Passionate developer with +10 years of development experience, focused on delivering concise UI with performance, a11y and usability. Creating awesome products is always my main goal, altogether with experimenting new technologies and getting to know what the market needs the most. I'm here not only to deliver products, but also to learn from the best, and to share knowledge as tangible as possible, which made me an open-source no. 1 fan, with a few FOSS projects in the oven.
CEO/Founder – December 2017, present 🏠
Altura was founded to deliver high-quality nearshore and offshore software development services to companies across the globe. Built a reputation for engineering excellence, hands-on leadership, and long-term client relationships with a diverse portfolio of high-growth startups and enterprise organizations. It is a branch of Erfolg, a company focused in managing high profile software development.
Notable client engagements include:
- Logibras / Logimodal (2018–2020) – Led development initiatives for logistics and transportation software solutions.
- Melty (2022–2025) – Provided full-stack engineering leadership and strategic product support for a modern web development platform.
- Parsus (2022–2025) – Delivered technical consulting and engineering execution for enterprise software solutions in healthcare and compliance.
- Woodspring Hotels (2022–2025) – Contributed to platform modernization and infrastructure improvements for the hospitality brand.
- Sisu (2023–2024) – Supported the team with data-focused engineering and product development in the wellness space.
- Sizebay (2020, 2024) – Assisted in frontend architecture and optimization for a leading virtual fitting room solution.
- The Goddard School (2023–2024) – Collaborated on digital initiatives aimed at modernizing educational platforms and improving UX.
Scope of work typically includes:
- End-to-end software architecture and development (frontend and backend)
- Technical leadership, team coordination, and client communication
- Performance optimization, dev process consulting, and system scalability
VTEX (https://vtex.com/)
Senior Software Developer - June 2024, present 🏠
Contributing to the core architecture and evolution of the Faststore Platform, with a strong focus on developer experience, infrastructure as code, modular design, and scalable deployment strategies.
- Participated in the early RFCs, architectural discussions, and implementation of the Faststore Platform, shaping foundational decisions from inception.
- Introduced ADRs (Architecture Decision Records) to formalize and document technical decision-making across the team.
- Researched, proposed, and implemented the internal proxy handler now used in the Faststore Platform: an initiative that included peer alignment, documentation, and prototyping of multiple approaches.
- Authored and presented the Faststore Platform deployment strategy, which laid the groundwork for multi-pipeline integration across Fastcheckout, Sales App, and Discovery.
- Led a package manager policy reassessment to reduce library lock-ins and improve lifecycle control, aligning with the broader Deployment Lifecycle strategy which I researched and authored.
- Actively contributing as a Maintainer Engineer for Shoreline, a shared component system, participating in Office Hours and technical reviews, while shaping future components, design conventions, and governance.
- Researched and implemented a pipeline enhancement to enable post-deployment source tarball downloads, improving observability and traceability across releases.
- Developed a mechanism on Faststore Cloud to distinguish deployments by available modules, even within complex monorepo structures.
- Contributed to internal infrastructure development using Pulumi and Go, enabling scalable provisioning and deployment workflows.
- Researched and implemented JavaScript sandboxing and AST traversal strategies using tools like Acorn to enable secure, modular, and introspectable plugin execution.
- Actively involved in cross-team solution design, internal RFCs, and composability discussions to drive VTEX’s frontend and cloud architecture forward
Sizebay (https://sizebay.com)
Head of Technology - March 2022, May 2024 🏢/🏠
- Spearheaded the architecture and development of core platform integrations including Shopify, Nuvemshop, Tiendanube, and MercadoShops, establishing foundational systems still in use today.
- Led the technical implementation and rollout of Stripe as the company’s default billing and payments infrastructure.
- Acted as both technical visionary and engineering manager, introducing modern frontend frameworks such as Next.js, Svelte and SvelteKit, shaping long-term frontend architecture and engineering standards.
- Built and scaled the engineering team from the ground up: led hiring efforts, conducted technical interviews, onboarded new developers, and implemented mentorship programs for interns and junior engineers.
- Facilitated regular technical workshops to level up frontend expertise across the organization.
- Served as the main point of alignment between engineering and other departments (e.g., product, sales, support), improving cross-functional collaboration and internal tooling (CRM integration).
- Revamped the company’s agile development process to enhance communication, delivery predictability, and team autonomy.
- Played a key role in strategic planning and decision-making alongside company leadership, influencing both product and business direction.
- Oversaw performance management, promotions, and team structure, while maintaining hands-on leadership in frontend development.
Senior Frontend Developer - December 2018, May 2024 🏢/🏠
- Migrated the web stack from KnockoutJS to React, TypeScript, and Redux Toolkit and established a new web development paradigm within the company Developed Virtual Fitting Room Version 3 (2019) and Version 4 (2020), Sizebay’s main service, currently used by millions of users every month, with thousands of access per minute and trusted by clients such as Netshoes, Nike, Riachuelo, and much more (info at https://sizebay.com/en/integrations/)
- Integrated a11y-ready components with ADA Compliance guidelines into every front-end project, along with i18n with maintenance and versioning through S3 and CloudFront
- Mentored front-end interns and also created the onboarding method currently used by the development team
- Explored up-and-coming front-end frameworks, i.e: Svelte for smaller projects (integrations with Google Chat, Changelog publishing web app, user metric reports web app, etc)
- Developed of internal apps to assist tasks from other company sectors, such as Customer Data Reports and Usage Metrics (with Sentry and Datadog)
- Created the front-end challenge for newcomers, started dojos and other internal team integrations
- Brought a modern approach to front-end development, and module bundler knowledge to create a very performative and complex web application that barely weighs 100kb
- Infra maintenance within AWS, such as Code Deploy, S3, EC2, ECS, and Route53
- Assistance to implement our main product into the customer's e-commerce (covering from mobile to web apps)
- Involvement regarding the future of the main product, with close contact with the leaders
Digital Apps Tecnologia (https://digitalapps.com.br)
Frontend Developer – December 2017, October 2018 🏠
- Consistent development and presence of each released application, made mostly using React Native.
- Took a important part as a development team leader from April 2018 to August 2018.
- Was responsible to migrate the full remote team to Slack, as well as re-organizing the team's Trello page.
- Delivered huge projects like:
- Bom Prato and Viva Leite, both to Sao Paulo's town hall.
- BURH app
- Reclame Aqui Academy
Cubos (https://cubos.io)
Intern Frontend Developer – February 2017, May 2017 🏢
- Despite the short experience due the lack of time, it was due to Cubos that I had my first experience with the React ecosystem, which I mainly use nowadays.
- Started the development of Cubos new website
Agilize Tecnologia (https://agilize.com.br)
Intern Frontend Developer – October 2016, November 2017 🏢
- Worked on Agilize Mobile
- Contributed to the development team by creating tools to automatize a few work routines (e.g: Docker improvements, Bash scripts)
- Maintained Agilize's web app for customers and employees.
- Deep JavaScript knowledge, with some love for ReactJS/Native, as well as HTML, CSS using pre-processors like SASS and LESS. I also have some background in UX design, thanks to my internship at Agilize.
- I also have experience in NodeJS, PHP (Laravel), MySQL, Git, Linux/Bash, Python and, lastly, Photoshop.
- I am very curious and proactive. I know it sounds generic, but I can guarantee that I'm always looking for something cool, that will help me as a developer and as a person.
- I speak Portuguese natively, and English fluently (which I am self-taught).
You can send me a "Hey!" via:
- E-mail: [email protected]
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luiz-nickel/
- X: @vaporwavie
- Github: @vaporwavie