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

• EV Infrastructure — 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. Real-time session management, pricing, settlement, asset telemetry, and field performance at scale.
• AI Enablement — Building the connective tissue between language models and the world's APIs. MCP servers, OAuth proxies, and integration bridges that let agents talk to Slack, Obsidian, project tools, browsers, and smart home devices — reliably, without ceremony.
• Networking — Meeting, working with, and hiring the people who build things that matter. My focus is building the best engineering teams in the industry, and that starts with real conversations and genuine collaboration.

Focus Areas

• OCPP and OCPI platform architecture for interoperability, tariffs, roaming, and security
• AI agent tooling: MCP servers, OAuth proxies, and integration bridges
• Scalable backend systems for real-time session management, pricing, and settlement
• Building and hiring exceptional engineering teams
• Uptime SLOs, observability standards, and incident response practices
• 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 automated 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