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Gabriel Rosas

Most engineering teams don’t struggle because they lack smart developers. They struggle because architectural decisions made under pressure create systems that become harder to change over time, and no one wants to be the one who has to fix it later. I’ve spent 15+ years making those decisions and learning exactly what separates systems that scale from ones that quietly become a liability.

I’m currently a Tech Lead at Black & White Zebra, where I drive the architecture and infrastructure behind the editorial platform that powers our publications. Day to day, that means owning the AWS environment, building CI/CD pipelines, and integrating internal tools with external platforms.

Before this role, I was CTO at Bip Carros, where I led technical strategy while staying hands-on in the code, building and running an automotive marketing platform that served over 350 dealerships and handled 10,000 leads and 5 million page views per month. Prior to that, at RPC, an affiliate of one of Brazil’s largest broadcast TV networks, I led the migration of the backend from a monolithic architecture to microservices and introduced the company’s first CI/CD pipeline, which became the foundation for DevOps adoption across their engineering teams.

I hold a Technology Degree in Information Systems from Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR). Over the years, I’ve also shared what I’ve learned with the developer community by giving talks on microservices and cloud scalability and leading web development workshops for computer science students.

My Areas of Expertise:

  • Software Architecture
  • Cloud Infrastructure (AWS)
  • DevOps & Automation
  • Data Integration & ETL
  • Engineering Leadership

More About Me:

Based in São José dos Pinhais, in southern Brazil, I’m a father to an 8-year-old daughter who keeps me grounded and constantly learning. Outside of work, I enjoy motorcycles and never miss a Formula 1 race, following the sport as much for the data and strategy as for the racing itself. I’m also a beginner audiophile exploring the world of high-fidelity sound and a casual gamer currently making my way through The Witcher 3.

What’s In My Tech Stack:

  • Cloud & Infrastructure
    • Amazon Web Services (AWS): The primary cloud provider that I use for compute (EC2, ECS, Lambda), storage (S3), databases (RDS PostgreSQL), and infrastructure orchestration. I like that it’s a mature platform with broad service coverage and strong tooling for DevOps practices.
    • Terraform: My go-to for Infrastructure-as-Code. I use it to keep environments versioned and reproducible, which saves me from the configuration drift that creeps in when infrastructure gets changed by hand.
  • Version Control & CI/CD
    • Git / GitHub: My primary platform for source control and collaboration, where code reviews and pull requests happen day to day. I also lean on GitHub Actions for CI/CD and workflow automation, since keeping pipeline-as-code right alongside the repository makes the whole flow straightforward.
    • GitLab: Used occasionally as an alternative platform, particularly when working with self-hosted repositories or projects that already live in the GitLab ecosystem.
  • Programming Languages & Frameworks
    • Node.js + TypeScript: Primary backend stack. The type safety TypeScript adds on top of JavaScript has been a real win for maintainability as our codebases have grown.
    • React: Frontend library used across most of our internal tools. I like how its component model keeps our interfaces consistent and quick to iterate on.
  • Databases
    • PostgreSQL: Primary relational database. I find this mature, reliable, and feature-rich. It’s particularly well-suited for editorial systems that require complex relationships and structured queries.
    • MySQL: Used as a secondary relational database, often in projects with existing MySQL-based stacks or when working with legacy systems.
  • Observability & Monitoring
    • AWS CloudWatch: Native AWS monitoring for logs, metrics, and alarms. Since most of my infrastructure runs on AWS, it’s my first layer of visibility into the platform itself.
    • New Relic: Application performance monitoring (APM). I reach for it when I need to go a level deeper than infrastructure metrics, into transaction tracing and finding where the real bottlenecks are.
    • Sentry: Error tracking and exception monitoring across backend and frontend. It catches the issues that slip past metrics, the actual exceptions reaching users.
  • AI-Assisted Development
    • Claude Code: AI coding assistant integrated into my day-to-day workflow. I use it to speed up code generation, work through refactors, and get oriented in unfamiliar codebases.
  • Collaboration & Communication
    • Slack: Team communication. It is also where we plug in the internal tools we build, so workflows show up right inside the app the team already uses.
  • Code Editor
    • VS Code: My primary IDE. I like that it stays lightweight while being endlessly extensible, with the first-class TypeScript support that fits how I work.
Gabriel Rosas

210+ published articles on The CTO Club