Developer and team lead from Portugal, turning messy business rules into software people enjoy using.
I’m a PHP developer with more than a decade behind me, mostly in Laravel and Drupal, who likes software that’s boring in production and delightful to use.
I build web applications and content platforms: Laravel apps full of real-world business rules, and Drupal sites that have to keep working for a lot of people over a long time. I’m happy on the front end too — JavaScript, CSS and Vue.js — even if the back end is where my heart is.
I’m a long-time Drupal follower: I’ve been to two DrupalCons in Europe and I’m an Acquia Certified Drupal 9 Site Builder. These days I also lead a team, which means a lot of code review, pairing and clearing the path so others can do their best work.
Toolbox: Laravel · Drupal · PHP · Vue.js · JavaScript · SaaS · MySQL · DDEV
SquareBit is my own studio — the place where I take on projects I believe in and get to wear every hat, from first call to deploy. It’s mostly Laravel and Drupal work for small businesses and agencies that need someone who’ll care about the code after launch day. It’s also my playground for trying things out before they reach a bigger team.
At MAXFINANCE Portugal, the credit-intermediation arm of the REMAX group, I’m the backend developer leading the team behind the in-house CRM that consultants use every day to move clients from first contact to signed deal. It’s a Laravel app with a lot of real-world rules baked in, so most of my time goes into keeping the architecture clean while the business keeps moving. I also spend a good chunk of it on code review and helping the team grow — which, honestly, is the part I enjoy most.
At AUSY in Belgium (now part of Randstad Digital) I worked as a Drupal developer on large platforms that have to keep working for a lot of people, for a long time. The highlight was the new website for Vrije Universiteit Brussel: a decoupled Drupal build, with JSON:API feeding a Vue.js front end — the right tool for a university with a lot of content and a lot of ways to show it. A great school in doing things properly.
TWISPER was a travel app startup, and I led the team building its business side. We built a system that validated business places by phone and email, wired the platform into Yext so every listing could be pushed out to the big directories, and put RabbitMQ at the centre of everything slow — image processing, content moderation and transactional emails all ran through queues. Startup pace, real ownership, and my first time leading a team.
My flagship project here was the Alimentarium Academy for Nestlé — an e-learning portal with courses, training and exams for kids, students and teachers, built on Drupal 7 with the Opigno distribution. Around it I maintained several other Drupal portals and wrote custom modules whenever a client’s needs went beyond what contrib could do.
At BOLD I worked on EDP’s corporate portal (edp.com), a Drupal 7 build hosted on Pantheon where one back office ran several portals through the Domain module. Beyond the usual Display Suite, Panels, Paragraphs and Views toolkit, I wrote a custom content-workflow module (Draft → Pending → Approved), moved configuration between environments with Features, and wired up Apache Solr for search.
grafe.pt was agency life: lots of clients, lots of websites, never the same problem twice. Working alongside designers here is where I picked up an eye for detail and a healthy respect for pixel-perfect handoffs.
I looked after iOnline, the newspaper’s Drupal portal — adapting modules, scripting the boring bits, improving the PhoneGap app, trafficking ads through Zedo (with jQuery plugins to manage the ad spots) and keeping the Linux servers happy.
Front-end development, client back offices and website layouts — the full small-studio mix.
Where it all started: Facebook apps on their API, layout remodels, Flash MREC ad animations and newsletter layouts.