Diego Torres
Tech Lead & Software Engineer
Software Engineer with experience across startups and larger companies, working across backend, frontend and mobile development, as well as technical leadership. Currently focused on building scalable backend systems in TypeScript on AWS, with extensive API integration experience. Builds with AI agents across the development lifecycle, shipping faster while maintaining good engineering practices.
Work Experience
Strategic Imperatives
Tech Lead
Nov 2023 — Present- Technical Lead for Fibre Café, a single unified API gateway that connects UK internet service providers to multiple fibre networks.
- Lead and mentor a team of engineers, setting technical direction and code quality standards through code reviews, pairing and design discussions.
- Design and build scalable, event-driven APIs in TypeScript on AWS (Lambda, SQS, SNS, DynamoDB).
- Work directly with suppliers and wholesale clients (e.g. CityFibre, PXC) to define API behaviour and requirements for new integrations.
- Apply agentic software development practices, using AI coding agents (e.g. Claude Code) to speed up delivery, code reviews and documentation.
- Platform processes ~4M service availability checks, 10K orders, 100K events sent and 170K events received per month.
Weaver Build
Senior Fullstack Engineer
Dec 2021 — Jul 2023- Founding member of the tech team.
- Designed and implemented the real-time messaging module within Weaver’s mobile app using TypeScript, Ionic/Capacitor, React, Ably Realtime, GraphQL and AWS infrastructure.
- Worked with OpenAI’s APIs, enabling users to generate messages using content from their prior projects, chat history and personal data.
Leaf Grow (Leaf Music)
Tech Lead / Senior Software Engineer
Sept 2015 — Dec 2021- Founding member of the tech team and tech lead for Leaf Grow’s backend projects using Django and Python.
- Managed a team of 5, overseeing performance, mentoring and project delivery.
- Implemented Leaf Grow’s web app using React and TypeScript.
- Defined best practices such as internal coding standards, Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment.
- Built the Leaf Music Android app from scratch using Java, and led development of Leaf Music’s backend using Firebase and TypeScript.
Desert Development
Senior Software Engineer
Oct 2012 — Sept 2015- Developed online games using C++ and JavaScript, e.g. Count Spectacular.
- Implemented internal tools using VB.NET.
Possible Worldwide
Senior Software Engineer
Mar 2011 — Oct 2012Developed web and Android projects, e.g. All Recipes.
Desert Development
Software Engineer
Nov 2009 — Dec 2010Developed casino games using C++.
Stack
Languages
- TypeScript
- Python
- Java
- C++
Backend
- Node.js
- Express
- Django
- Celery
- REST APIs
- GraphQL
- SOAP
- WebSockets
- OAuth2
AWS
- Lambda
- API Gateway
- SQS
- SNS
- DynamoDB
- Cognito
- ECS/ECR
- ElastiCache
- S3
- OpenSearch
Architecture
- Systems Design
- Event-driven architectures
- Pub/Sub
- Real-time messaging (Ably)
AI & LLM
- OpenAI API
Data
- PostgreSQL
- DynamoDB
- Firestore
Frontend & Mobile
- React
- Next.js
- Ionic / Capacitor
- Android (Java)
Infra & DevOps
- Docker
- GitHub Actions
- CI/CD
- Google Cloud / Firebase
- Digital Ocean
Testing
- Jest
- React Testing Library
- Playwright
- TDD
Education
University of Costa Rica
Master’s Degree in Computer Science
—Final project: “Effect of the number of colors and the distance measure on the similarity between image correlograms”.
University of Costa Rica
Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science
—About Me
Hi there, I’m Diego 👋🏽, and I like building software. I’m a Tech Lead and Software Engineer originally from Costa Rica and now based in London. I’ve worked in startups and larger companies in both countries, often as a founding member of the tech team. These days I lead the Fibre Café team at Strategic Imperatives, designing event-driven APIs with TypeScript and AWS and mentoring the engineers I work with. Over the years I’ve built everything from backend services and real-time messaging to web apps and an Android app that reached close to a million downloads. Other interests include tennis, video games, comedy and meditation.
