About Me

I've always been curious about how things work and how they can be made better. Growing up in Joinville, Brazil, I spent a lot of time drawing and became interested in computers when my family got our first one. My dad noticed both interests and suggested that I learn AutoCAD. Once I learned how to draw parts on a computer, my next question was simple: how are these parts actually made?

That question led me to a machining apprenticeship at SENAI, then to Mechanical Projects, product design, and eventually Production and Systems Engineering. I worked full-time while studying at night, and each experience seemed to create the next question. Designing parts made me interested in how they were manufactured. Manufacturing made me interested in production systems. Engineering projects made me interested in how people, information, materials, and processes fit together.

That curiosity eventually led me to software. While managing engineering at JVC Precision, I was trying to improve workflows that depended heavily on spreadsheets and disconnected information. I had also worked with ERP systems before and knew how difficult they could be to adapt to the actual needs of a company. I started building an internal system as a temporary solution while improving the processes and looking for a better ERP. But the temporary solution kept growing, eventually connecting much of the business, from sales and engineering to production, procurement, shipping, and quality.

By 2019, I realized I was becoming more interested in software than traditional engineering. I started studying Java, JavaScript, PHP, databases, and software architecture, initially thinking about how I could build a more robust version of the system I had created. When I moved to British Columbia in 2021, I decided to test whether software development should become my career. I joined 7Gen part-time, later moved into software development full-time, and found that I enjoyed working professionally with software as much as I had hoped.

Nengatu grew from many of those experiences. After years of working with manufacturing systems and seeing the limitations of traditional ERP software, I wanted to explore what I would build if I could start from the foundations instead of adapting old workflows. That became a multi-year project spanning product decisions, software architecture, backend and frontend development, cloud infrastructure, deployment, and direct conversations with users.

The tools I use have changed a lot over the years, but the motivation behind the work has stayed surprisingly similar. I enjoy building things and creating solutions that remove unnecessary work. The simplest way I describe it is: I enjoy making life easier; it doesn't matter if it's for me or someone else.

I approach learning in much the same way. I prefer understanding concepts instead of memorizing terminology, usually creating a scenario in my head where a new idea could be useful before applying it to a real problem. From there, I go deeper into documentation and specifications when I need the details to implement it properly. That approach has helped me move across machining, mechanical design, manufacturing, engineering leadership, project management, and software without feeling like I was starting over every time.

Outside of work, music has been one of the constants in my life. I started playing guitar at 14 and was teaching a few neighborhood kids not long afterward. Years later, music also introduced me to my wife when we formed a classic rock band during university. I still play guitar today, and one of my personal software projects, Pratica Tool, brings that long-time interest together with something else I enjoy: building tools that solve problems I experience myself.