Director of Engineering at SwissBorg. I scale engineering teams in fintech and crypto with aviation-inspired operational discipline β structured briefings, blameless debriefs, and relentless continuous improvement. Hands-on with automation across departments, driving our AI transformation strategy.
π Lisbon, Portugal
β ExploreSole Director in the engineering organisation and right hand to the Head of Engineering across 8 teams. Setting delivery standards and shaping engineering strategy for the challenges ahead.
Scaled engineering from 30 to 70+, shipped a 21M CHF Series A crowdfunding platform, and led the Identity team delivering continuous PSAN / MiCA compliance for 900k+ users.
Joined to build and lead a team in the crypto space. Established Kanban practices org-wide and drove gamification on the Loyalty side of the app (3.5M BORG purchased).
Led a solutions team of 4 focused on fast prototyping and proof-of-concept delivery for enterprise clients, owning projects end-to-end.
First engineer at the startup. Built a scalable Layer 2 solution for high-volume Ethereum transactions and grew an agile team from 1 to 6.
Co-founded a fintech startup building a white-labelled financial-advisor chatbot. Raised Β£100K, built a team of 7, and an 800+ customer waitlist before launch.
PDX β sole developer building four fintech web apps end-to-end. Serli β apprentice on enterprise and R&D projects with RedHat and Google.
I borrow my operating model from aviation, where high-stakes teams stay safe through discipline rather than heroics. These are the principles I bring to engineering organisations.
Authority is clear, but any voice can flag a risk. Psychological safety is an operational requirement, not a perk.
Before we fly, we brief. Shared intent, known risks, clear roles β so execution is fast and surprises are rare.
After every flight, we debrief the system, not the person. Incidents are gifts: the cheapest way to learn.
A line between honest mistakes and recklessness. People report freely because reporting is rewarded, not punished.
Small, compounding gains over heroic rewrites. Measure, adjust, repeat β the boring path to high performance.
Kanban boards, product delivery, my own to-do list, distributed systems β same physics. Little's Law and queueing theory govern all of them: limit work in progress, or wait longer for everything.
Books, methods, and frameworks that shaped how I lead. A living collection β I add to it as I discover things that work.
Care personally, challenge directly. The framework that taught me to give feedback without being a jerk or avoiding hard conversations.
feedbackHow to structure teams and interactions for fast flow. Changed how I think about Conway's Law and organizational design.
org designDiscipline equals freedom. No bad teams, only bad leaders β the leader owns everything in their world, no exceptions, no excuses.
ownershipTactical empathy over hard bargaining. "No" isn't a wall, it's the start of the real negotiation.
negotiationReject the Fool's Choice between honesty and the relationship. Team health shows up in the lag between spotting a problem and fixing it.
communicationComplex problems need horizontal trust, not more layers of command. Build a team of teams, not a bigger hierarchy.
org designAsk "What do you want?" before offering advice. Raising someone's TERA Quotient does more for a team than any answer I could give.
coachingEvery unplanned change is a fire waiting to start. Find the constraint, protect it, and the rest of the system follows.
devopsDistraction-free concentration is a competitive advantage. Protect it with routines, not just willpower.
focusThe first question I always ask. The timeline defines the complexity of the task β and the team's stance, from let-go to democratic to autocratic.
planningCertified in both. Scrum for structured sprints, Kanban for continuous flow. The context leads the choice.
agileObjectives and Key Results done right. The art is picking 2-3 objectives that force tradeoffs, not 15 that say yes to everything.
goalsA good 1:1 has a rhythm: personal check-in, career growth, blockers, feedback. I keep a shared doc per direct report β never take notes in secret.
peopleWrite before you build. A lightweight RFC culture catches bad designs in hours, not sprints. Template: Context, Proposal, Alternatives, Decision.
techThe most underrated ritual. Whether we're there to optimise the team's ways of working, to celebrate, or just to vent and name the problems β it's never wasted time.
teamsA practical (and genuinely funny) guide to applying agile methodologies outside of software. If Scrum can survive a wedding, it can handle your project. With a foreword by Mike Cohn.
Read it on Amazon βDecoding technical leadership, culture, and innovation. Co-hosted with Pierre Feray-Ferrand. The show is on hiatus, but the back catalogue lives on.
Managing teams, fostering innovation, and the art of technical leadership.
Building and assessing engineering culture that survives hypergrowth.
Lead by example: take your holidays. Protecting teams from burnout.
Real-world stories and case studies from the trenches.
Scaling, pitfalls, and building a resilient tech foundation.
Hiring, promotions, 1:1s, performance reviews β people management deep dives.
Always happy to chat about engineering leadership, crypto, or what's playing on your playlist.