Ricardo Vega

Senior Software Engineer / Backend Software Engineering Lead

Düsseldorf, Germany

ricardoe@gmail.com | LinkedIn | GitHub

Summary

Professional experience managing engineering teams in critical data products.
Professional experience with leading Frontend and Backend development and multiple programming languages.
Professional experience with multiple Cloud Computing providers, Kubernetes and event-driven systems.
Ten years of Ad Technology and Internet Advertising experience.
Expert in Data Processing, Analytics and proficient with AI-driven applications.
Expert in Web Development languages, tools, and techniques.
Expert in Software Development tools, communication with remote teams.

Work Experience

trivago N.V.

trivago N.V. is a German technology company specializing in internet-related services and products in the hotel, lodging and metasearch fields. The company headquarter is in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Backend Software Engineering Lead Jun 2020 - Present

Data Platform Team Lead (Dec 2024 - Present): Owning central data infrastructure, including workflow orchestration, the data warehouse, centralized streaming ingestion, and large-scale batch processing (many under SOX controls). Responsible for team strategy, OKRs, budget and cost oversight, and formal incident management.
Accommodation Profile Team Lead (2022 - 2024): Led trivago’s accommodation and content data ecosystem.
Content Interface Team Lead (2020 - 2022): Established data pipelines and cloud ingestion foundations.

Impact Highlights:

Platform Reliability & Cost: Led 30%+ cost reductions across core data services, with sustained savings exceeding €10K/month.
Cloud Migration & Data Foundations: Led the migration of 20+ data pipelines off legacy infrastructure onto cost-effective warehouse pipelines. Designed and built a streaming-to-warehouse ingestion system ahead of company-wide efforts, enabling cloud platform adoption for the entire content organization. Transitioned ungoverned shared database tables into a governed ownership model to remove data-integrity issues.
AI for Data: Secured buy-in and implemented an AI-for-data strategy, creating a metadata/data-context layer to make company data machine-discoverable. Built the first LLM-based content pipeline utilizing a Gemini model to generate AI content highlights in 6+ languages. Drove unit-wide AI adoption by defining the roadmap and leading cross-org knowledge-sharing events.
Leadership & Team Delivery: Created a lean operating model emphasizing clear work traces, lightweight documentation, and a high-trust environment. Successfully hired, mentored, and promoted engineers from junior to senior roles while sustaining high delivery throughput over six years.

GumGum Inc.

GumGum is an artificial intelligence company, with deep expertise in computer vision. Its mission is to unlock the value of images and videos produced everyday across the web, social media and broadcast television.

Principal Web Engineer Aug 2016 - May 2020

Leading architectural and technical direction of the client code for our advertising products.
Leading research and developing for new techniques and technologies for our advertising product.
Designing and developing new products, tools and prototypes for different needs of the advertising products.
Leading integrations with industry partners.
Mentoring engineers in the advertising division to understand, maintain and improve the existing products and codebase.

Web Engineering Manager Aug 2014 - Aug 2016

Managed and lead the Web Engineering team, including remote members in Mexico City, Los Angeles and France.
Designed, developed, maintained and setup company websites and internal tools for stats and operations.
Led multiple company-wide projects and endeavors including adopting GIT, organizing yearly hackathons, and setting up chat-like communication tools.
Implemented monthly show-and-tell sessions, supported the creation of shared Open Source products, and organized hiring processes.
Helped build up the Web Engineering team that now works on a wide range of projects for the company.

Lead JavaScript Developer Aug 2008 - Aug 2014

Designed and developed the JavaScript code that allows the company to create new products effortlessly, which is embedded in thousands of websites across our network with millions of daily hits.
Designed, developed and deployed multiple Web applications for internal operations and statistics.

Early Career (Before 2008)

Zapatec JavaScript Developer (July 2007 - July 2008): Developed AJAX widgets, documented the Java codebase, and provided client support.

Folk Arts Museum

Lead Systems Engineer (July 2006 - July 2007): Designed and deployed ticketing, museography control, and internal communication systems.

Sistemas CASA S.A de C.V. Webmaster (Before 2006).
INAH - CNDI Web Developer (Before 2006).

Skills

Languages: Python, Bash, SQL, Terraform, JavaScript, PHP, HTML5, CSS3, Ruby
Cloud Computing with GCP: BigQuery, Cloud Run, Cloud Functions, BigTable, Stackdriver
Cloud Computing with AWS: RDS, EC2, CloudFront, CloudWatch, Lambda, Lambda @ Edge
Development Tools: Kafka, Docker, Kubernetes, Git, GitOps, GitLFS, GitFlow, GitHub, Bitbucket
Development with Python: Data pipelines, serverless functions, HTTP APIs
Development with NodeJS: NPM, Express, Build tools, Gulp, Rollup, Babel
Development with PHP: Composer, Propel ORM, Laravel, Microframeworks, PHPUnit
Front-End Development: Cross-browser compatibility, cross-domain communication, DOM, BOM
Databases: MySQL, Postgres, Redshift, Cassandra
Frameworks: VueJS, ReactJS, jQuery
APIs & Tooling: Browser APIs, Google APIs, Animation and charting libraries
Testing: Jest, Karma, Jasmine, Headless
Engineering Best Practices: Web Performance, Caching, Protocols, Programming Patterns, OOP, RESTful API design, Automated Documentation, Diagram as Code, Linux management
Other: Jira, Redmine, Jenkins, drone.io, ElasticSearch, Logstash, Kibana, Gimp, 3D Blender, Unity

Education

ESCOM, IPN

2003 - 2006

Computer Systems Engineering. Two years. No degree.

Personal Statement

As an Engineering Lead with over 15 years of experience building practical software solutions, I specialize in scaling critical data infrastructure and growing high-performing teams. I remain deeply hands-on with the codebase and prefer to lead implementations from the front. My natural curiosity drives me to learn quickly across different domains, keep pace with emerging industry tools, and validate new ideas through rapid experiments and proofs of concept.

I focus on aligning technical architecture directly with business goals. This practical approach has enabled me to drive significant infrastructure cost reductions, migrate legacy pipelines to modern cloud environments, and build out new strategies that make organizational data machine-discoverable.

I believe sustainable technical excellence requires a lean operating model based on clear communication, transparency, and trust. I lead by example and share knowledge openly to mentor engineers at all levels. My goal is to lead engineering organizations in building reliable, innovative products that solve complex, real-world problems.

Hobbies

Board games
Civic tech
Swimming
Science & Technology