Backend & Platform Engineer
Federico Almendra
I build distributed systems and real-time data platforms.
Five years in the Corporate & Investment Bank at JPMorgan Chase. MBA candidate at UCEMA. Based in Buenos Aires.
01 About
I'm a Backend & Platform Engineer based in Buenos Aires, focused on distributed systems, real-time data platforms, and AI-assisted engineering.
For the past five years I've been part of the Market Adapters team in JPMorgan Chase's Corporate & Investment Bank, designing and operating backend services for real-time transaction monitoring and payment gateway integrations in Java and Python. I work with high-throughput Kafka pipelines, event-driven architecture, and low-latency systems that need to stay stable at scale.
My work also sits where engineering meets product: I run requirements sessions, manage backlogs, and align engineering and business stakeholders across complex initiatives.
AI is now a core part of my day-to-day. I use Claude Code and GitHub Copilot extensively, build reusable AI developer tooling, experiment with LLM workflows and agentic systems, and help drive adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices across teams.
02 Experience
JPMorgan Chase
Corporate & Investment Bank · Buenos Aires
Backend & Platform Engineer Market Adapters
May 2021 – Present
- Design and build backend services and APIs for real-time transaction monitoring and payment gateway integrations, mainly in Java and Python.
- Build and maintain Kafka data pipelines for high-throughput, low-latency ingestion across distributed systems, and automate recurring fixes so they stay stable without manual work.
- Use Claude Code and GitHub Copilot daily; built reusable AI skill templates the team now relies on, and help teammates get up to speed on AI-assisted development.
- Help drive AI tooling adoption across engineering teams: evaluate agentic workflows, MCP integrations, and LLM-powered tooling before broader rollout, and run community-of-practice sessions on what's new in AI/ML.
- Act as Product Owner on some workstreams: run requirements sessions, manage the backlog, and keep engineering and business stakeholders aligned.
- Take part in vendor evaluation sessions, reviewing architectural proposals and technical credentials against our stack.
- Write technical documentation and build Splunk dashboards for payment-partner onboarding and incident response. Contributed to AWS and GCP migration efforts and cloud-aware design within the team.
CIB Tech Co-Lead People & Culture
2024 – Jan 2026
- Led cultural initiatives across CIB tech focused on inclusion, well-being, and team cohesion. Organised cross-team events, handled internal comms, and mentored junior engineers.
Universidad Nacional de La Plata
Remote
Software Engineer
2014 – 2021
- Built E-Tutor, a platform connecting students with academic tutors online, delivered with an agile/scrum methodology.
- Gathered detailed requirements from users and stakeholders for web and mobile application development.
Founder & Lead Engineer
2010 – 2016
- Founded and led a live-streaming platform from concept to production, scaling to more than 4 million sessions per month at peak traffic.
- Designed and operated high-volume distributed systems for session processing, streaming orchestration, and third-party platform integrations.
- Built automated load testing, monitoring, and CDN-based delivery pipelines to maintain high availability during large traffic spikes.
- Owned the full product lifecycle end-to-end: roadmap, architecture, vendor integrations, deployment strategy, and production operations.
03 Skills
- Languages
-
Java
Python
JavaScript
Kotlin
PHP
Swift
- AI & Agentic
-
Claude Code
GitHub Copilot
LLMs
Agentic workflows
MCP integrations
Prompt engineering
- Data & Streaming
-
Apache Kafka
SQL · MySQL / PostgreSQL
Splunk
Pipeline design
- Cloud & Infrastructure
-
AWS
GCP
Terraform
Jenkins
Git
CI/CD
- Ways of Working
-
Agile / Scrum
BDD
Product Ownership
Technical Writing
Public Speaking
Vendor Evaluation
04 Education & Certifications
MBA Candidate
2025 – Present
Universidad del CEMA (UCEMA)
Licenciado en Sistemas
2010 – 2015
Universidad Nacional de La Plata
Six-year combined BS/MS in Computer Science. Coursework in design patterns, databases, concurrent programming, and cloud computing.
Certifications
AWS Solutions Architect – Associate
HashiCorp Terraform Associate