Based in Barcelona, Spain ⌨️ Coding since 1999 (PHP 3) Building with AI every day

Nil Portugués Calderó · Senior Software Engineering Manager

I lead teams and still write code. Now with
AI.

I've been coding since 1999, back when PHP was on version 3. Since then I've built product at high-traffic marketplaces: search, payments and checkout, data pipelines and, today, applied AI, both in what I build and in how I run teams. Always asking the same question: what's the business impact?

See experience Email me LinkedIn GitHub
1999wrote my first lines of PHP 3. 27 years of coding
5sites in 4 languages where I launched Paper at The Knot Worldwide
9+years leading teams: tech lead, CTO and engineering manager
20M+monthly unique visitors on the marketplace I work on

Expertise

The pieces that run
a digital business

Six areas where I've led teams, made the calls and written the code.

LEADERSHIP

Engineering management

I build teams from scratch and have hired at The Knot Worldwide, Adsmurai, Trovit and Bandit. I grow people and align engineering with the business through OKRs and the roadmap.

HiringOKRs1:1sAgile
SEARCH

Search engines

Led Trovit's search APIs (listing and detail pages) and introduced Elasticsearch at Adsmurai: indexes, relevance and analytics.

ElasticsearchAlgoliaSphinxSolr
PAYMENTS

Checkout and payments

Marketplace checkout, payment gateways, buy now pay later and e-commerce platforms. White-label checkout at The Knot Worldwide.

StripeKlarnaBigCommerce
DATA

Data engineering

Airflow pipelines on Google Cloud, streaming ETLs and analytics. Championed Adsmurai's Data Guild.

AirflowKafkaSparkDruid
APPLIED AI

AI in product and management

RAG systems, semantic search and MCP servers. Plus AI workflows for planning, testing and documenting as a team.

RAGLangGraphpgvectorMCP
ARCHITECTURE

Architecture and migrations

DDD, hexagonal architecture and SOLID. I move monoliths to cloud-ready APIs and microservices without stopping the business.

DDDHexagonalMicroservices

The evolution of search, lived from the inside

From full-text indexes to generated answers with cited sources.

01
SphinxFull-text search
02
SolrFacets and relevance
03
ElasticsearchDistributed search and analytics
04
AlgoliaSearch as a service
05
EmbeddingsSemantic search with pgvector
06
RAG + MCPAnswers with cited sources

Software development life cycle

How I ship software

A structured, measurable process from idea to production and back again. This is what I do at each phase.

Planning

  • OKRs and roadmaps aligned with the business.
  • Technical, team and cost feasibility.
  • Initiative plans drafted from PRDs.

Requirements

  • Functional and non-functional requirements.
  • Discovery and delivery epics, and user story maps.
  • Clear acceptance criteria.

Design

  • Architecture with DDD and hexagonal.
  • Data models, APIs and search indexes.
  • Technology chosen for cost and team fit.

Implementation

  • SOLID, coding standards and code review.
  • Legacy refactors without stopping the business.
  • AI agent-assisted development.

Testing

  • Unit, integration and component tests.
  • BDD with Behat and Cucumber; Jest on the front end.
  • E2E coverage scaled with AI.

Deployment

  • CI/CD pipelines and automated builds.
  • Docker, AWS and Google Cloud.
  • Staging and production environments.

Maintenance

  • Monitoring with Prometheus and InfluxDB.
  • Strict SLAs on critical systems.
  • Docs kept in sync with the code.
↻

And round again: every release feeds the next planning cycle.

CI/CD: from a commit to production

Continuous integration and continuous delivery: every change is built, tested and ready to deploy automatically.

⌥Commit
⚙Build
✓Tests
▣Artifact
◐Staging
▲Production
◉Monitoring
Frequent integrationSmall changes merged into the main repository every day.
Immediate feedbackEvery build runs the tests and flags breakage straight away.
Automated deploymentFrequent, repeatable releases with no manual steps.
RollbackIf monitoring spots a problem, roll back to the previous version.

AI

How I use AI today

Across both halves of my job: running teams and building product.

To run teams

  • Initiative plans, epics and story maps drafted from PRDs.
  • My own skills for board reviews, strategy writing and team health.
  • End-to-end test coverage scaled with AI-assisted generation.
  • Technical docs kept in sync with the actual code.

To build product

  • Multi-level RAG systems over video libraries, 100% local.
  • MCP servers connecting private knowledge to Claude or Cursor.
  • Agent-driven development, with my own skills and an AGENTS.md per project.
  • Python automation over real-time data.
rag · local · llama.cpp
Which video explains how to validate an idea before building it?
▶Video 12 · 04:31 ▶Video 37 · 18:05
Ask anything…⏎

Featured project: chat with sources over video libraries

100% local multi-level RAG with a ChatGPT-style interface, streaming answers and an MCP server. Illustrative example above.

▶YouTube
≡Subtitles
▦Chunks
⋯Embeddings
◉pgvector
⟁LangGraph
✦Local LLM
✓Answer + citations

Experience

The last 10 years

From engineer to tech lead, CTO and engineering manager. Earlier roles are on LinkedIn.

Career

Engineering Tech lead Leadership AI projects
The Knot Worldwide
Adsmurai
Trovit
Bandit
AI projects
20172019202120232025now
  • TK

    The Knot Worldwide

    Jun 2021 — now · Remote / Barcelona

    Senior Software Engineering Manager

    20M+ visitors/monthPaper on 5 sites4 languages

    The world's leading wedding marketplace: The Knot, WeddingWire and Bodas.net.

    • Built engineering teams from scratch (Node.js + React and PHP/Drupal + React/Node) and hired extensively, owning the full lifecycle: role design, sourcing, interviews and onboarding.
    • Paper on 5 sites in 4 languages (The Knot and WeddingWire in the US, Bodas.net, Mariages.net and Matrimonio.com) with a white-label approach to checkout, search and tracking.
    • OKRs and roadmap prioritisation aligned with the business, balancing tech debt and feature delivery.
    • Performance review frameworks, salary review cycles, career paths and mentoring at every level.
    • AI-augmented management (since 2025): planning, AI-generated E2E tests and docs kept in sync with code.
  • AD

    Adsmurai

    Apr 2019 — Jun 2021 · Barcelona

    Senior Technical Team Lead · previously Senior Java Software Engineer

    Java · Spring BootMicroservicesElasticsearchData Guild

    Marketing technology: paid media automation and creative optimisation.

    • Java backend: migrated legacy Vert.x and Tomcat applications to Spring Boot microservices, with Java 8, Scala, Redis and Docker.
    • Led the refactoring of the Java and PHP codebases of MediaPlanner and Ads Composer, applying SOLID and DDD.
    • Introduced Elasticsearch as the core search and analytics engine: index design and search scripts.
    • New APIs powered by ETL pipelines with Kafka, Cassandra, Spark and Druid, monitored with Prometheus and InfluxDB.
    • Championed the Data Guild and deployed Airflow pipelines on Google Cloud, with Python DAGs.
    • Front-end migration to React + TypeScript, with Jest tests and a Storybook design system.
    • Hiring, 1:1s, feedback and OKRs across several product teams.
  • TR

    Trovit

    Dec 2017 — Apr 2019 · Barcelona

    Technical Team Lead · previously Senior Software Engineer

    Search and tracking57 portals3 verticals

    Global classified-ads search engine aggregating listings from thousands of sources.

    • Led the search (listing and detail pages) and tracking APIs: business-critical systems.
    • Scaled the APIs across homes, cars and jobs in 57 country portals, moving from PHP 5 to 7 with DDD.
    • Owned the company-wide email system, with strict SLAs for high-volume delivery.
    • Hiring, 1:1s, feedback and biannual performance reviews for the team.
  • BA

    Bandit

    Feb 2017 — Dec 2017 · Barcelona

    CTO · previously Backend Tech Lead

    HR-tech startup focused on talent acquisition through gamification.

    • Technology strategy, infrastructure and backup resilience planning.
    • CRM migration from Salesforce to SugarCRM and operational wind-down of the Barcelona office.
    • Hiring for the engineering team.

Experience before 2017 on LinkedIn →

Beyond the code

Business mindset

The question isn't “can we build it?” but “is it worth building, for whom, and at what cost?”

Winner of Startup Weekend Barcelona 2016

I've also built and sold a side project, and served as a startup CTO. I know what it's like to build with few resources and little time.

📈

Revenue impact

Owned systems tied directly to revenue: search, checkout, tracking and email.

🎯

Strategy

OKRs, roadmaps and hiring plans aligned with product and business priorities.

🎓

Business training

Business administration and management programme at ThePowerMBA (2020–2021), on top of my engineering degree.

💶

Cost and return

I choose architecture with cost in mind: local AI with no per-query cost, and deployments sized to the need.

Stack

What I work with

Languages

JavaPHPTypeScriptPythonNode.jsC#

Frameworks

Spring BootVert.xSymfonyReactNext.jsFastAPIDrupal

Search

ElasticsearchAlgoliaSphinxSolr

AI

LangGraphLangChainpgvectorllama.cppMCP

Data

AirflowKafkaSparkDruidCassandra

Payments and cloud

StripeKlarnaBigCommerceAWSGCPDocker

Lab

Side projects

What I build outside work, by type of project.

Games

Unity · C#
2

Beat 'em up

in development

Inspired by 16-bit classics.

UnityC#ShaderLab

Top-down run'n'gun

in design

Single player or local co-op.

UnityC#Game design

Mobile apps

React Native · Expo
1

Daily quotes app

prototype

Onboarding, i18n, SQLite, notifications and widgets.

React NativeExpoSQLite

Applications

Web · AI · tooling
3

RAG chat over video

in use

Answers with sources and the exact minute, 100% local, with an MCP server.

FastAPILangGraphNext.js

Multi-tenant SaaS base

ongoing

Refactor to React 19 and composition patterns, with Prisma and React Router.

React 19PrismaTypeScript

GraphQL code generator

open source

Generates queries, mutations, subscriptions, fragments and types for any schema.

TypeScriptGraphQL

Open source

1300+

GitHub stars on my PHP libraries for building SQL and producing standards-compliant APIs (JSON API, HAL, Problem Details).

See all repositories →

php-sql-query-builder★ 424
laravel5-jsonapi★ 309
symfony-jsonapi★ 114
php-backslasher★ 88
php-json-api★ 70
php-serializer★ 51

Education

🎓
Computer EngineeringLa Salle BCN · Universitat Ramon Llull. Final project on search engine optimisation, graded with first-class honours.2005 — 2013
📊
Business programme · ThePowerMBAOnline programme in business administration and management (non-accredited).2020 — 2021
🧑‍🏫
Teaching assistant · La Salle BCNUNIX systems and web projects.2010 — 2013

Languages

CatalanNative
SpanishNative
EnglishFull professional · Cambridge CAE
FrenchBasic · DELF A1

Contact

Let's talk

I'm based in Barcelona. If you're looking for someone to lead an engineering team, improve your search or checkout, or bring AI into your product and the way your team works, get in touch.

contact@nilportugues.com LinkedIn GitHub