About
I build software end to end, and I lead the teams that do.
I design, build and run production software end to end: data model, APIs, frontend and deploy pipeline, and more and more, the LLM agents and RAG inside the product.
Background
I'm João Lorenzo, a full-stack and AI engineer based in Brazil.
Since 2024 I've led engineering at Pyp System, the software studio I founded. With a team of five we've shipped seven client products. I also co-founded, and lead engineering for, an AI communication platform built as a joint venture with a Brazilian cloud provider.
Before that I was Tech Lead at Growth 8, a startup accelerator, where I led a team of four to five engineers and co-founded one of its portfolio startups. I started out building C#/.NET systems and government procurement integrations at Abase Sistemas.
Across all of it, the focus stays the same: solving real business problems, not shipping code for its own sake.
How I work
Four principles
Business problems first
Code is the means. I start from what the business needs to change, and I measure the work by whether it changed.
Own what reaches production
Deploys, backups, security reviews and incidents are part of the job, not someone else's. I design for the day something breaks.
Boring infrastructure, small teams
A modular monolith before microservices, and the simplest infrastructure that keeps production safe. Complexity has to earn its place.
AI-native, still accountable
I work spec-first: coding agents generate code, tests and documentation from the spec, and I review, integrate and own what ships. Architecture and production quality remain my responsibility.
Experience
Where I've worked
- Jun 2024 — Present
Founder & Lead Engineer · Pyp System
Software studio building and operating production platforms for clients and joint ventures. Team of five; seven client products shipped.
- Co-founded and lead engineering for a multi-tenant omnichannel AI platform, a joint venture with a Brazilian cloud provider: NestJS + PostgreSQL platform, Python/LangGraph agent engine and a Go WhatsApp gateway.
- Took a subscription travel marketplace from first commit to the App Store and Google Play in about four months (NestJS, Next.js, React Native).
- Product owner and DevOps for a fractional real-estate ownership platform (Turborepo, NestJS, Nuxt).
- Designed zero-downtime blue-green deploys used by every product, and led security audits and production incident response.
- Spec-first, AI-native delivery: coding agents generate code and tests from the spec; I own the architecture, code review and production quality.
- Aug 2023 — Aug 2024
Tech Lead & Full-Stack Developer · Growth 8
Startup accelerator.
- Led a team of four to five engineers taking a product from concept to production in Vue, NestJS and TypeScript.
- Turned requirements from leadership into a technical roadmap and owned deployment and infrastructure.
- Co-founded Cemitério Digital, a portfolio startup, and launched its full platform with subscriptions and payments in two months.
- Dec 2022 — Aug 2023
Web Developer · Abase Sistemas
- Built C#/.NET and ExtJS systems for municipal governments, including integrations with government procurement APIs.
- Led most of the proof-of-concept work used to win and renew municipal contracts.
- Jul 2022 — Dec 2022
IT Support Intern · Unimed Missões
- Led the company-wide email migration to Microsoft 365 with zero data loss.
Skills
Tools I use in production
- Languages
- TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, Go, SQL, C#
- Backend
- Node.js, NestJS, FastAPI, Prisma, PostgreSQL, Redis, BullMQ, Socket.IO
- Frontend & mobile
- Vue 3, Nuxt, React, Next.js, React Native (Expo)
- AI
- LangGraph, LangChain, RAG, Qdrant, Model Context Protocol, OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini
- Infrastructure
- Docker, GitHub Actions, nginx, blue-green deploys, Linux, S3
Education
Technologist Degree (CST), Systems Analysis and Development
UNICIVE · 2025 — expected Dec 2027
Languages
English and Portuguese
Full professional proficiency in English; Portuguese is my native language.