Meet the team: Bernardo Viana

Questions and Answers with one of our engineers.

Why did you decide to join SwissBorg?

It’s a combination of factors.

Firstly, it’s a remote-first company — allowing its employees to pretty much work wherever they want. Coming from the south of Europe, my dream was to be able to move back there and Swissborg opened that door for me.

Also, joining a company in the crypto space was very attractive as I’ve been learning blockchain technology on and off for the past years. This would expose me even more to the space and create more opportunities for me to keep learning.

Last but not least the team itself created a big impact on me during the interview process which was then confirmed when I joined the company. The team conveyed assertiveness, kindness and intelligence which got me interested in joining this company specifically.

How did you get into Engineering?

I got into Software Engineering via a company that specializes in training grad students in software development among some other specializations. Before that I was working in patent law, however, I wanted to move to the UK and be an engineer so I was lucky enough to land this opportunity.

You are a part of our DIY Investment squad — what is the purpose of this team?

We build tools that help our community members set up their investment strategies. Our latest development was the SwissBorg auto-invest which allows users to perform regular exchanges automatically.

Generally, we focus on all the features related to trading in the Swissborg app. This includes token listing or price alerts as well.

How does your squad collaborate?

Our squad is quite product driven which gives a good part of the direction to the squad. For every product proposal that we get, we estimate and give feedback on complexity. This helps refine the product in its initial iterations to deliver a working MVP.

Technical decision making is performed collectively within the team. We get together and perform design sessions where each engineer has the opportunity to express ideas and concerns about the technical direction of a product.

One of the most interesting aspects of our team is that what we build is quite visible in the SwissBorg app. This means that we’re heavily involved in Frontend development as well as QA testing. This makes our team quite cross-functional and really fun to work with.

Have you learned anything since joining SwissBorg?

I’ve learned a great deal of new things! Technology-wise I had the chance to learn about event-sourced systems, distributed tracing or protocol buffers.

Also, I’ve had the chance to really learn how to work on systems that provide information to a mobile application. For instance, I’ve realized the importance dynamic feature flags have in the development lifecycle of a new product and the power it gives us.

I’ve also had the chance to deepen my knowledge of Scala and keep learning about the awesome libraries such as cats-effect, tapir, monocle or fs2.

What is the most recent technical concept or skill you have acquired and why did you choose to learn this one specifically?

I’ve been learning Python for finance lately. I’m discovering the vast realm of tools for finance in the Python ecosystem. I got interested in learning more about its applications and how quants use it to develop financial strategies for their investments.

Do you have any hobbies?

Yes, I do have a few. I love sports and I used to be quite into basketball in the past. But nowadays I enjoy playing football, beach volleyball and snorkelling or scuba diving. I’ve also developed an interest in the niche practice of mobility training and I have a lot of fun doing weird poses and movements I’ve never done before.

One other hobby I have is reading and learning about the economy and the financial sector. I got into it a few years ago and it just became part of me spending some time being a geek on the topic.