luiza prestes
pt en
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Senior Software Engineer hcm @ caju + one foot in product engineering

hi, i’m luiza. i design systems and the screens that live on top of them.

Senior Software Engineer on Caju’s HCM team, working on employee onboarding and document signing. Backend by training, with an eye for interface and UX since I started out in branding in 2020. São Paulo, remote.

see work linkedin
Photo of Luiza Prestes smiling, wearing glasses, on a red background
kotlin✳typescript✳python✳postgres✳react✳claude✳nlp

about

I started in 2020 as a branding designer for clients in Europe and the United States. In 2022 I became a software engineer at Looqbox, on a product that turns natural-language questions into SQL queries over retail data. In 2024 I started a Computer Science degree at UFSCar and, the same year, joined Caju.

Today I own workstreams end to end at Caju: I write the spec and the design doc, design the services and take them through rollout, frontend included. I’m also on the business unit’s on-call rotation and an onboarding buddy for new engineers.

At UFSCar, I also do undergraduate research in quantum computing.

event-driven · kafka ddd · hexagonal · bff llm agents · mcp observability
languages portuguese fluentenglish C1/C2
  1. 2020

    branding designer

    Visual identity for clients in Europe and the US.

  2. 2022

    software engineer at looqbox

    Text-to-SQL for retail data: plain-language questions become queries.

  3. 2024

    ufscar and caju

    Computer Science at UFSCar and software engineer at Caju.

  4. 2026 · today

    Senior Software Engineer at Caju

    Plus quantum computing research at UFSCar.

work

What changed after I got there, with the before and after numbers.

mysql → postgres6 services
rows, zero loss7.37M
worst search time−76%
caju · data · backend

six services to postgres

I led the engineering side of moving HCM services from a shared MySQL instance to Caju’s PostgreSQL standard, in three waves: schema validated against production, code adapted and cutover windows run. The cutover model became the standard for the waves that followed.

"sales by store in may"
↳ Query
↳ Metric · GroupBy · Filter
looqbox · kotlin · antlr

plain-language questions become queries

I designed the platform’s natural-language parser with ANTLR and abstract syntax trees, cutting the query failure rate by 40%.

restarts/day ~20 → 0
docs/week 4,200+
pages/week ~200k
caju · backend

no more OOM crashes

In the document processing service, I replaced the synchronous flow with a queue-based async one and closed the leaking buffers. Within a month, zero restarts.

api 1.9 → 3.0
envelopes in 3 weeks25.9k
no definitive failure99.6%
resumed with no manual fix204
caju · integrations

clicksign 3.0, and nobody noticed

I led the migration of every customer’s e-signature flow from Clicksign’s legacy API to 3.0, from kickoff to a gradual rollout behind feature flags, with a reconciliation routine that made the cutover reversible. No screen changes for signers, and the foundation that unlocked signing via WhatsApp.

40→24 min per pipeline
caju · dev experience

frontend ci 40% faster

I restructured the pipeline with parallel stages and better testing and branch coverage practices, across ~3,000 runs a month.

agent → tools()
↳ mcp://internal-services
guardrails ✓ access filters ✓
caju · ai

platform services as MCPs

A customer insights agent (turnover, for example) that consumes internal services through MCP tools, with security guardrails and low token usage. It started at the internal hackathon, where I led the team to 3rd place.

on github

What comes off my keyboard, updated daily.

2,726 contributions in the last 12 months

github.com/mluizaa00 →
first contribution · Mar 29, 2019 8,917 contributions all-time
decjanfebmaraprmayjunjulaugsepoctnov
updated Nov 8, 2026

research

undergraduate research · ufscar

drone routing with quantum computing

I research route optimization for UAVs on the Dubins Traveling Salesman Problem, a curvature-constrained routing problem, using a hybrid quantum-classical approach. I compare exact and heuristic solvers (Gurobi and GLKH) against Simulated Quantum Annealing on solution quality and runtime.

awards
2026 · 3rd place

caju hackathon

An AI agent built on MCP tools and internal services, with security guardrails and access filters.

2025 · 3rd of 2,000+

brazilian federal revenue hackathon

An affordable spirometer as an anti-smoking solution, in the public health track.

the contract before the screen, the product before the code.

5+ years writing software
~50 incidents a month on the business unit’s on-call
2M+ audit logs archived with full traceability
1 month to bring a newly hired senior engineer to full autonomy, as their technical mentor

let’s build something well thought out?

Open to conversations about product, backend and applied AI.

linkedin github