RUBENS RAFAEL

Rubens Rafael

Full stack software engineer

I build web products end to end, from interfaces and APIs to integrations, infrastructure, and AI features. At GitStart, I work on products for different clients.

Portrait of Rubens Rafael

Education & credentials

Academic background and certifications

Postgraduate Degree, Computer Software EngineeringEstácio · 2025
Associate Degree (CST), Systems Analysis and DevelopmentEstácio · 2022–2024
Certifications6
Análise e desenvolvimento de sistemasEstácio · Jan 2025
Spread Full Stack DeveloperDigital Innovation One Inc. · May 2022
Programa de Treinamento Hiring Coders
HTML Web DeveloperDigital Innovation One Inc. · Jun 2021
Inter Front End DeveloperDigital Innovation One Inc. · Feb 2022
Software EngineerEstácio
GitStartSoftware Engineer · 2022–present

On-demand engineering for external clients, internal projects, and open source contributions. Experience across different codebases and stacks such as React, Node.js, and GraphQL.

FreelanceFull Stack Developer · 2022–2026

Client web development projects, including Talentz, the spycode-io job platform, and the Dinâmicas Terapêuticas app.

Own ProductsIdeation & development · 2026–present

Products built outside GitStart with teammates for the Brazilian market: MoneyFy and Licify. The work spans data modeling, external integrations, user experience, and implementation.

Personal ProjectsIdeation & development · 2025–2026

Projects built solo from idea through end-to-end execution. Calamo and Floggy span data modeling and SDK work through production infrastructure, queues, billing, and self-managed deployment.

Projects

Click a card to flip it and see the technical challenge behind it.

Experience:
2026
BROWSER INFRA

Google Chromium

Test automation engineering work in the Chromium ecosystem, focused on supporting and evolving WebDriver/ChromeDriver for Android and the platform's shared code components.

BROWSER INFRA

Google Chromium

Challenge: Contributing in low-level languages and complex ecosystems (C++ and Java) with no prior experience in them, using AI as a learning lever to navigate the codebase, write code aligned with the project's rigorous standards, and review teammates' PRs.

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2026
CONSUMER FINTECH

MoneyFy

Built MoneyFy from scratch, a personal finance app with WhatsApp as the interface: backend architecture, data modeling, and the AI agent that interprets user messages.

CONSUMER FINTECH

MoneyFy

An agent pipeline decides the action from the user's message — text, audio, or a receipt. Hotmart and Mercado Pago as payment integrations, handling onboarding and subscriptions.

Challenge: Keeping the agent accurate on a small, cheap model (GPT-5 nano) instead of a larger one, tuning reasoning per call type to control cost without losing reliability.

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2026
B2G SAAS

Licify

Contributed to a B2G SaaS for Brazilian public-procurement intelligence (still under development), centralizing PNCP data for suppliers bidding on government contracts.

B2G SAAS

Licify

A custom ETL ingests and normalizes data from PNCP (Brazil's National Public Procurement Portal) into a dedicated data warehouse; documents live in Cloudflare R2, uploaded and read through signed URLs that never touch the backend.

Challenge: Joined after the platform was already founded, focused on improving performance and the product's overall experience — optimizing existing flows without breaking what was already working.

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2025–2026
AI AGENT TOOLING

Calamo

Solo build of Calamo, a no-code backend builder: define objects and actions visually and publish each one as a REST route or an MCP tool, ready for an AI agent to call directly, no server code required.

AI AGENT TOOLING

Calamo

NestJS and Next.js monorepo, with Postgres via Prisma/Knex for user-defined data, Mongo for execution logs, a Redis/BullMQ queue, Stripe billing, and a built-in AI chat (OpenAI Agents SDK) that helps build objects and actions in natural language.

Challenge: Designing a single action engine that automatically generates both REST routes and MCP tools from the same definition, including safe dynamic DDL on Postgres for every object the user creates or changes, without duplicating logic between the two exposure formats.

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2026
FEATURE FLAGS PLATFORM

Floggy

Self-hosted feature-flags platform with a dashboard, API, and TypeScript SDK. Applications evaluate flags locally, without calling the server for every decision.

FEATURE FLAGS PLATFORM

Floggy

Monorepo with NestJS, React, and Redis. The SDK keeps an in-memory cache and synchronizes flags in the background.

Challenge: Evaluating boolean, percentage, and group-targeted flags on the client while keeping cache consistency and latency low.

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2026
FREELANCE

Dinâmicas Terapêuticas

Rebuilt a vibe-coded app for its owner, adding a protected members area and a checkout integrated with Appmax.

FREELANCE

Dinâmicas Terapêuticas

The prototype exposed paid content. While investigating sales, I found that the old webhook had not recorded buyers in the database; I rebuilt access control and payment confirmation.

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2025–2026
FINTECH SAAS

Alaan

Backend refactoring and architectural migration, moving business logic out of the modules of an Express.js monorepo into an object-oriented microservices architecture built with NestJS.

FINTECH SAAS

Alaan

Challenge: Mapping the coupled dependencies between the monorepo's modules and transposing the business rules into isolated NestJS microservices, while preserving each module's original behavior.

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2025–2026
VERTICAL SAAS

Revi Pulse

Built Revi Pulse from scratch, a Website Builder platform for partner restaurants that lets each business create, customize, and publish its own site with the Revi menu and ordering platform natively integrated.

VERTICAL SAAS

Revi Pulse

The architecture is a single Next.js application that dynamically renders hundreds of distinct sites based on the request host, using the Cloudflare API for custom domains and wildcard subdomains.

Challenge: Building a dynamic, high-performance multi-tenant architecture from scratch, able to render and route multiple sites and custom domains from a single deploy instance, with automated SSL/DNS provisioning via Cloudflare.

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2025–2026
DEV TOOLING

OutSystems

Integration and support for the custom OutSystems Expression language inside the Monaco Editor within the company dashboard.

DEV TOOLING

OutSystems

The delivery included custom syntax themes, language parsing, and autocomplete/IntelliSense logic.

Challenge: Integrating OutSystems' proprietary syntax into the Monaco Editor, adapting the language's parsing and real-time dynamic code suggestions without hurting the editor's in-browser performance.

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2024
COMPLIANCE SAAS

Drata (Project Cosmos)

Worked on Project Cosmos, building a robust unit and integration test suite for the client's internal UI component library.

COMPLIANCE SAAS

Drata (Project Cosmos)

The suite ensures full coverage for design-system components — both functional behavior and strict accessibility (a11y) conformance.

Challenge: Guaranteeing the integrity, resilience, and accessibility conformance of the company's global components before downstream consumption, by simulating complex interface interactions.

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2024
INDUSTRIAL SAAS

First Resonance

Migrated and modernized the company's Design System, replacing legacy inline-CSS styling with a modularized CSS Modules architecture.

INDUSTRIAL SAAS

First Resonance

The migration included new features, behaviors, and visual adjustments on the components, with regression validated via Storybook and Chromatic, in a local npm-link workflow between the library and the main application.

Challenge: Progressively migrating the component library with zero visual or behavioral regression on the main dashboard — validated with automated visual tests in Chromatic — while establishing a safe local-linking workflow between the two repositories.

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2024
MARKETING ANALYTICS

HockeyStack

Legacy modernization and new analytics integrations for the product.

MARKETING ANALYTICS

HockeyStack

Progressive migration of old PUG (Jade) pages to modern React components, plus campaign/marketing parameter (UTM) capture and tracking integrated with the LinkedIn Ads platform.

Challenge: Refactoring the legacy PUG view layer to React while keeping visual consistency, alongside shipping reliable UTM capture for B2B campaigns.

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2024
CONSUMER / MOBILE

Ideel

Targeted UI development and adjustments for new platform pages, covering both the web application and the hybrid mobile app.

CONSUMER / MOBILE

Ideel

Challenge: Keeping design fidelity and cross-platform visual consistency between the Web and Mobile versions.

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2024
AI WRITING TOOLS

Jenni AI

Continuous UI/UX and usability improvements on the platform's core text editor, plus a mid-size refactor of the styling and display system for in-app action notifications.

AI WRITING TOOLS

Jenni AI

Challenge: Refactoring the notification styling system without introducing visual breaks or regressions in the editor writing experience.

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2024
TRAVEL / BOOKING

Zaui

Implemented the portal's full rebranding process.

TRAVEL / BOOKING

Zaui

The delivery required building a reusable Vue component library from scratch, covering every visual variant, state, and behavior needed for the brand relaunch.

Challenge: Structuring a flexible Vue component architecture to support the full site rebrand while keeping consistency and code reuse.

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2023–2025
PRODUCTIVITY SAAS

Workflow (formerly Opine)

A platform for organizing collaborative notes on documents and websites with a team.

PRODUCTIVITY SAAS

Workflow (formerly Opine)

The work included migrating the web app from JavaScript to TypeScript and transitioning legacy Ruby microservices to Node.js, plus other general improvements across the platform.

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2023–2024
OPEN SOURCE → CLIENT

Cal.com

Started as an open-source contribution that, thanks to the quality and impact of the team's results, turned into a formal direct client contract.

OPEN SOURCE → CLIENT

Cal.com

The work covered visual refactors and general UI/UX improvements across the platform, plus e2e test coverage.

Challenge: Adapting and improving the UI in a large-scale, high-visibility open-source repository, while holding rigorous code standards and compatibility with the Next.js architecture.

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2023–2024
DEVTOOL CRM

Twenty

Started as an open-source contribution that evolved into direct client work.

DEVTOOL CRM

Twenty

The scope ranged from UI refactors and bug fixes to custom ESLint rules for team-wide code standards, plus critical features like complex composite inputs that required database migrations.

Challenge: Building complex, full-stack features — from database migrations to frontend state management with Recoil — in a modular open-source CRM platform.

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2023
AI WRITING TOOLS

Spellbound

Continuous UI/UX polish directly on the application's interactive email editor, focused on usability, visual fluidity, and precision of the graphic elements.

AI WRITING TOOLS

Spellbound

Challenge: Raising the editor's visual refinement and usability while keeping precise, predictable rendering of the generated emails.

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2023
WELLNESS

Vivoo

Frontend development focused on implementing and updating the brand's official website interface, ensuring strict technical fidelity to the Figma prototypes and design system.

WELLNESS

Vivoo

Challenge: Translating complex, responsive Figma prototypes into reusable, fluid, and performant components in the Vue ecosystem.

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2023
DATA INFRA

Hash.ai

My part of a broader website-modernization project for Hash.ai: building the dedicated technical documentation area, using MDX (MDXJS).

DATA INFRA

Hash.ai

The implementation allowed interactive, styled React components to be embedded directly inside Markdown files, letting the content team write dynamic, visually rich documentation.

Challenge: Creating a styled component ecosystem fully integrated with the MDX parser, keeping Markdown's writing flexibility combined with React's interactive power.

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2023
HEADLESS CMS

Directus

Open source contributions through GitStart, with targeted fixes to the Directus admin interface.

HEADLESS CMS

Directus

Small behavior and usability improvements to UI components.

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2022–2023
NO-CODE PLATFORM

TrySavvy

Continuous evolution and new features/integrations for the TrySavvy no-code platform, built for Growth and Engineering teams to create and test dynamic experiences (landing pages, quizzes, slide-style onboarding flows).

NO-CODE PLATFORM

TrySavvy

The app engine used an Express server reading JSON structures and dynamically serving HTML, with frontend interactivity orchestrated via Stimulus.js, and quality assured by a full Cypress e2e test suite.

Challenge: Expanding the existing ecosystem with new features and external integrations (Airtable) without compromising the stability of the Express/Stimulus.js Server-Driven UI architecture.

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2022
OBSERVABILITY

Grafana

Open source contributions through GitStart, fixing panels and dashboards and updating frontend tests.

OBSERVABILITY

Grafana

The PRs covered charts, tables, tooltips, and notifications, plus fixes in Loki and Tempo.

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2022
ANALYTICS

Metabase

Open source contributions through GitStart to visualizations, filters, and query editor flows.

ANALYTICS

Metabase

The PRs fixed bar charts, pivot tables, date filters, and focus after rerunning SQL queries.

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2022
FREELANCE

Talentz

My first project as a developer: freelance frontend work on Talentz, a technology job-listing platform by spycode-io, built with React, GraphQL, and Fastify.

FREELANCE

Talentz

Challenge: Breaking into the field with zero prior professional experience, learning on the job. It was a freelance project that never moved past this early stage — it never actually launched.

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