Starting a blog, finally
Why this section exists, and what I intend to put in it. A placeholder post — written to prove the publishing pipeline works end to end.
José
Protano
I build backends that hold — and the whole product around them.
Software engineer since 2018, currently working on .NET microservices at WEX. Outside working hours I take products from nothing to production on my own: live video, payments, AI agents, and a few ideas that are hard to explain in one sentence.
- Currently
- Software Engineer @ WEX
- Based in
- Francisco Beltrão, Brazil
- In software since
- 2018
- Languages
- Portuguese · English · Spanish
01
Selected work
6 running in production
ChaLive
Gender reveal parties, live, for the family that couldn't fly in
Live streaming built for gender reveal parties: guests join from a link — no app, no account — place their boy-or-girl guess, send a gift over Pix, and watch the reveal in real time. WebRTC video, payments and scene recording running off a single instance.
- .NET 10
- React 19
- LiveKit
- SignalR
- Stripe / Pix
- PostgreSQL
- ffmpeg
Visit → Closed source
Agende
Online booking for small businesses
A scheduling platform where a business configures its services, staff hours and calendar, and customers book through a public multi-language portal.
- .NET 8
- Angular
- FullCalendar
- i18n
Website → Closed source
Also shipped
Rune
AI agents that turn vague Jira cards into shippable work
An AI-assisted delivery platform. It imports Jira cards, scores how ready they are for development, drafts acceptance criteria and a decomposition, builds a repository-aware technical plan, then runs a Dev Agent that opens a draft PR — with a human approval gate between every step.
- .NET
- Angular
- PostgreSQL
- Jira Cloud API
Closed source
ComandaX
Order management for restaurants
Role-based interfaces for managers, waiters and the kitchen, with kanban order tracking, payments and real-time coordination across the floor.
- .NET 8
- Angular
- Tailwind
- GraphQL
Visit → Closed source
FinTano - Planejamento Financeiro
Budget, net worth and credit cards on one screen
VibeSync
The crowd picks the soundtrack
A collaborative music platform for events: guests suggest tracks through a shared link while the host controls the queue in real time.
- .NET 8
- Angular
- YouTube API
- JWT
The lab prototypes and ideas that haven't become products yet
Openverse
A world where every person thinks for themselves
A life simulation where each character has a private mind: when one goes idle, gets hungry or reacts to an event, a local server thinks for that character through an LLM. Seasons, weather, nutrition and memories persist in SQLite. One day lasts five real minutes.
- Node.js
- SQLite
- OpenAI API
- Canvas
Buddy
A character that keeps living while the app is closed
A persistent creature prototype: hunger, thirst and enthusiasm drift in real time, traits are generated automatically, memory works in two layers, and death inside the cycle is permanent.
- Next.js 16
- React Three Fiber
- PostgreSQL
- OpenAI API
Inflação Real
Your own inflation, read off a receipt's QR code
Imports Brazilian NFC-e receipts by QR code, link or access key, normalises products by EAN and compares price per equivalent unit — measuring the inflation of your actual shopping basket rather than the national index.
- ASP.NET Core 8
- SQLite
- HtmlAgilityPack
Closed source
Focus News
From news feed to rendered video, unattended
An automated short-form video pipeline: it pulls the news, writes the script with an LLM, synthesises narration with TTS and renders the final cut with FFmpeg — no manual step in between.
- Python
- OpenAI
- FFmpeg
- TTS
Phrasly
Language practice against the clock
A translation game with timed rounds, answer checking that tolerates punctuation and contractions, difficulty levels and a local leaderboard per duration.
- React
- TypeScript
- Vite
02
Experience
From support desk to microservices
- Aug 2025 — Present Remote
Software Development Engineer at WEX
End-to-end .NET microservices with high test coverage, Azure cloud services through to production deploys, and observability with OpenTelemetry, Grafana and Splunk.
- Nov 2024 — Aug 2025 Remote
Fullstack Developer at DB1 Global Software
Built microservices and web apps in .NET/C#, maintained legacy Vue.js applications, contributed to Blazor migrations, and worked on one of the world's largest marketplace hubs with Angular.
- Aug 2021 — Nov 2024 Remote
Fullstack Developer — Mid/Senior at Ponta Agro
Led development on one of Brazil's largest livestock management systems, migrated .NET Framework to .NET Core, and single-handedly built the API behind the company's first mobile app.
- Sep 2020 — Nov 2021 Remote
Backend Developer — Junior at Programer Project
Developed a web application with a .NET Framework backend and Vue.js frontend, backed by SQL Server and hosted on Azure.
- May 2018 — Jun 2021 Maringá, PR
Implementation & Support Analyst at Conciflex
Joined as an intern and grew into head of the support department, working across PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQLite and MSSQL in credit card sales management for major Brazilian retailers.
03
About
I'm a software engineer from Francisco Beltrão, in the south of Brazil, with a B.Sc. in Software Engineering and a postgraduate degree in Web Development.
I started in 2018 on a support desk — answering tickets for retailers across Brazil — and worked my way through implementation, backend and fullstack roles. That path is the reason I care about the unglamorous parts: what happens at 2am when a deploy goes wrong, and whether the person on the other end can actually get their job done.
Today I work on .NET microservices at WEX in an international team, day to day in English. What I enjoy most is owning something end to end — the schema, the API, the interface, the deploy and the graph that tells me it's healthy.
The projects on this page are mostly nights and weekends. Some of them are real products with paying infrastructure behind them; others exist because I wanted to find out whether an idea would work at all.
Backend
- .NET / C#
- Microservices
- REST
- GraphQL
- SQL
Frontend
- Angular
- React
- Vue.js
- Blazor
- TypeScript
Data
- PostgreSQL
- SQL Server
- SQLite
- EF Core
Cloud & DevOps
- Azure
- AWS
- Docker
- CI/CD
- Nginx
Observability
- OpenTelemetry
- Grafana
- Splunk
Currently exploring
- LLM agents
- WebRTC
- Realtime systems
Get in touch
Building something
interesting?
I'm always open to new opportunities, collaborations, or just a good conversation about tech. I read everything that arrives.