Rafael Roman

Hi, I'm Rafael 👋

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

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.

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. Built 5+ international banks, scaled systems to millions of users, led engineering teams through hypergrowth.

Backend at heart — JVM, Kotlin, distributed systems, event-driven architecture. Also Flutter, platform teams. Kafka Summit speaker .

Speaking: Kafka Summit London, KotlinConf, WeAreDevelopers World Congress, DevBCN, JavaCro, TEDx (AI, 2019).

Based in Basel 🇨🇭. From São Paulo 🇧🇷. Spent a decade in Barcelona 🇪🇸.
Languages: Portuguese, Spanish, English, Catalan.

Work Experience
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  • Jan2024 - Present
    Upgrid
    Co-founder & CTO

    Building a Swiss energy marketplace that connects local solar producers directly with consumers — guaranteed lower prices, 100% local renewable energy, zero hardware. Reshaping how communities buy and sell electricity in Switzerland.

  • Jan2022 - Dec2023
    Personio
    Staff Engineer / Engineering Lead

    Led platform engineering teams at one of Europe’s leading HR tech scale-ups. Focused on distributed systems, developer experience, and scaling engineering processes through hypergrowth.

  • Jan2018 - Dec2021
    N26
    Senior Software Engineer / Tech Lead

    Helped scale one of Europe’s largest neobanks to millions of users. Built and maintained core banking infrastructure — event-driven architecture, Kafka-based pipelines, distributed systems at scale. Speaker at Kafka Summit London.

Projects
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Let's Connect

Interested in distributed systems, fintech, energy tech, or engineering leadership? I'm always happy to chat. Find me on: