance processing. Internal documentations, requirements analysis, system specifications and test scenarios.
Acted as system analyst and developer for value added services and customer billing. Conducted projects for integration of data and voice platforms, user interface development, SMS billing systems, customer provisioning and credits sales control. While at Tess I was part of the small team who developed the carriers' first SMS gateway allowing customers to send messages to other carriers and also utilize short codes to check their pre-paid balance among other things.
Tess was later acquired by Claro, the largest carrier in Latin America.