Hey, I’m Ricardo.

I’m an engineer who’s spent his career at the intersection of AI and software, since before that was the obvious place to be. I started in an ML research lab in Brazil working on music classification, published a couple of papers along the way (one with IEEE), then went from hackathons to co-founding a data analytics company, to building platforms in New York, to where I am now: designing and delivering production AI systems for banks and other regulated financial institutions.

Right now that means agentic and LLM-based systems for compliance and operational workflows, with the guardrails, human oversight, and audit trails that regulated environments actually require. I care a lot about the gap between an AI demo and a system that survives contact with a real compliance team, and most of my current work lives in that gap.

I’m also just genuinely curious about how systems, whether they’re made of code or people, actually work. I like turning complicated ideas into clear mental models, through code, through diagrams, through writing.

Outside of tech, you’ll probably find me:

  • Running in NYC.
  • Reading.
  • Cooking.
  • Staying curious about people and cultures.

This site is my personal space to share ideas, experiments, and opinions, some polished, some in progress.