DiogoPires

Co-founder & CTO

Engineering leadership · Fintech · Distributed systems · Big data

At Zharta I hired the engineering team and architected every protocol we launched. Ten years in fintech, blockchain and big data, after an MSc in robotics and intelligent systems. Looking to lead engineering on AI products next.

Equity raised
$4M
Government grants
$4M
Loan volume
$20M+
Protocols shipped
4

Experience

2021 – Now

Zharta Co-founder & CTO

On-chain lending and renting against NFTs, and institutional lending against tokenised real-world assets (RWAs).

  • Raised $4M in equity ($300K pre-seed from angels, $3.7M seed from Greenfield Capital, Shilling and Possible Ventures) plus $4M in Portuguese government grants.
  • Architected and led delivery of NFT Lending v1 (2022), NFT Renting v1–v3 (2023–24), NFT Lending v2 (2025) and Lending Pro, our institutional RWA lending product (2025).
  • Grew the company to 20 people, half of them in engineering.
  • 5K+ loans and rentals, largest loan $1M. RWA partners include Securitize, Centrifuge and OpenEden.
  • Vyper contracts on Ethereum, ApeChain, Avalanche, Robinhood Chain; audited by Hexens, Hacken, Red4Sec.

Scene Collateral vault

Drag a token into the vault to issue a loan against it, or tap the token. Each token also has a button below: tap it, or focus it and press Enter.

Vault empty. 0 of 6 tokens in the vault.

Illustration, not live data. In production: 5K+ loans and rentals, largest loan $1M.

2021

OutSystems Lead Product Architect

  • Lead architect across two teams on One-Click Publish, designed to take apps from IDE to cloud in minutes.

2019 – 2021

Mercedes-Benz.io Software Architect

  • Architected data supply systems feeding marketing and technical data for the smart and Mercedes-Benz Vans brands into Daimler platforms (AWS serverless, Kotlin, Python, Terraform).
  • Built the R3 Corda points ledger for a gamified EQC app that rewarded battery-friendly driving.

2017 – 2018

AppCoins Team Lead & Software Architect

  • Co-authored the white paper for a blockchain protocol covering app-store ads, in-app purchases and developer reputation. The ICO raised $16M.
  • Led the 14-person team that built it, spanning Android, web, backend, blockchain and UX/UI.

Scene Transaction chain

Hover a transaction to read its hash. Each transaction also has a button below: tap it, or focus it, to read its hash.

6 transactions on the chain.

Illustration, not live data. The protocol's ICO raised $16M.

2016 – 2017

Aptoide Big Data Architect

  • Scaled malware detection 20x to 30K app scans a day at 98% first-pass success, 99.5% on same-day rescan.
  • Built an analytics platform processing 5M+ events a day (Python, Apache Spark, AWS Kinesis, EMR).

Scene Malware scan

Move the scanner lens over the apps, or tap where to scan on a touch screen. Flagged apps glitch. The arrow buttons below, and the arrow keys, move the lens one cell at a time.

Scanned 0 of 192 apps. 0 flagged as malware.

Illustration, not live data. In production, malware detection scaled 20x to 30K app scans a day.

Education

2008 – 2016

Instituto Superior Técnico MSc Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, Robotics, Control & Intelligent Systems · BSc

  • Thesis on robot mapping and navigation with SocRob@Home at ISR-Lisboa, winners of RoCKIn@Home 2015.
  • Research grant on the EU USORA project, building a remote mobile-robotics lab. Paper published at REM 2015.

Scene Mapping and navigation

The robot follows the pointer and maps walls with its lidar. Tap the map to set a waypoint. The arrow buttons below, and the arrow keys, drive the robot one cell at a time.

Robot ready. Map 13% explored.

Illustration of occupancy-grid mapping, the subject of the thesis with SocRob@Home, winners of RoCKIn@Home 2015.

Skills

Leadership
Hiring & team building · Technical strategy · System architecture · Fundraising · Security & audits
Engineering
Python · Vyper · Kotlin · Java · PostgreSQL · AWS · Docker · Kubernetes · Terraform · Apache Spark
Domains
DeFi & on-chain credit · Tokenised RWAs · Distributed systems · Big data · Machine learning · Robotics
Languages
Portuguese (native) · English (full professional) · Spanish, German (elementary)

Work with me

Technical advisory
For founders and investors: architecture and security reviews, protocol design, technical due diligence.
Fractional CTO
Engineering leadership for early-stage teams: technical strategy, hiring, delivery and audits.
Protocol architecture
On-chain lending, renting and tokenised real-world assets on EVM chains, from design to audit.
Data platforms
Event pipelines and analytics at scale, on AWS and Apache Spark.

Write to hi@diogopires.dev.

Contact

PGP (signing) E552 E27B B00E F60A C935 B070 2BD4 1DED ECFB 6B7E public key

Download CV (PDF)