Architecture & System Design
You have requirements, constraints and a vague idea of where you're going. I turn that into a system with clear boundaries, explicit trade-offs and decisions you can actually build on.
I TURN COMPLEXITY INTO STRUCTURE
Complex systems rarely fail because they're too complex. They fail when nobody understands what actually matters.
I help engineering teams make sense of difficult systems, make hard technical decisions, and build software that holds up in the real world.
↓ KEEP READINGWHEN EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED, NOTHING IS OBVIOUS
Requirements. Constraints. Legacy decisions. Distributed systems. Real-time data. Hardware. Protocols. Performance.
Everything affects everything else.
And that's where things usually go wrong.
The hardest engineering problems aren't solved by writing more code.
They're solved by understanding the system well enough to know what code should exist in the first place.
I HELP TURN TECHNICAL UNCERTAINTY INTO SOMETHING YOU CAN BUILD
Systems Diagnosis
Something works. But nobody really knows why. I dig into difficult existing systems, find the real constraints and separate symptoms from the problems underneath them.
Engineering Rescue
The system has become painful. Changes are risky. Performance is unpredictable. Nobody wants to touch certain parts anymore. I help make it understandable again — and give the team a way forward.
I DON'T START WITH TECHNOLOGY
Ambiguity
Understanding
Structure
Decisions
Engineering
Reliable System
Because choosing a technology is easy.
Knowing what the system actually needs is the hard part.
I'M JOSÉ MARÍA
I like understanding how things work.
Not just the code, but the whole thing: what the system is trying to achieve, what constraints it has, where the pieces connect, and what happens when something inevitably goes wrong.
I've spent most of my career building software in very different environments — from backend platforms and distributed systems to software running on industrial hardware in the real world.
Some of those systems were well understood from the beginning. Others weren't.
I've always found the second kind more interesting.
The messy ones. The difficult ones.
The ones where someone needs to step back, make sense of what's there, and figure out where to go next.
More about me →LET'S TALK
If you're dealing with a system that's becoming difficult to understand, a technical decision that needs direction, or an engineering problem that needs someone to take ownership, I'd be interested in hearing about it.
You don't need to have the problem neatly defined.
Just present yourself and tell me what's going on.
Send me an email →