Rafael Roman

CTO & Co-founder building the future of energy in Switzerland. 20+ years shipping software that matters.

Co-founder & CTO of Upgrid — a Swiss energy marketplace connecting local solar producers with consumers. Lower prices, 100% local renewable energy, zero hardware.

From N26 (Europe's largest neobank) and Personio to building 5+ international banks at GFT. Backend at heart — JVM, Kotlin, distributed systems, event-driven architecture.

Speaker: Kafka Summit London, KotlinConf, WeAreDevelopers World Congress, TEDx.

Based in Basel. From São Paulo. A decade in Barcelona.

  • Jan 2024 - 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.

  • Jan 2022 - Dec 2023
    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.

  • Jan 2018 - Dec 2021
    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.

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