About Me

I love to innovate, research, brainstorm, architect, prototype, create, and develop awesome things. I'm very curious, and easily intrigued by hard problems and new challenges.

I'm a creative entrepreneur with a solid background in technology; a computer scientist with a broad and strong set of skills, which includes problem solving, product development, product vision, data science/analytics and software architecture. For fun, I design, create, and hack hardware and software projects. I also enjoy playing guitar and drums, writing about tech, storytelling, creating artwork, songwriting, and collecting certain vintage computers.

My first computers were a TK90X (a Sinclair Spectrum Clone) and a Hotbit MSX. I first learned about computing by reading a lot of books and magazines, and by accessing every Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) whose dial-in numbers I could get my hands on. I am pretty sure I was one of the first kids in Brazil to have a modem (with a speed of 300bps) back in 1987.

André Lessa

Pittsburgh, PA US

My Professional Experience

Highlights

● Extensive experience architecting solutions with various technologies and languages spanning Software Development, Data Science, Data Engineering, Machine Learning, Search & Information Retrieval, Data Modeling, and Systems Architecture. Python is my strongest language skill, and I am a Google Cloud Certified Professional Data Engineer.
●  I collaborate with startup CEOs and key stakeholders, aiding in the transformation of their visions and presentation materials into tangible products. Simultaneously, I've designed and engineered numerous scalable systems tailored for diverse applications.
●  I lead and supervise teams with experience coaching and mentorship engineers. I am also proficient in Agile methodologies (Scrum/ Kanban), as well as Project/Product Management.
● Over the years I have applied my expertise to significantly enhance the success of multiple companies, while also securing funding for my own startup, Meaningfy Inc, in 2012, when I led the launch of an AI-based news monitoring SaaS service dubbed ‘Google Alerts on steroids’.

Work

Inmar Intelligence Inc.

Senior Manager of Data Engineering • 2023 - Present

I currently lead a team of data engineers tasked with building a Data lake and a Data warehouse on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). We create data pipelines using Python, Scala, BigQuery, Cloud Functions, Composer/Airflow, Dataproc, GCS, and other services. And by the way, I'm a Google Cloud Certified Professional Data Engineer.
inmar.com

Voci Technologies Inc. → Medallia Inc.

Joined Voci and shortly after that, Medallia acquired us.

Director of Software Engineering • 2019 - 2023

Medallia is the pioneer and market leader in Experience Management.
My team was responsible for developing software tools that added value to solutions built with the lightning-fast Speech-To-Text engine we had created at Voci.
medallia.com

OnlyBoth Inc.

CTO • 2014 - 2019

OnlyBoth analyzes data sets by looking for novel comparative insights and then reporting all findings in English, just as if a human had done the research and written the reports. Its technology combines machine discovery – Artificial Intelligence algorithms that discover humanly-digestible knowledge – with natural language generation (NLG), making insights easy to read and share in perfect English. At OnlyBoth, I designed and created the web application and managed all the AWS infrastructure and web development. We eventually launched a free portal at BenchMine.com to benchmark US Healthcare Segments and 401K plans using public datasets made available by the US Government.
benchmine.com

Meaningfy Inc.

Founder and CEO• 2012 - 2014

Meaningfy was a web service that allowed users to track news related to specific companies, products, and industries of interest (think "Google Alerts" on steroids). It was a competitive intelligence web service based on Machine Learning recommendations and user collaboration. It used daily email alerts to provide teams with an up-to-date summary of their competitive landscape. The company was accepted into 2 startup accelerators (AlphaLab/IW and IdeaFoundry), raising $50K between them. In addition, it also received some early funding from CMU's i6 Agile Innovation System.
meaningfy.com

... and more.

See my LinkedIn page for the full experience.

Education

PUC-RJ

Masters in Analysis, Design & Management of Information Systems

UVA-RJ

Bachelors in Computer Science

Certifications

Google Cloud

Professional Data Engineer Certification • 2024

See my certificate

MIT Sloan School of Management

Executive Program: Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy • 2018

See my certificate

Udacity

Self-driving car Engineer Nanodegree • (I graduated!!!! See my certificate.)

The Udacity Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree was a 9-months (3 terms, 4 if you count the intro) program that covered key topics like deep learning, computer vision, sensor fusion, localization, controllers, vehicle kinematics, automotive hardware, and more.
  some of my project videos  

Udacity

Intro to Self-Driving Cars Nanodegree • 2017

Essentials of building a self-driving car, including probability, C++, machine learning, linear algebra, Python skills, C++, and computer vision.

Udemy

The Complete Agile Scrum Product Owner Masterclass • 2020

Udemy

Technical Program Management • 2019

Skills

I'm skilled in many areas, including: Python, Agile, Rails, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Javascript, Database Design, SQL, NoSQL, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Natural Language Generation (NLG), Self-Driving Cars Tech, Robotics, Web, Search Tech, and Data Science.

  • Entrepreneurship
  • Innovation
  • Software Development
  • Creativity


The latest from my blog




Client Testimonials

  • Imagination’s greatest threat is the absence of an inspired and organized mind.

    André Lessa

  • If you don't question why things are what they seem to be, they will just keep being what they've always been. And if you don't question why things only do what they are known to do, then they will never do anything different apart from what they've always done.

    André Lessa

  • Things are only impossible until they're not

    Captain Jean-Luc Picard

  • I have a new theory: Andre's brain does not function like everybody else's. In front of a wall, Andre does not see a wall, he sees an infinite number of cracks, pathways to the other side of the wall.

    CTO at a previous job