Engineering Leadership · AI · Fintech

Kenji Yamamoto

Head of Technology — AI, Fintech & Platform Engineering. Leading scalable engineering teams, product innovation and technology strategy.

📍 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

25+years in technology
1.5M+daily active users served
99.98%platform uptime
−30%infrastructure costs
−70%support costs via AI

About

I'm a technology leader with over two decades of experience spanning software engineering, data engineering and engineering management. Today I lead global engineering organizations building high-scale messaging and communication platforms in fintech — driving product delivery, platform reliability and AI-driven innovation for systems serving millions of users.

My path went from frontend development in the late 90s, through more than 15 years at Globo — South America's largest media group — working on products like Cartola FC and globoesporte.com, to leading engineering at PicPay, one of Brazil's largest fintechs, through its IPO on Nasdaq. I care about clarity, engineering excellence, and building teams that turn technology into real customer value.

Experience

Head of Technology

PicPay
Jul 2024 — Present
  • Lead a global engineering organization of 25+ people (engineers, PMs, QA, SREs) across 3 squads, supporting 1.5M+ daily active users.
  • Architected and delivered a new in-house messaging platform with a zero-downtime migration on AWS, cutting annual infrastructure costs by 30%.
  • Maintained 99.98% uptime across critical messaging and communication services.
  • Led AI-driven customer service initiatives, reducing support costs by 70%+ and halving first-response times.

Tech Manager

PicPay
Jan 2022 — Jul 2024
  • Managed cross-functional teams responsible for APIs, backend services and platform architecture for high-volume messaging systems.
  • Collaborated with global teams across Brazil and China on platform scalability and roadmap execution.
  • Mentored engineers and drove agile delivery for products supporting millions of users.

Head of Growth — Publishing & Video Products

Globo
Aug 2021 — Dec 2021

Drove data-informed growth for publishing and video products, optimizing ways of working and orchestrating cross-team initiatives.

Data Engineer Specialist · Cartola FC

Globo
2018 — 2021

Built data architectures for extraction and transformation powering predictive modeling — including team-optimization features for Cartola FC, Brazil's biggest fantasy football game.

Software Engineering Specialist

Globo
2006 — 2018

Nearly 12 years building web products at scale for South America's largest media group, including globoesporte.com and the Rio 2016 Olympics coverage.

Early Career — Frontend & Web Development

Advice NetBusiness · Americanas.com · Jornal O Dia · Domanni
1998 — 2006

Frontend, Flash and UI development across e-commerce, media and agencies.

Skills

Engineering Leadership AI & Machine Learning Platform Engineering Distributed Systems AWS Cloud Architecture Fintech Messaging Systems Data Engineering Cross-functional Team Leadership Technology Strategy Agile Delivery Global Teams

Education

Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil