// Technical Lead · Solution Architecture · Software Engineering · Chile

const johnny = {

headline: "I design systems, modernize platforms, and turn complex technical problems into executable plans.",

};

I build software and lead technical decisions across production systems, regional solutions, and platforms that need to evolve without stopping the business.

My work combines architecture, hands-on development, modernization, security, technical debt, and team mentoring.

$ cat sobre-mi.md

I'm a Technical Lead and Software Engineer with more than a decade building and operating software in production.

Over the past few years my work evolved from development and team leadership into increasingly cross-cutting responsibilities: designing regional capabilities, modernizing platforms, technical assessments, security, technical debt strategy, and defining engineering standards.

I'm especially interested in the intersection between architecture and implementation. I don't want to move away from code to do architecture: I prefer to understand systems from their real behavior, their operational constraints, and the decisions that shape their evolution.

My next professional stage is focused on deepening Solution Architecture and cross-cutting technical leadership, while staying hands-on.

$ grep -A2 "principles" como-pienso.md

+ The domain does not know AWS exists

Ports and adapters isn't a pattern for tutorials. It's a way to keep infrastructure decisions from contaminating business rules that should survive a change of provider, framework, or persistence mechanism.

+ All debt gets documented. None gets hidden.

Technical debt can be a valid decision. What is dangerous is debt that nobody knows about, nobody measures, and nobody can prioritize. I prefer to make explicit what we are trading off, what it costs, and what condition should trigger resolving it.

+ Distributing does not always mean improving

Microservices, events, and independent components carry an operational cost. I prefer to start with clear boundaries and distribute only when there are real reasons of scale, autonomy, resilience, or ownership that justify paying that cost.

+ Consistency first, elegance second

A perfect design on a diagram can be wrong in production. When a decision pits conceptual purity against consistency, traceability, or recoverability, I optimize for the system’s real behavior.

+ Design to fail

Timeouts, retries, idempotency, observability, and graceful degradation are not an afterthought. They are part of the architecture.

+ Architecture close to the code

An architectural decision should be observable in contracts, code, deployments, metrics, and operations. If it only exists in a slide deck, it is not implemented architecture yet.

+ Technical leadership should reduce dependency

A TL should not become the only person who can answer hard questions. Documentation, automation, mentoring, PR reviews, and collaborative design should make the team progressively more autonomous.

+ AI multiplies speed. It does not replace judgment.

I don't use it as autocomplete. I explore and propose before writing code, document non-obvious decisions as ADRs, and put every change through a bounded review before any PR. Technical judgment stays mine.

$ cat capabilities.yaml

Architecture & System Design

I design domain boundaries, contracts, integration strategies, persistence models, and architectural decisions that account for real operational, security, and evolution constraints.

Modernization

I transform legacy systems and fragmented ecosystems through incremental plans, migration strategies, automation, and progressive risk reduction.

Technical Assessments

I analyze products and platforms across architecture, security, technical debt, operations, documentation, and team capacity, turning findings into prioritized roadmaps.

Technical Leadership

I support teams through design, mentoring, PR reviews, dojos, and solving complex problems. My goal is to increase autonomy, not centralize knowledge.

Security & Engineering Quality

I run technical and post-incident reviews, prioritizing vulnerabilities, authentication/authorization, secrets, sensitive data, testing, observability, and maintainability.

$ ls -la selected-work/

Regional Product Platform

Designed a regional capability to query products across multiple heterogeneous sources and countries, delivering a consistent contract to its consumers. The design prioritized per-origin adapters, tenant isolation, resilience, versionable contracts, and incremental evolution, avoiding premature distribution of a solution that could still preserve clear boundaries within a modular architecture.

Demonstrates: integration · multi-tenancy · resilience · API design · distribution decisions.

Regional File Platform

Designed a regional storage capability abstracted from the cloud provider, using a Valet Key pattern for direct transfer, persistent metadata, and asynchronous processing. The architecture separates control plane from data plane and uses consistency patterns such as Transactional Outbox.

Demonstrates: cloud architecture · security · async processing · consistency · portability.

Regional Notifications

Designed a regional, event-driven notifications capability with standard contracts, multi-tenant isolation, and reliable publishing. The goal was to prevent every product from building its own implementation to solve the same cross-cutting problem.

Demonstrates: event-driven architecture · contracts · platform thinking · multi-tenancy.

Regional Task Management

Designed a canonical regional model to consolidate existing task management implementations. The strategy used a state machine, reconciliation, and incremental Strangler Fig-style migration to reduce risk during the transition.

Demonstrates: domain modeling · legacy modernization · migration strategy · distributed systems.

Technical Debt Strategy

Cross-cutting assessment of infrastructure, data, observability, services, shared libraries, security, and documentation. The result was not a list of problems, but a set of enablers, standards, and lines of action to reduce debt repeatably across teams.

Demonstrates: cross-cutting architecture · technical strategy · governance · prioritization.

Product & Technology Assessments

Evaluated technology domains across product, architecture, operations, demand, UX, security, documentation, and capacity. Findings were turned into short, medium, and long-term plans with metrics, owners, and prioritization mechanisms.

Demonstrates: technology strategy · product thinking · governance · portfolio.

Security & Engineering Assessment

Post-incident technical audit of a mobile SuperApp shared across multiple applications. The analysis separated immediate risk from structural debt, prioritizing exposure of secrets and PII, storage, authentication/authorization, logging, testing, and maintainability.

Demonstrates: application security · code review · risk prioritization · engineering quality.

$ ls -la experiencia/

▾ cencosud_transversal.ts — Regional & Transversal Technical Lead 2025 – Present

Technical leadership of regional solutions and cross-cutting work across internal retail products. My scope combines hands-on development with architecture design, modernization, technical assessments, security, and team mentoring.

  • Technical leadership of solutions spanning Chile, Argentina, Colombia, and Peru.
  • Design of regional capabilities for products, files, notifications, and task management.
  • Technology modernization and definition of target architecture.
  • Architecture, technical debt, operations, and security assessments.
  • Participation in portfolio initiatives and cross-cutting technical evolution.
  • Mentoring, dojos, PR reviews, and resolution of complex problems.
  • Definition of repeatable processes for assessment, remediation, and product takeover.
▸ cencosud_regional.ts — Software Engineer → Regional Technical Lead Dec 2024 – 2025

I joined as a Software Engineer and progressively took on technical leadership over regional modules.

  • Rompe Filas: mobile assisted-selling solution with Smart POS integration for Argentina and Colombia.
  • Altillos: regional management of storage units and locations.
  • Shared architecture based on React/Ionic/Capacitor and NestJS services.
  • Evolution of data models, integration, and resilience.
  • Direct participation in implementation and design.
▸ aramco.ts — Technical Lead Sep 2024 – Dec 2024

I led the initial design of a new gas station platform built on Azure, DDD, and Event-Driven Design, coordinating decisions with technical and business stakeholders.

▸ cencosud_pactolus.ts — Senior Full Stack Engineer Dec 2022 – Aug 2024

Modernization and regionalization of the billing core, applying hexagonal architecture to per-country integration.

  • Modernization and regionalization of the billing core.
  • Hexagonal architecture applied to per-country integration.
  • MongoDB, Redis, and messaging for distributed systems.
  • CI/CD automation and quality gates on Pull Requests.
  • Observability and regional technical work.
▸ codelovers.ts — Co-founder & Technical Lead 2013 – 2022

Co-led the technical evolution of ClassTrack, a SaaS curriculum management platform used by approximately 200 schools and 50,000 students.

  • Architecture and infrastructure on AWS.
  • Backend and frontend evolution over nine years.
  • Incremental migrations without stopping operations.
  • Observability and operational continuity.
  • Payment integrations and mobile applications.
  • Technical and product leadership.

Earlier Experience

Learning Plus · Supervisor / Senior Full Stack Developer

Modernization of an educational platform and infrastructure migration to AWS.

Suksa · IT Supervisor / Senior Web Developer

Modernization of internal systems, Git/Jira adoption, and ERP evolution.

Rock and Code / Inventa · Web Developer

Web application development and solutions for various clients.

$ cat stack.json

"architecture" DDD · Hexagonal Architecture · Clean Architecture · Event-Driven Architecture · Distributed Systems · ADR · Transactional Outbox · Strangler Fig
"backend" TypeScript · Node.js · NestJS · Fastify
"messaging" Kafka · Pulsar · Google Pub/Sub
"data" PostgreSQL · MongoDB · Redis · MySQL · Elasticsearch
"cloud platform" AWS · GCP · Azure · Docker · Kubernetes · GitHub Actions
"frontend & mobile" React · React Native · Ionic · Capacitor · Next.js
"engineering" Testing · Observability · CI/CD · Application Security · Technical Debt · Code Review · Architecture Assessments
"ai-assisted engineering" Claude Code · GitHub Copilot · Gemini CLI · MCP

$ cat escritura.md

Engineering that can be defended

I write about architecture, technical decisions, modernization, engineering tooling, and lessons learned working with real systems.

Read on Medium →

$ ./consultoria --init

> Architecture & Engineering Consulting

I work with teams that already build software but need a second perspective to tackle modernizations, technical debt, system design, security, or complex architectural decisions.

Areas where I can help

  • Architecture assessment
  • Technical debt assessment
  • Modernization strategy
  • Distributed systems
  • Application security review
  • Engineering practices
  • Technical mentoring

Development

I work on development projects of any size: from a form or a small fix to a full platform. I apply the same architectural rigor regardless of scale.

hello@johnnyhuirilef.dev