Independent consulting · architecture, domain modelling, engineering focus

Engineering effort,
pointed at the
right problem.

I'm Breno Gerude — software architect with 11+ years modelling systems and reading complexity. Teams rarely fail for lack of effort. They fail spending it in the wrong layer, on the wrong model, against the wrong constraint. I come in, find where that is happening, and either hand you the map or stay and build it with you.

Years
11+
Mode
Advisory + hands-on
Based
Greater Vancouver Area, BC
// where teams lose engineering time
01 — services

How I help engineering teams

Most engagements start with a symptom — velocity dropped, the rewrite stalled, nobody can estimate anymore — and end somewhere else entirely. I find the actual constraint first, then help you fix it. Advisory or hands-on, alongside your team rather than over it.

01

Domain & System Modelling

Most "performance problems" and "velocity problems" are modelling problems in costume. I map the domain with your team, name the boundaries, and make the model carry the rules instead of the code working around them. DDD, event sourcing, CQRS — applied where they earn their cost.

  • Domain mapping
  • Boundaries
  • Event modelling
  • ADRs
02

Complexity & Effort Audit

Where is your engineering time actually going, and what is it buying? I read the codebase, the architecture and the delivery flow, then separate the complexity that is essential from the complexity that is accidental. You get a ranked list of what to fix and what to stop doing, with the reasoning attached.

  • Codebase review
  • Accidental complexity
  • Prioritisation
  • Roadmap
03

Architecture & Modernization

Audit legacy stacks, define migration paths, and lead — or implement — cloud-native rewrites. Hands-on delivery on AWS and DigitalOcean: event-driven backbones, microservices, and APIs that survive scale and stay debuggable at 3 AM. I write the code or pair on it.

  • Discovery
  • Migration path
  • Event-driven
  • Observability
04

AI Pipeline Integration

I'm not an ML researcher — I'm the engineer who wires your product into the AI tools that already exist. Recent work: integrating GPT into a reputation-monitoring pipeline, plugging custom workflows into ML processors, and building/optimizing Claude Code skills and agents.

  • Claude Code
  • LLM APIs
  • Skills & agents
  • Automation
05

Senior Engineering Hours

Plug in as a senior engineer on your team. Code, review, mentor, unblock — wherever the work needs hands. Useful when you need throughput or seniority without permanent headcount.

  • Coding
  • Code review
  • Mentoring
  • Unblocking
02 — stack

The toolkit, transparently

No silver bullets. I pick boring technology that fits the problem — then optimize ruthlessly.

// languages

  • TypeScript
  • Go
  • Kotlin

// cloud

  • AWS
  • DigitalOcean

// databases

  • PostgreSQL
  • MongoDB
  • Redis
  • DynamoDB

// practices

  • DDD
  • TDD
  • Event Sourcing
  • CQRS
  • Microservices
03 — work

Problems I've solved inside engineering teams

Seven times a team had a problem that looked like one thing and turned out to be another. What it was, and what changed.

  1. 2024

    Manual analysis was the bottleneck, not the science

    A petroleum company was reading nano fossils by hand, so the analysis step — not the geology — set the pace of every study. I led the AI initiative that automated detection and folded it into the existing workflow, cutting execution time substantially.

    Wikki Brasil · Brazil
  2. 2024

    A monitoring product drowning in its own inbox

    Reputation monitoring meant reading more content than any team could keep up with. I designed the event-driven system around it — GPT-3.5/4 with SQS and Lambda, deployed on ECS for high availability — and owned it end to end, from architecture through deployment.

    FSB Digital · Brazil
  3. 2022

    QA cycles were gating every release

    Integration coverage on the Payment Engine API was hand-written and permanently behind the spec. I built a framework that generates the integration tests from the OpenAPI definitions, so coverage tracks the contract instead of trailing it — and QA stopped setting the release date.

    Highline · USA
  4. 2020

    An engineering org with no defined lifecycle

    The product-engineering team was shipping without an agreed shape to the work. I defined the development lifecycle, the deployment pipeline, the pre-sales guide, the recruitment guide and the delivery KPIs — so decisions had somewhere to live other than people's heads.

    BossaBox · Brazil
  5. 2019

    A reconciliation pipeline nobody could reason about

    CNAB — Brazil's Febraban-defined flat-file standard for bank↔business payments, boletos, Pix, TED, and settlement returns — is the backbone of automated B2B finance in the country. The existing pipeline treated it as bytes to parse rather than a domain to model. I rebuilt reconciliation on top of the standard itself, cutting processing time and sharpening fraud and anomaly detection.

    PagBank · Brazil
  6. 2018

    Critical-care data arriving too late to act on

    ICU staff were working from readings that were already stale by the time they reached them. I built the ICU-connected applications that stream health metrics in real time, measurably reducing response time in critical care.

    Hospital São Domingos · Brazil
  7. 2016

    Inmate admission split across police stations and courts

    Admission data lived wherever it was first touched, so no one held the whole picture. I designed the integrated platform for Maranhão State that automates admission end to end across both, improving security and operational oversight.

    Maranhão State · Brazil
04 — voices

What the engineers I worked with say

Recommendations from engineers and managers who saw the work up close.

Breno is obsessed with code quality and clean architecture — you can always keep peace of mind by delivering project ownership to him. A great team partner.

Leon Klinke Senior Software Engineer · Highline

His approach goes beyond superficial fixes — he immerses himself in every aspect of the technology, ensuring deep understanding and innovative solutions. Any team would be fortunate to have Breno.

Kurt Browder Lead Software Engineer · Highline

Solid engineer. His experience in software development and software architecture were apparent daily…

Jeremie Weldin Engineering Manager
05 — let's talk

Not sure where your engineering effort is going?

An architecture review, a modelling session, or a full complexity audit. Tell me what hurts — I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right fit.

[email protected]

// replies within 48h, weekdays