Marcos Messer
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Principal Engineer · Lucerne

Hi, I’m Marcos Alexandre Figur Messer

Principal Engineer based in Lucerne, Switzerland. I lead teams that deliver complex software — from architecture through production — and I still ship a lot of the code myself. I value people who care about their craft, and I earn trust by holding myself to the same standard. I’m driven by using technology to solve real-world problems.

Selected projects

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cold.globalcold.global

The Choice of Law Dataverse: an open-access legal research platform for private international law — court decisions, legal instruments, and jurisdiction comparisons for scholars and practitioners worldwide. When the original dev team moved on, I took it over as sole engineer: converted the codebase to TypeScript, redid the design language and the data presentation — comparison tables, side drawers for quick peeking — and reworked performance from edge caching down to the materialized views.

The AI case analyzer extracts choice-of-law data from court decisions; it began as a Python/Streamlit app I shipped to Azure, now folded into the FastAPI monorepo.

Nuxt · Vue · TypeScript · Python · FastAPI · PostgreSQL · OpenAI · Azure · Cloudflare

agathabrandao.comagathabrandao.com

Personal academic site for a University of Lucerne researcher in transnational law — publications, CV, and events in English, Portuguese, French, and German. I built it as a playground for Next.js, DatoCMS, SSR, GraphQL subscriptions, and i18n routing. It scores 100 on PageSpeed, mobile and desktop.

Next.js · TypeScript · Tailwind CSS · DatoCMS · GraphQL · Cloudflare

patrimoniosolar.compatrimoniosolar.com

Marketing and lead-generation site for Patrimônio Solar, a Brazilian solar energy company — services, FAQ, blog, and quote requests. It started on Hugo; I rebuilt it in Astro for page speed and UX, and I run its SEO — currently pushing PageSpeed to a straight 100.

Astro · Tailwind CSS · Cloudflare

formacaoglobal.comformacaoglobal.com

Site for Formação Global, a Brazilian study-abroad advisory — scholarships, mentoring content, and testimonials. An early experiment with static generators, it grew to thousands of visits on Hugo, Cloudinary media, and strict security headers.

Hugo · Cloudinary · Cloudflare

Work

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crowdhouse AGPrincipal Engineer—crowdhouse AG

Apr 2026 — now

Technical direction and a large share of the code — architecture designed and implemented hands-on, frontend and backend; also VP of AI. Currently building an accounts-payable system — AI document ingestion, triage, approval flows, payment runs, Abacus integration — as the first piece of a property-management DMS, and refactoring the codebase toward DDD.

TypeScript · Next.js · NestJS · Python · AWS

crowdhouse AG / Driven AGEngineering Manager—crowdhouse AG / Driven AG

Dec 2023 — Apr 2026

Planning, processes, and delivery in a team of twenty — developers, product, design, and business analysts — also Director of AI. Still hands-on: AI document ingestion in Python, an auditable event-log system with collaborative tasks and comments, and CI/CD times cut by more than ten minutes per PR.

TypeScript · Next.js · NestJS · Python · AWS

Driven AG / crowdhouse AGTech Lead—Driven AG / crowdhouse AG

Jan 2023 — Dec 2023

Architecture and standards in a cross-functional product team — DDD, SOLID, and composable patterns that keep thousand-line PRs reviewable. Per-PR CI in five minutes: 5,000 unit tests, 2,000 integration, e2e across 90% of happy paths.

TypeScript · React · NestJS · AWS · Terraform

Driven AG / crowdhouse AGSenior Software Engineer—Driven AG / crowdhouse AG

Dec 2021 — Dec 2022

Full-stack TypeScript — React, NestJS, GraphQL, and AWS infrastructure as code with Terraform. Built document and invoice ingestion (AWS Textract, OpenAI) that turns uploads into vehicle timelines and service history; migrated the frontend from react-scripts to Vite.

TypeScript · React · NestJS · GraphQL · AWS · Terraform

EF Education First / EF Kids & TeensSoftware Engineer—EF Education First / EF Kids & Teens

May 2019 — Nov 2021

Sole developer on a ten-person recruitment team — Next.js and Gatsby sites on Storyblok, and a Salesforce funnel recruiting teachers for the US, UK, Malta, China, and South Africa. Part-time on a second Lucerne team's classroom platform: React frontend, Go backend.

Next.js · Gatsby · Go · Storyblok · Salesforce · AWS

Tribunal Regional do Trabalho 17a Região - TRT-ESSoftware Engineer—Tribunal Regional do Trabalho 17a Região - TRT-ES

Apr 2014 — May 2019

Court systems in C#/.NET for a regional labor court — 800 internal users, thousands more external. OData APIs, SOAP services, Nintex workflows, and portal features; SharePoint migrations from 2013 through 2019, several terabytes, the last done remotely from Switzerland.

C# · VB.NET · ASP.NET · WPF · UWP · SharePoint · Nintex · Oracle · MSSQL

About

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Originally from Brazil, I’ve spent over a decade building software across startups, large corporations, and government agencies. That range has given me strong technical depth and adaptability. I lead through respect for good work and honest effort — trust is earned, not assumed, and the best teams are built on that foundation.

Off the clock I volunteer as an engineer on the Choice of Law Dataverse and run a home lab hosting more self-managed services than any household needs.

Engineering Manager

Running teams that ship — clear planning, agile delivery, and high standards for the work and the people doing it.

Full Stack Developer

Building scalable web applications end-to-end with React, Node.js, C#, and Python — including the CI/CD pipelines that keep them running.

Cloud & DevOps

Hands-on with AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, and Terraform — designing infrastructure that scales and deploying it with confidence.

Contact

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