Hi, I'm Adão 👋

📍 Portugal | CTO at Powerdot

15+ years designing distributed systems, scaling platforms, and leading engineering teams. Currently building the technology foundation for large-scale EV charging infrastructure across Europe.

Philosophy

Build systems that scale before the business forces you to. Good architecture is a competitive advantage, not a cost centre.

What I'm Working On

• Powerdot - Leading technology strategy for 3,500+ charging locations and 15,000+ charging points across Europe. Owning OCPP and OCPI platforms covering interoperability, tariffs, roaming, and security.
• Charging standards - Contributing to Autocharge with MSP roaming, Cloud Load Management approaches, and OCPP Gateway open source efforts.
• Industry community - Publishing whitepapers and participating in CPO standards and innovation forums.

Focus Areas

• OCPP and OCPI platform architecture for interoperability, tariffs, roaming, and security
• Scalable backend systems for real-time session management, pricing, and settlement
• Uptime SLOs, observability standards, and incident response practices
• Asset telemetry, maintenance systems, and field performance at scale
• Technical strategy aligned to growth and unit economics

Background

• 15+ years as a builder, software architect, engineering manager, and technology leader
• Advisor to early-stage teams on product strategy, architecture, and technical due diligence
• Founded YMedia, a web agency and automaded online ads service, failed hard in 2018
• Founded Bright Technologies, acquired by Sword Health in 2021
• Software Architect for Airchat (founded by ex-Tinder CPO - Brian Norgard and Naval Ravikant)
• Currently leading technology strategy and delivery at Powerdot across Europe