Francisco Polaco Santos.
Engineer at heart, leading with purpose.
Engineering Manager @ Human Ready
Hi, I'm
About Me
I’m an engineer turned engineering manager, currently leading teams at Human Ready. I’ve spent my career building software and the people around it — I care as much about how teams work as about the code they ship.
(More about my journey coming soon.)
Values & Philosophy
(Coming soon — what I believe about engineering, leadership, and people.)
Experience
Engineering Manager
-
Human Ready
Apr 2024 - Present
Leading the product engineering team and project teams.
Senior Software Engineer
Apr 2022 - Mar 2024
Built highly scalable analytics products working closely with product and engineering. Stack: FastAPI, React, Docker. First steps leading technical projects and mentoring junior engineers.
Software Engineer
-
Feedzai
Oct 2018 - Mar 2022
Worked on Feedzai Genome (link analysis for financial crime detection) and Case Manager (transaction alert management). Led key parts of a major Genome redesign. Completed a CS rotation as a delivery engineer, gaining direct client-facing exposure.
Education
2016 - 2018
Master's Degree, Computer Science and Engineering
Instituto Superior Técnico
GPA:
16 / 20
Focused on Distributed Systems and Cybersecurity. Thesis: PRIME — a probabilistic membership protocol for large-scale systems.
2013 - 2016
Bachelor's Degree, Computer Engineering
Instituto Superior Técnico
GPA:
16 / 20
Core curriculum: Computer Networks, Distributed Systems, Software Engineering, AI, Compilers, Databases.
Things I've built
Markdown TTS Reader
Reads markdown notes aloud. Built because I needed a way to go through notes hands-free in the car — no existing tool did exactly this.
Compound Interest Calculator
A compound interest calculator with all the fields you actually need. Most calculators were missing something, so I prompted a better one.