About me

I was born in Zamora, a small city in the northwest of Spain. My parents bought us a computer when I was 15 and since the first moment I started using it, I was hooked.

After more years than I should have spent in high school, thanks to an embarrassing number of hours playing videogames, I decided to study a Bachelors Degree in Software Development. I did my internship in a small local company, where I built web templates for potential clients and help to fix bugs in the products they already had. I should have done a good job as they offered me a permanent role so I stayed in the company for a few more months before moving to the big city, Madrid.

I started doing job interviews in Madrid and got a couple of offers from a web agency and a consultancy company. I joined the latter and started working in projects for the main client, one of the biggest banks in Spain (and Europe). After a few months, I took more responsibilities in the team and we started working on a project for the UK subsidiary of the client. I became the main contact with the client and started managing all the fixes and weekly releases.At this time I also started mentoring new joiners, helping them have the easiest as possible onboarding in the project.

In July 2009, I moved to the UK to work directly in the client offices. What was supposed to be a few months project became my job for more than a decade! I've had multiple roles in a lot of different projects. See below a few of them:

• Full Stack Developer, OnePayFX project
• Technical Lead, real-time data streamming project
• Product Engineer, Disputes project
• Incident Analyst
• Web developer

If you want to know more about my professional experiece, technology stacks and project details, visit my LinkedIn profile.

A couple of years ago, I had a burnout crisis. I was stuck in a project I didn't like, doing repetitive tasks that didn't give me any joy and dealing with more paperwork and bureaucracy than with what I really liked, coding and technical challenges.

I requested to be assigned to a different project and at the same time, I started working on side projects in my free time. I learned new things on my own, I built my website and I started documenting a lot of the things I learnt in my blog. This was an eye opener for me as I realized I enjoyed more working in my side projects and my blog than in my daily job.

After more than 10 years working in the same company, I decided to take my chance, leave the safeness of my job and take a few months off to focus on my side projects and try to find new clients and projects on my own.

In 2021, I started to learn about blockchain and smart contracts and in 2022 I joined Chainstack as a developer advocate.

Hobbies

I love running. I think it's the best way to start my days and when I go for a run first thing in the morning, I know I'm going to have a very productive day. It helps me focus, wake up and during my runs I organise my thoughts and come up with new ideas. It's like meditation on the move for me.

I have a goat mentality 🐐! I really like nature and being outside and as soon as I see a mountain, I want to go to the top. I've been doing trail running lately which combines my passion for both running and mountains and I plan to run an ultra trail race (more than 42Km) this year.

I'm a foodie traveler. I love travelling and visit new places and learn new things about different cultures but most of all, try different foods. I also love cooking and I think I'm pretty good at it.

Mantras