Strategy is the lore. Code is the canon. I keep them in one universe.
I've spent more than twenty years writing software and more than ten turning that depth into product leadership. I take ambiguous, cross-team platform problems, work out the engineering constraints and the business stakes together, and build through them. Always looking for the next challenge, ideally a 0-to-1 build or a turnaround with room to grow scope.
The stories behind the numbers
Call centers, auctions, tax forms. I fall for the problems nobody writes songs about.
None of these started as a defined project. Each one was friction the business had learned to live with. Turning that kind of problem into something a team can ship is the job. These three show what it looks like.
01Avalara · 2024 – now
Retiring the legacy catalog behind every Returns product
Every Avalara Returns product runs on the same execution layer: the tax forms the platform fills and files. That layer lived in an aging monolith, the Tax Form Catalog, that spread form management across 15+ separate products, exposed no shared API, and blocked anything modern from being built on top of it. It could not be switched off, because every product depended on it.
I directed the program that replaced it, driving the spec and the gap analysis against the old system, sequencing a quarter-by-quarter parity roadmap, and moving each vertical across persona by persona rather than in one risky cutover. Engineering re-platformed the monolith onto microservices, a REST form-definition service behind a GraphQL layer, while the authoring interface was rebuilt in React on the new abstraction.
A single production cutover in June 2025 moved 15+ dependent systems onto the new services with no downstream disruption. The platform now authors 18,000+ forms across 17 tax domains, and the legacy catalog is on track to retire by the end of 2026.
02Superbid · 2021 – 2023
Standardizing customer support tooling across LatAm
Every month, around 60 support tickets spilled past the first line with nowhere structured to go. Five departments touched them, none owned them, and every country we operated in handled them differently.
I coordinated the customer-found-defects initiative that pulled Legal, Sales, Operations, Engineering, and Product onto a single system, and drove standardized help-desk tooling across Brazil and the rest of LatAm.
Overflow dropped by roughly 54%, consistent across three separate points in my records.
03Round Pegs / Superbid · 2020 – 2021
Removing manual data-onboarding drag
The biggest clients created the worst spikes: every large onboarding arrived as heterogeneous files someone processed by hand, in bursts. The team had learned to live with it.
I led a small multifunctional squad that replaced the manual step with standardized file-input formats and scripts feeding client source files straight into the system, moving us off legacy tooling and onto distributed microservices.
Cycle time improved by roughly 21%; the work led directly to a Head of Product role.
Sculpting the path
45 projects, 100% client success
The strategy gets written, and the hard problems get their song. Some things you just shape by hand. Alongside every product role, I kept a practice running: real software, shipped for real clients across many industries and countries.
Every engagement independently tracked and scored by the platform, not self-reported.
Every client, a brushstroke
“He’s the best Product Manager I’ve worked with so far. Fernando brings a huge amount of experience, is kind, responsive, and consistently professional. I can’t recommend him enough.”
Mykhail Heraskin, AmberEnhance
“Over two years, Fernando managed several teams, including LATAM, across both delivery and product discovery. His engineering and product knowledge made build-versus-deliver decisions simple and sound, and together we moved the business needle.”
Head of Product & Engineering, LATAM
Pedro Antunes, Superbid
Translated from the original Portuguese
“We couldn’t be where we are today without his knowledge, mentorship and refined soft skills. He helped me as a founder build upon an idea and turn it into an industry recognised product.”
Product Manager & Mentor
Adri Leite, Cliffside Cybersecurity
“A gifted developer, knowledgeable about so many aspects of development, from code quality through dev-ops, deployment, git hygiene, project management, and much more.”
Project Lead & Development
Scott Yewell, Purpose Built Software
“He takes the time to document, research, back up, explain, and implement. We understand the fix, and the codebase is stable and reliable.”
Web Development
Jon Haller, PTC
“Amazing organization managing the projects. His communication was top-notch, and he met all deadlines.”
Product Owner & Team Lead
Gabriela De Luca, RoundPegs
“Probably the best developer we have found so far. Very professional, and takes great care communicating, providing reports, and suggesting solutions and improvements.”
ISP Infrastructure
Peter Saunier, WebAgency