Full-stack architect and engineer with three decades of proven experience delivering scalable, high-performance systems. From bare-metal to the cloud, from monolith to microservices — I've built it, shipped it, and maintained it.
I've spent 30 years doing the one thing that never gets old: solving hard problems with well-crafted software. I started writing code when the web was barely a concept, and I've evolved with every major shift in the industry — from client-server to cloud-native, from procedural to functional and object-oriented, from bare-metal deployments to containerized microservices at scale.
I'm equally at home designing a high-throughput data pipeline, architecting a distributed system, and shipping a polished front-end. I believe clean code, strong tests, and simple systems are the foundation of everything that lasts — and I bring that discipline to every project I touch.
I've worked across startups, enterprises, and regulated industries — building things from scratch and untangling decades of technical debt. I mentor teams, lead architecture decisions, and stay close to the code. That's where the real work gets done.
Three decades means I've not just learned these technologies — I've watched them evolve, and adapted with them.
Three decades of evolving technologies, growing responsibilities, and consistent delivery.
Lead architect for a distributed platform serving millions of daily active users. Redesigned the core data pipeline from a fragile monolith to a horizontally scalable event-driven system. Established engineering standards, led a team of 12, and drove adoption of DDD and clean architecture principles across multiple product lines.
Core engineer on a payments platform processing $2B+ in annual transactions. Owned the API layer, security architecture, and front-end dashboard used by 50,000+ merchants. Led the migration from a legacy stack to a modern cloud-native architecture with zero downtime.
Led development of a HIPAA-compliant patient management system used by 300+ clinics nationwide. Built the data integration layer that synchronized records across legacy EHR systems and a modern API-driven platform. Managed a 6-person engineering team and drove code quality initiatives that reduced production incidents by 70%.
Delivered end-to-end solutions across a diverse client portfolio spanning logistics, retail, and government. Grew from individual contributor to leading client engagements and owning technical delivery. Deep experience in relational database design, n-tier architectures, and early web application development during the formative years of the public internet.
Started writing code professionally before the commercial web existed. Built desktop applications, data entry systems, and early client-server architectures. Developed the discipline and fundamentals that still underpin my engineering approach today.
Real problems. Real solutions. Measurable outcomes.
Legacy batch-reporting system caused 12–24 hour data delays, blocking business decisions and frustrating enterprise clients.
Designed and built an event-driven streaming pipeline ingesting 50M+ events/day with sub-second dashboard latency using Azure Event Hub, Stream Analytics, and a React-based dashboard.
20-year-old ERP system on a deprecated stack, with no tests, no documentation, and a team afraid to touch it.
Led a 3-year incremental modernization using the strangler fig pattern — extracting modules into microservices while keeping production running continuously throughout. TDD from day one.
Single-tenant monolith unable to onboard new enterprise clients without custom deployments — killing growth.
Architected a multi-tenant API platform with row-level security, tenant isolation, OAuth 2.0 authentication, and a self-service developer portal — all without touching the core business logic.
Healthcare provider needed a patient-facing web portal that integrated with 5 legacy EHR systems without a shared API standard.
Built an abstraction layer and unified GraphQL API over FHIR-mapped data, with end-to-end encryption, audit logging, and a WCAG 2.1 AA-compliant React front-end.
E-commerce platform's order system buckled under Black Friday traffic, causing lost orders and angry customers.
Rebuilt the order pipeline as an async, message-driven architecture with idempotent handlers, dead-letter queues, and auto-scaling workers. Load tested to 10× peak capacity.
Legal firm managing 500K+ documents with no intelligent search — employees spent hours finding precedents manually.
Built a document intelligence platform integrating vector search and LLM summarization with the existing document management system, wrapped in a clean React UI with semantic query support.
Carlos has an extraordinary ability to take a vague problem, ask the right three questions, and come back with an architecture that's both elegant and practical. He's the kind of engineer who makes everyone around him better — and the systems he builds still work flawlessly years later.
In 20 years of managing engineering teams, I've met very few people with Carlos's combination of technical depth and communication clarity. He's as comfortable presenting architecture tradeoffs to the board as he is reviewing a PR. A rare find at any level.
We brought Carlos in to rescue a failing legacy migration. Within two weeks he had diagnosed the root causes, proposed a path forward, and started shipping fixes. The system he rebuilt now processes 10× the load with a fraction of the incidents. He's simply exceptional.
Whether you have a specific project in mind or just want to explore how I might help — I'd like to hear from you.