I’m Diego Rodrigo, a senior software engineer in Madrid. I build products, backend systems, and the connections between them.
Selected work.
Built across the stack.
AfterChapterI started AfterChapter as a small web app to help my girlfriend make collages of the books she’d read. It grew into a reading app for her, my sister, and me—and a product I wanted to take further.
My own product, built end to end: the mobile app, Python API, database, observability, and home-screen widgets.
Visit AfterChapter ↗
Product thinking → Mobile experience → Backend → Observability
IDEA TO BETA ↗In payments, the work underneath matters. I helped make transactions faster and contributed to financial products with a direct business impact.
I led the Floating initiative and used profiling and SQL optimisation to reduce card transaction latency by approximately 80%.
Senior Software Engineer, Payments Team · 2024–2025. I also built asynchronous migration workers for a 400,000-user migration. The visual beside this text is a conceptual performance comparison, not Cobee’s internal architecture.
Same outcome.
One fifth of the latency.
Performance engineering · Financial product delivery · Migration systems
TECHNICAL + COMMERCIAL ↗Some of the most useful products are the tools your own team needs. I designed and built a backoffice feature to find and upload missing translations.
From spotting the problem to shipping the React and Python solution. Alongside it: architectural improvements, mentoring, and a more balanced testing strategy.
Senior Software Engineer · 2025–2026. I led a transition towards Hexagonal Architecture and helped the team move towards a balanced mix of unit, integration, and acceptance tests.
Example translations are prepared for this demo. Review them, then apply the update.
Identify the need → Design the workflow → Ship the full feature
OWNERSHIP, END TO END ↗At RDNest, I worked on a system that weighed trucks, photographed their number plates, and recorded how much material they delivered or collected at a recycling plant.
I built C++ software on Raspberry Pi to connect industrial scales and control plant lighting and traffic signals, alongside camera and number-plate recognition work.
CHANGE THE INPUT.Hardware integration · Edge software · Computer vision · Backend
CODE WITH CONSEQUENCES ↗Some of my favourite projects started with something simple: an app for my family or a device I wanted to connect.
I chose Computer Engineering because I was curious about hacking. I’d already been experimenting with Kali Linux and cryptography. At university, I discovered programming and got hooked.
One of my professors liked the way I worked and offered me an internship at his startup. That became my first job, at RDNest, and introduced me to IoT.
I’ve since worked across data, backend, and frontend, with backend becoming my main focus. What motivates me is seeing the software we build used and enjoyed by real people.
Outside work, I still tinker with Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and ESP32: small projects like automatic watering systems and an internet radio.
The full career timeline, in my CV ↗I like talking directly with the people involved, understanding what they need, and making the trade-offs clear. I care about honest communication and software that makes sense technically and commercially.
AI is part of my workflow. It helps me move faster across the stack, while I keep ownership of the technical decisions and what ships.
Excerpts from LinkedIn recommendations
“He's the kind of teammate who makes the people around him better, and I'd be happy to work with him again.”
“Diego combines strong backend engineering skills with a rare product sensitivity: he cares deeply about user experience, while keeping technical quality, scalability, and maintainability at the center of his work.”
A product to bring to life?
A system that needs a fresh pair of eyes?