Rafael Tavares

Software engineer in Lisbon. Full-stack at Lighthouse.

Rafael, seen from behind, looking out of a large window over a city at dusk

About

I build products where distributed systems, backend engineering, AI and blockchain meet.

I'm a software engineer from Portugal. At Lighthouse, a tool for managing digital assets, I integrate blockchain protocols and build backend features. Lately that means scalable data processing, and AI-powered pipelines that let us iterate on it faster.

Before that I was the first hire at Mio, a startup where I went from building the frontend of an AI assistant to owning it end to end, used by hundreds of thousands of people. Real users and real scale taught me more than any course could.

I studied Computer Science & Engineering at NOVA, where I earned my BSc and got partway into the master's. I like designing systems that scale, working with data, and software that holds up in the real world, and I care about how it feels to use as much as how it's built. On the side I make small, careful tools, like 16².

Based in Lisbon, PT Now Lighthouse Studied BSc CS&E, NOVA Speaks Portuguese, English

2020 – 2026, one square per month

Point at a month, or pick something below

Experience

Lighthouse

Digital asset management

Full-stack Software Engineer

Nov 2025 – now
  • Build and maintain the integrations with blockchain protocols that bring people's assets into Lighthouse, and the backend features around them.
  • Help build scalable data processing systems, and AI-powered pipelines that speed up how fast we can iterate on them.

Mio

Remote · first hire

Product Engineer

May 2025 – Jul 2025
  • Built an AI companion chatbot, the company's second mini-app: a full-stack Next.js app with serverless APIs, persistent memory through Mem0 and the AI SDK, and its own deployment pipeline.
  • Built a proxy that combines several Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers behind one interface, with request routing and OAuth sign-in, on Express.
  • Made the company's original manifesto website, from layout to sharing previews.

Software Engineer

Jan 2025 – Apr 2025
  • Built the frontend of Sage, an AI assistant app, then its serverless backend and database, and went on to own it end to end: hundreds of thousands of users, tens of thousands every day.
  • Helped add personalization from people's Google Calendar and Gmail, using retrieval-augmented generation.
  • Designed a white-label version of Sage for other developers to put in their own mini-apps in the World App ecosystem, with the API and onboarding to go with it.
  • Analyzed how people used the app to decide what to improve and build next.

t_insight

Lisbon · hybrid

Software Engineer Intern

Oct 2024 – Feb 2025
  • Built features and interface components for a React Native app on iOS and Android.
  • Made the database faster with better indexes and a cleaner data model, and set up backups.
  • Wrote the development guides and code standards new team members onboard with.

n.inf

NOVA's computer science club, Almada

Executive Board · Treasury & Projects Lead

Jun 2024 – Jun 2025

Elected to the board as head of treasury and coordinator of the projects team. Ran budgets for hackathons and workshops, led the teams and mentored new members.

Project Developer

Mar 2022 – May 2024

Built web apps for the university community with the club's technical team, and helped organize workshops and hackathons.

ETHGlobal Lisbon

Hackathon

Hacker

May 2023

Built InfluLENSer with a team of five over the weekend: a marketplace where influencers get paid for posts, on Lens Protocol and TalentLayer. It won Lens Protocol's Best Use award and a share of The Graph's prize pool.

Things I've made

  • Every pixel of every Minecraft painting, laid out to study, simplify and paint.

    16²

    Next.js · runs in the browser

    2026

  • A marketplace where influencers get paid for posts. Won Lens Protocol's Best Use award at ETHGlobal Lisbon.

    InfluLENSer

    Next.js · Lens · TalentLayer

    2023

  • A note-taking app for the web, split into services in a Turborepo monorepo.

    JRNL

    React · Turborepo · Motion

  • A real-time chat, made to learn how WebSockets work.

    Socket Chat

    React · Hono · WebSockets

  • Preview and generate noise filters and grainy gradients.

    Noise Gradients

    React · shadcn/ui

Education

Integrated Master's, Computer Science & Engineering

2020 – 2025

NOVA School of Science and Technology. One programme that leads to a BSc, then on to the master's.

  1. Earned the BScSep 2020 – Jan 2025
  2. Took master's courses alongside the last BSc semesterSep 2024 – Jan 2025
  3. Back for the master's, then left to join LighthouseSep 2025 – Nov 2025

Algorithms, operating systems, computer networks, distributed systems, databases, graphics and AI, with a project in most of them. In the master's: programming languages and compilers, systems privacy, applied cryptography and web applications.

Figma UI/UX Design Essentials

Jun 2023 – Jul 2023

Udemy certificate. Components, prototyping and design systems, from wireframe to handoff.

Contact

Get in touch

Happy to talk about anything on this page, or whatever you're working on.