Jesús Hergueta
Personal site Caracas, originally · Mexico City, today

I build things that matter, with the right people.

Software, teams, ideas, products. Tell me what you have in mind and I'll tell you how we make it real.

Jesús Hergueta Tech Lead · Engineering Manager · Inventor
Ex-Kavak · 8+ years Open to opportunities in Venezuela, Mexico, and worldwide
Chapter 01

Who I am.

I'm an engineer, but more than that I'm someone who enjoys understanding how things work — and building them better when I can.

Jesús Hergueta
Jesús Hergueta
Made in Caracas, 1997
Now in Mexico City

For the past eight-plus years I've been working on what holds tech companies together from the inside — the part that's almost never visible, but without which nothing stays standing. I grew up professionally at Kavak, Mexico's first unicorn, where I joined as one of the first backend developers and ended up leading squads of up to fifteen people. I went through two major architecture revamps, and without quite planning it I became the person the team turned to whenever the topic was payments, authentication, or design decisions that would hurt if they went wrong.

After Kavak came Pacto, a very early-stage startup where for the first time I lived the full experience of building from zero — senior international team, open-ended problems, plenty of room for real engineering. From there I moved to Solara, where I came in as their first technical hire and had to set everything up again: the team, the architecture, the platform, the culture.

My favorite ground is the systems nobody sees but without which nothing works.

Backend, infrastructure, payment integrations, IoT, data, internal tooling. I work mainly on AWS, with hands-on experience in GCP, Azure, and DigitalOcean. Since 2022 I've been bringing generative AI into the work in a serious way — both into what I build (models from Anthropic, Meta, Amazon, and DeepSeek on Bedrock) and into my day-to-day workflow.

Something peers, managers, and direct reports often mention about me: that I bring calm when things get messy, and that the way I communicate helps the team move with confidence. I take it with gratitude — for me it's a meaningful part of how I understand this craft.

Chapter 02

How I work.

It's not about money. It's about doing things right — and I'm not afraid to walk away from a project when quality isn't respected.

— 01

Pragmatic and process-driven.

Document, understand, plan, execute. No step gets skipped because no step is wasted. Intuition is valuable, but method is what makes something hold up once it stops being just an idea.

— 02

Modular and isolated.

I design so that each piece can change without breaking the rest. Risks stay contained. Components get replaced. Costs don't explode when something shifts, and today's decisions don't become tomorrow's prison.

— 03

Transparent by design.

If you can't observe it, you can't trust it. Logging, metrics, clear contracts, decisions you can defend. Transparency isn't a nice-to-have — it's the only way to operate with peace of mind once things grow.

— 04

Grounded in theory.

Every technical decision has a reason that can be argued from first principles. I don't do things "because that's how it's done" — I do them because I understand the trade-off and can defend it when someone asks.

— 05

Thinking about what nobody sees.

Security, standards, certifications, maintenance. The things that aren't urgent today but determine whether the system is still alive in five years. Operations wants to solve and move on — someone has to think about the rest, and that's usually me.

— 06

Doors always open.

Building in isolation is building dead. The best software is the one that integrates, connects, extends. I design with the assumption that tomorrow something new will need to talk to this — because it always does.

Chapter 03

What I've done.

Four projects that fairly capture what I do. Each one was different, each one taught me something different. All of them are still alive in production.

2019 — 2021 Founding
Backend Dev

Kavak · Caracas

Unified Payment Processor.

An in-house Stripe for Kavak, built from scratch.

I designed and built a proxy with its own database and Factory-pattern wrappers that integrated six payment providers (Stripe, Conekta, PayPal, MercadoPago, EBANX, and PayU) behind a single uniform API. The idea was simple on paper but ambitious in practice: turn launching a new country from a months-long project into a two-week integration.

100% of Kavak's money ended up flowing through this system — reservation checkouts, vehicle purchase wires, payments with revenue split to third parties (Stripe Connect-style), subscriptions, reconciliations, reporting. At its core, an in-house Stripe built for commercial reasons and to optimize fees.

Countries served · Mexico · Argentina · Brazil · Turkey · Oman
2021 — 2022 Tech Lead
Kavak · CDMX

Kavak Total.

A product that internally could have been a company.

I led the conception and technical build of Kavak's extended warranty and post-sales benefits product — from architecture all the way to production launch. The squad grew to fifteen people across backend, fullstack, iOS, Android, QA, and DBA, and we worked against commercial deadlines that left little room for mistakes.

Internally it came to be considered a business line that could stand on its own. The CEO and PM publicly recognized it as one of the most successful launches of the year — but what I learned most was how to coordinate an operation of that size without losing technical quality along the way.

Squad · 15 people · Backend · Mobile · QA · DBA
2022 — 2023 Sr. Backend
Pacto · CDMX

Pacto Box · edge computing.

A restaurant POS that keeps running even when the internet drops.

I led the development of an offline-first appliance — a Dell mini-PC running Linux and Docker — meant to run the restaurant POS without depending on internet connectivity. I worked from the ISO image and the boot process up through the internal networking (custom DNS, in-house WiFi AP, traffic bypass) and an atomic edge-to-cloud sync system on top of a serverless event broker.

The architecture allowed cloud branches and edge branches to coexist without conflicts — a small detail that, in real operation, was the difference between a usable system and one that caused more problems than it solved. I showcased the prototype at ABASTUR 2023, Mexico's largest hospitality industry trade show.

Showcased · ABASTUR 2023 · DILA Capital fundraise
2024 — Today Tech Lead
Solara · CDMX

Proposal Tool · SaaS platform.

OCR, scraping, simulation, finance, AI — and under one thousand dollars a month in infrastructure.

It's the centerpiece of Solara's solar and BESS financing platform. It combines several data sources to generate commercial proposals in minutes — OCR of CFE bills (Mexico's national power utility) on Textract with a model trained to 98% accuracy, in-house scraping of the CFE portal for consumption history, generation simulation with PVWatts and our own math, financial modeling engine, and final proposal generation as a white-label PDF plus an interactive web experience with an AI chat on Bedrock using Anthropic and Meta models.

Total infra cost · < 1,000 USD/month · Production
Chapter 04

Path.

The full road, step by step, no chapters skipped.

  1. 2024 — Today Tech Lead · Solara Mexico City
  2. 2022 — 2023 Sr. Backend Developer · Pacto Mexico City
  3. 2021 — 2022 Tech Lead · Kavak Mexico City
  4. 2019 — 2021 Sr. Backend Developer · Kavak Caracas
  5. 2018 Web Developer · ACO Rent a Car Caracas · advisor since
  6. 2017 Developer Analyst · PwC Caracas
Chapter 05

Tools.

The digital ones and the ones that aren't. I work across three desks — one to think and plan, one to type, and a third to build things with my hands when I need to.

Digital stack

Languages

TypeScript · JavaScript · Python · Java · C# · SQL

Backend

Node.js · Express · Flask · FastAPI · GraphQL · REST

Cloud

AWS as my main strength — Lambda, ECS, RDS, EventBridge, SNS/SQS, Cognito, Bedrock, Textract, OpenSearch, VPC, IAM. GCP, Azure, DigitalOcean.

Data

PostgreSQL · MySQL · MongoDB · DynamoDB · Redis · SQLite · DuckDB

Infra & DevOps

Docker · Terraform · Atlantis · GitHub Actions · NGINX · WireGuard · Linux on-premise

Applied AI

AWS Bedrock with models from Anthropic, Meta, Amazon, DeepSeek. Cursor, Codex, and Claude in my daily workflow.

The other desk

Building with hands

3D printer, circuits, precision tools, soldering. The part where a problem becomes physical.

At full scale

Mechanics, blacksmithing, woodworking, electrical. The space for when the problem needs a lathe, not an IDE.

Ready for the client site

On-site kit ready to go. Tools clean, functional, well-maintained. If I have to travel, I travel prepared.

For looking

Professional photography gear. For trips, overlanding, personal projects. To capture what matters.

Chapter 06

Outside of work.

There's something that doesn't show up in a CV but for me matters just as much as anything else: the hands side. I do DIY on pretty much anything that can be done — mechanics, automotive, blacksmithing, woodworking, electrical, electronics. If I'm not in front of a screen, I'm most likely fixing something or building something new. That part never went away — it lives alongside the digital one and feeds it.

I live with Otto, my German shepherd, and a good part of my free time revolves around him. I love exploring — road trips, overlanding, getting to know new places without rushing, ideally with the camera close by. I have professional photography gear and end up using it more on trips and personal projects than on work.

When I picture the next ten years I don't see myself in a corporate office. I see myself working in the field, traveling without rush, with family and home as the center. Tech will always be there — but as a tool to live better, not as the place where I live.

OttoDIYMechanicsBlacksmithingWoodworkingElectronicsOverlandingRoad tripsPhotographyReading
Chapter 07

What I'm building.

— Early stage

The Caracas Agency.

A software development and technical consulting agency based in Caracas, open to local and international clients. I'm building it slowly, with the conviction that as a migrant returning to his country, part of what I have to bring back is new standards, knowledge, and ways of doing things. Venezuela has been more in isolation than blocked — and it needs to catch up to a global reality where everything hangs by thin threads.

Today we operate with two clients that come from my own trajectory. Still without formal legal entity, still looking for the right co-founder. Without rush but with clear ambition: build long-term relationships, take care of the team that joins, and aim for the best — even outside the budget when it matters.

If this resonates with you — as an investor, a potential co-founder, a client, or simply someone who also wants to move something in the region — write me.

Back cover

Let's talk.

If you made it this far — thanks for reading. I'm open to conversations of any kind: about projects, about ideas, about building something together, or just to get to know each other. Any channel works, and a conversation is always pending.