Hi 👋, I'm Rafael Roman

CTO & Co-founder · 20+ years building software that matters · 🇧🇷 → 🇪🇸 → 🇨🇭

🚀 What I'm building now

Co-founder & CTO of Upgrid — a Swiss energy marketplace that connects local solar producers directly with consumers. Guaranteed lower prices, 100% local renewable energy, zero hardware. We're reshaping how communities buy and sell electricity in Switzerland.

💼 The journey so far

20+ years across the full spectrum — from IBM and GFT to N26 (one of Europe's largest fintechs) to Personio, and now leading my own company. I've been hands-on building 5+ international banks, scaled systems to millions of users, and led engineering teams through hypergrowth.

The through-line: solving hard problems at scale, in regulated industries, across borders.

🔧 Craft

Backend at heart — JVM, Kotlin, distributed systems, event-driven architecture (Kafka Summit speaker, not by accident). I've done mobile (Flutter), led platform teams, and shipped things people actually use. Also built and maintained an app with 2,500+ daily active users as a side project.

🗣️ Public speaking

I've spoken at Kafka Summit London, KotlinConf, WeAreDevelopers World Congress, DevBCN, JavaCro, and gave a TEDx talk on AI back in 2019 — before it was cool. Happy to talk distributed systems, fintech lessons, energy tech, or honest career advice.

🌍 Background

Born in São Paulo 🇧🇷, spent a decade in Barcelona 🇪🇸, now based in Basel 🇨🇭. Fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Catalan.

🤝 Connect