Data platforms, products, and technical leadership.

I build data platforms, rescue awkward migrations, and ship products. I also write, photograph, and make music. synff is the product I designed and shipped. The writing is how I think.

01

Selected work

A product I built, a platform I reshaped, and two functions I stood up.

I gravitate toward messy, ambiguous work. These are four examples of what that usually looks like.

Album-first music discovery

Founder / product / engineering

Visit synff

synff

An independent music discovery product that starts from how people write about records, not from what you already stream.

Challenge

Most recs are play-history and sonic similarity. That just gives you more of the same. I wanted something that starts from journalism and album writing, then uses Crate (albums you own), Rotation (artists you listen to), and ratings to develop taste over time.

What I built

I designed and shipped the whole system: a catalogue from journalism and album writing, a lineage graph and semantic album profiles to move through it, and a NER model that pulls artists and influences out of that writing. Two-way Discogs, Crate and Rotation, weekly recs with reasons, web plus iOS and Android.

Why it matters

Streaming made it easy to listen to everything and know nothing. This is the opposite bet, actually shipped: recs you can explain, from writing and from records you own.

synff Threads card: choose three artists and follow the shortest continuous route between them. — Threads

synff Crate on phone: the albums you cared enough to buy. — Crate

Product strategyFull-stack engineeringData modelingDiscogs

Compliance intelligence platform

Platform architecture and delivery

Visit MyCosegic

Cosegic

Turned a stuck Azure + PHP migration into a lean event-driven platform the team could actually iterate on.

The original migration path was slowing delivery and constraining what the product could become.

I reshaped the architecture around a modern multi-tenant Next.js stack, clearer domain boundaries, and typed workflows.

Easier to extend, faster to prototype on, not hostage to the old path.

Platform architectureTechnical deliveryMulti-tenant systemsTyped workflows

ESG insights and intelligence

Novata

Data Engineering Lead

Built the data engineering function and cut a painful onboarding path from more than a month to one or two days.

Onboarding became dramatically faster, the team gained leverage, and the platform became more reliable.

Team leadershipOnboarding systemsData ingestionData governance

Global educational publisher

Twinkl

Head of Data Engineering

Set up the data engineering function and started replacing a legacy estate with more than 1,800 stored procedures.

The business got a clearer roadmap, a modern foundation to build on, and fewer reasons to keep negotiating with the past.

Data strategyLeadershipLegacy replacementPlatform foundations

02

Writing

Most of it lives on Substack.

Essay / Create de Goods

Listening to everything, knowing nothing

A piece about how the abundance of streaming can rob you of the experience of knowing music if you let it.

Open

Archive / Substack

Create de Goods

Essays on technology, culture, music, and building things with an actual point of view.

Open

03

Photography

Photography is how I slow down.

A different kind of attention to the same kinds of details.

Two people talking beside a bicycle on a sunlit Tokyo street. — Chat

A lone paddleboarder crossing still water beneath low hills. — Lagoon

Two people sitting in a quiet bar beside a bright window. — TA

Photography / Instagram

Create de Goods

Street scenes, quiet interiors, and the things that make me stop walking.

Open

04

Contact

If the work is messy or technical, I can help.

Data, architecture, workflow design, product thinking.

I gravitate toward platforms that need simplification, data foundations that need adult supervision, and the odd rescue mission. Email is the easiest route.

Get in touch hello@degouveia.me

GitHub

Code, experiments, and in-progress ideas.

The tidy version of the CV.

Substack

Essays, notes, and opinions that did not fit anywhere else.

Instagram

Photography and visual work.