Open to opportunities

Maximiliano Catarino

@maximilianocatarino

Message

I modernize high-throughput financial platforms, scaling APIs and reducing latency and infrastructure costs.

Brazil

Message

What I'm looking for

I'm looking to lead modernization, performance engineering, and cloud-native architecture work on high-throughput systems, especially where I can improve reliability, latency, scalability, and engineering delivery.

I've modernized core financial platforms at KingPanda and Dock, leading zero-downtime migrations, performance engineering, and architectural redesigns for systems handling up to 12 billion requests per month.

At Dock, I helped split a 200-endpoint Java monolith into eight projects while maintaining 99.99% availability. I rebuilt a critical credit-card API, scaling throughput from 3,000 to 10,000 RPS and achieving p99 latency below 100ms through PostgreSQL, Parquet, and AWS S3.

Across Zup Innovation, MaxMilhas, Rios Projetos e Sistemas, and my own digital agency, I've built cloud-native services, modernized legacy applications, developed ETL pipelines, and delivered distributed systems with Java, Kotlin, Python, PHP, AWS, and Kubernetes.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Backend Engineer Specialist

Current

KingPanda

Mar 2026 - Present (6 months)

Leading performance engineering and architectural modernizations on a high-throughput legacy platform. Achieved 100% to 400% reduction in request latency and a 64x increase in supported concurrent users.

PHP MySQL MemCached Event Driven Architecture AI Agents Cursor Claude Code Performance Optimization

Backend Engineer Specialist

Dock

Jul 2024 - Feb 2026 (1 year 7 months)

Maintained a legacy monolithic Java solution with over 200 API endpoints, supporting 12 billion requests per month. Led a project to rebuild a critical API, scaling throughput from 3,000 to 10,000 RPS and reducing infrastructure costs by over 500%.

Java Spring Boot SQL Server Kafka Python Pandas DuckDB Kubernetes Jenkins Splunk ETL PostgreSQL Parquet

Backend Engineer Specialist

Inter Bank

Apr 2024 - Jul 2024 (3 months)

Integrated the engineering team for Inter's social network platform, designing and developing high-performance microservices for mobile application interfaces and core API functionalities.

Java PostgreSQL Kubernetes

Backend Engineer Specialist

Zup Innovation

Jun 2020 - Jan 2024 (3 years 7 months)

Core member of the R&D team driving strategic initiatives, including decommissioning legacy mainframe services and automating COBOL to Java modernization. Also developed core product services and serverless solutions for iti Banco Digital.

Java Quarkus COBOL Antlr Kotlin Spring Boot DynamoDB AWS Lambda Python ETL Apache Parquet

Technology Director

E-Conform

Jul 2019 - May 2020 (10 months)

Formulated technology roadmaps, managed CAPEX/OPEX budgets, and defined software development lifecycles and governance frameworks. Estimated project effort and monitored delivery velocity using Scrum and Agile frameworks.

Roadmapping Financial Governance SDLC Agile Scrum

Software Engineer

MaxMilhas

Sep 2017 - Jul 2019 (1 year 10 months)

Designed and developed high-performance, scalable solutions, including migrating legacy monoliths to microservices and building scalable services with Symfony, Laravel, Node.js, and TypeScript. Developed automated test suites and technical documentation.

PHP Zend Framework Silex Symfony Laravel Node.Js Development TypeScript Puppeteer MySQL MongoDB Redis Docker AWS OpenAPI UML

Software Engineer

Rios Projetos e Sistemas Ltda.

Sep 2009 - Aug 2017 (7 years 11 months)

Designed and developed a new core system architecture for a government-scale City Hall ERP, decoupling monolithic modules. Led legacy modernization and built a centralized SSO system with Keycloak.

PHP Zend Framework Socket.IO Java Oracle Redis SOAP Docker AWS Keycloak

Co-founder & Software Engineer

3Pixel Produtora Digital

Feb 2006 - Aug 2009 (3 years 6 months)

Partner and lead technical resource in a digital agency, driving end-to-end development of custom software and web solutions. Engineered distributed web applications and built proprietary systems including a CMS and email marketing platform.

PHP JavaScript ActionScript CMS Email Marketing

Education

Degrees, certifications, and relevant coursework

Centro Universitário UNA

Bachelor's Degree, Systems Analysis and Development

Completed a degree in Systems Analysis and Development at Centro Universitário UNA in Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil.

University of Maryland

Specialization, Cybersecurity

Completed a specialization in Cybersecurity covering fundamental concepts for building secure systems from hardware to software and the human-computer interface.