Jorge Pinto Sousa

Engineering Leader - Head of Engineering - Principal Engineer
Porto, Portugal

Scaling engineering organizations, technical strategy, and quality-driven delivery across safety-critical, fintech, and AI-enabled domains.

Contact

• Email: jorge.pinto.sousa@proton.me
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sousajo-cc
• Download the CV (PDF)

Executive Summary

Engineering leader with 10+ years of experience spanning hands-on individual contribution, technical craftsmanship, and executive engineering leadership. Currently Head of Engineering Development at Critical TechWorks, driving engineering strategy and excellence company-wide (~3,500 FTEs) and shaping the organization's AI Operating Model. Previously led an 80+ engineer software unit across multiple product streams. Proven track record of building high-performing teams, embedding engineering excellence (quality, testing, CI/CD, traceability), and delivering in demanding, safety-critical and regulated environments - from autonomous-driving ECUs to real-time financial regulatory systems. I combine deep technical roots (Modern C++, compiler toolchains, LLVM) with organizational leadership, mentorship, and a strong culture-building mindset.

Leadership Highlights

• Company-wide engineering leadership: Drive engineering strategy and excellence across the entire organization (~3,500 FTEs) as Head of Engineering Development.
• Organizational leadership: Previously led 80+ engineers across multiple product streams, defining technical vision and aligning architecture with business goals.
• AI strategy: Shaping the company-wide AI Operating Model - agentic workflows, AI observability, and FinOps/token-cost governance - while keeping testing, traceability, and quality first-class in AI-enabled development.
• Engineering excellence at scale: Disseminated best practices in code quality, testing, and CI/CD across the organization, raising overall delivery performance.
• Safety-critical delivery: Led the end-to-end quality toolchain for an autonomous-driving ECU (static/dynamic analysis, coverage, dependency integrity) under AUTOSAR, MISRA, and CERT guidelines.
• Deep technical credibility: Maintainer and top contributor of an internal LLVM fork; authored custom clang-tidy checkers; owned quality and host compiler toolchains.
• Culture & talent: Championed software craftsmanship (coding dojos, pair/mob programming, Modern C++), mentoring engineers and interns across multiple organizations.

Core Competencies

Engineering Leadership

• Technical vision & strategy
• Company-wide engineering leadership (~3,500 FTEs)
• Scaling & leading large engineering organizations (80+ engineers directly)
• Aligning architecture with business goals
• Mentorship, coaching & culture building
• Agile leadership (Scrum - PSPO I, PSM I)

Technical Expertise

• Modern C++, Python, Ansible
• Compiler toolchains & LLVM/Clang tooling
• Quality engineering: static/dynamic analysis, code coverage, MISRA/AUTOSAR/CERT
• CI/CD, build systems (CMake, Bazel), DevOps automation
• AI-enabled engineering: agentic workflows, AI observability, FinOps

Domains

• Automotive / autonomous driving (safety-critical embedded)
• Financial services / regulatory reporting
• AI-enabled engineering (agentic workflows, AI observability, FinOps)

Experience

Critical TechWorks

4 years 4 months

Head of Engineering - Engineering Development
April 2026 - Present | Porto, Portugal

• Company-wide engineering leadership (~3,500 FTEs): shaping the AI Operating Model for engineering, ensuring that testing, traceability, quality reporting and static/dynamic analysis remain first-class in AI-enabled development.
• Defining the company's AI competence landscape (agentic workflows, AI observability, FinOps/token-cost) and converting technical-leadership knowledge into organizational capability through onboarding and consolidated engineering practices.
• Driving engineering excellence across the organization.

Head of Software Engineering Unit
January 2024 - Present | Porto, Portugal

• Defined and drove the long-term technical vision across multiple product streams, aligning architecture with business goals.
• Led a diverse group of 80+ engineers, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and mentorship.
• Disseminated best practices in code quality, testing, and CI/CD, enhancing overall team performance.

Scrum Master and Software Engineer
April 2022 - March 2024 | Porto, Portugal

• Led the end-to-end quality toolchain rollout (static analysis, dynamic analysis, code coverage, dependency integrity checking) for an autonomous driving ECU.
• Introduced several automated testing and quality-gates in the delivery pipeline.
• Tailored relevant coding guidelines to be used in a safety-relevant SW development context.
• Main maintainer of quality and host compiler toolchains.
• Maintainer and top contributor of internal LLVM fork.
• Created custom clang-tidy checkers for AUTOSAR, CERT and MISRA coding guidelines.
• Led team of 6 engineers and also external partners.

Scrum Master and Software Engineer
June 2020 - April 2022 | Porto, Portugal

• Introduced several automated testing and quality-gates in the delivery pipeline.
• Led two different teams of engineers in an embedded C++ project.

Natixis

3 years 4 months

Software Craftsmanship
October 2019 - June 2020 | Porto, Portugal

• Facilitated coding dojo sessions to share software craftsmanship practices: design & conception, testing, refactoring, live coding and pair and mob programming.
• Disseminated the use of Modern C++ within the company.

C++ Software Engineer
December 2017 - June 2020 | Paris, France

• Manage the generation of real time reports to Regulators.
• Control and monitor trades, positions and breaks for report accuracy.
• Main maintainer of the pre-trade regulatory checks and alert compliance violations services.
• Mentored interns.

DevOps Automation Developer
March 2017 - December 2017 | Porto, Portugal

• Implemented a continuous delivery workflow on a C++ legacy project.
• Automated build processes.
• Migration to a new version of gcc.

Newton.ai

Junior Software Engineer
August 2015 - February 2017 | Porto, Portugal

• OCR and document classification using ITK and OpenCV (C++).

Languages

• Portuguese (Native or Bilingual)
• English (Native or Bilingual)
• French (Native or Bilingual)
• Spanish (Native or Bilingual)
• Italian (Limited Working)
• Catalan (Limited Working)

Certifications

• Professional Scrum Product Owner I (PSPO I)
• Professional Scrum Master I (PSM I)

Education

• Universitat Oberta de Catalunya - Master's degree, Cybersecurity and Privacy (February 2025 - December 2026)
• Edinburgh Napier University - Bachelor of Science - BS, Computing