Paulo Neves

Paulo Neves

Engineering Manager & Product Owner

Johnson & Johnson

Jacareí, SP, Brazil
Remote (Brazil) or São Paulo
paulo@psneves.com.br

About

Product-minded engineering leader with a strong security foundation — five years in Information Security & Risk Management at Johnson & Johnson, then product ownership of the Innovative Medicine HCP portal across LATAM and CENCA. Today I lead a 100+ engineer Full Stack organization across a 25-initiative portfolio, and by integrating AI across planning, build, test and release the team delivered US$2M in cost avoidance year-to-date in 2026.

Founder and sole engineer of Meus Desafios, a live habit-tracking app on iOS and Android — and of the grounded conversational assistant on this site. I own product, mobile client, backend, billing and store releases end to end — the side project is another place to put product and engineering experience into practice.

US$2M Avoided
Year-to-date 2026, from AI across the delivery lifecycle
100+ Engineers
11 J&J engineers and 90+ Full Stack contractors across 25 initiatives
Still Hands-On
Architecture, code and releases

AI-Assisted Engineering Practice

How the work gets done

The practice behind the US$2M — how AI is integrated across planning, build, test and release, and the bar agent-written work has to clear. Every mechanism below exists because of a failure it prevents.

  • Specifications and agent instructions are version-controlled artifacts committed next to the code and reviewed like source, so the context an agent works from is owned and current rather than re-explained each session.
  • Recurring workflows are packaged as reusable agent skills rather than re-prompted from scratch, so the same task produces the same shape of output whoever runs it.
  • Agents run on scoped subtasks in isolated git worktrees, so parallel work cannot collide and every change stays independently reviewable.
  • A reviewer agent audits the writer agent's diff before a human sees it — first output is never the output that ships.
  • Agent changes clear the same gate as human ones: build, typecheck, lint and tests pass before review, and a person approves every merge.
  • Headless runs handle the repetitive passes — migrations, codebase-wide sweeps, release checks — that do not need someone in the loop.

Experience

Professional Journey

Johnson & Johnson

Johnson & Johnson

São José dos Campos, SP, Brazil

2014 — Present

Full Stack Engineering Manager, Technology Services

Apr 2023 — Present

Key Responsibilities
  • The team delivered US$2M in cost avoidance year-to-date in 2026 by integrating AI capabilities across its planning, build, test and release cycle.
  • The team took 1st place globally in the 2026 Hack4Health hackathon, Care Community theme; served as team lead.
  • Lead an 11-engineer J&J team spanning intern to coordinator — 5 direct reports, plus 6 who report to them — accountable for hiring, career development and performance; zero voluntary attrition across three years.
  • Accountable for Full Stack delivery on 10 initiatives and technical oversight of 15 more; own vendor management and budgets, and hire the Full Stack engineers who join the team.
  • Own Full Stack Engineering engagements for Vision, and support the team's work across additional business areas.
  • Brought GitHub Copilot and AWS Kiro into the team's daily delivery and built the reusable agent skills engineers adopted; specification-driven development became the practice that keeps AI output reviewable.
  • Remain hands-on: design architecture and write production software, with CI/CD and infrastructure-as-code on Terraform and AWS.
  • Promoted from Chapter Lead in September 2023 after building the group's hiring, onboarding and career-path foundations.

Technical Product Owner, Innovative Medicine

Sep 2020 — Mar 2023

Service Specialist — Digital & RPA, Technology Services

Feb 2019 — Aug 2020

Sr. Information Security Analyst, Information Security & Risk Management

Apr 2018 — Feb 2019

Information Security Analyst, Information Security & Risk Management

Jun 2015 — Mar 2018

Information Security Intern, Information Security & Risk Management

Jan 2014 — May 2015

Meus Desafios

Meus Desafios

Remote — Brazil

2026 — Present

Founder & Sole Engineer

2026 — Present

Earlier Experience

  • Software Developer — Mentor Interativa (2011 — 2013). Built a learning management system in Java and shipped the company's first mobile app.
  • Junior Software Developer — Stefanini (2011). Migrated legacy Delphi applications to Java; added credit-card types to payment processing.
  • Teaching Assistant, Java — FAJTec — Faculdade Jaguariúna (2010). Supported the Introduction to Programming in Java course and authored its assessments.
  • Instructor — Data Computadores (2008 — 2009). Taught computer fundamentals, Windows configuration and Microsoft Office to entry-level students.

Things I Build

Shipped and running

Meus Desafios
LIVE

Meus Desafios

The app I founded and build alone. React Native and Expo on the client, Next.js and PostgreSQL on Vercel behind it, a Maestro end-to-end suite gating every release, and freemium billing behind the Premium tier. Tracks sleep, water, calories and exercise, with duels, private groups and weekly leaderboards.

React NativeExpoNext.jsPostgreSQLVercelMaestroFreemium billing
Marduk Barber
LIVE

Marduk Barber

A premium barbershop site with subscription plans and a tailored booking experience.

Next.jsSubscriptionsBooking

Archive

  • Papelando — A virtual stationery brand selling customized planners, notebooks and journals.
  • 75 Hard Challenge — A tracker for the 75 Hard program: daily checklists, habit tracking and streak indicators.
  • DietaFlex — A flexible-dieting tool for balancing macros and calories without strict food restrictions.

Core Skills

Technologies & Expertise
Product & experience
Product ownershipRoadmap & OKRsDrupalContentstackPayload CMSPersonalizationSite searchWeb analyticsSelf-service portalsIdentity ProvidersLLM integrationsRAGChatbotsAgile delivery under audited complianceVendor managementBudget ownershipArchitecture & technical directionHiring & career development
Security & risk
Application security assessmentCompliance reviewsSOX testing for IT operationsSecurity awareness & trainingVulnerability assessment & remediationSecure coding guidance
Full stack & AI engineering
LangGraphAgent orchestrationTool-calling assistantsGitHub CopilotAWS KiroSpecification-driven developmentTypeScriptNext.jsReact NativePostgreSQLPythonTerraformAWS (Lambda, API Gateway, EKS)Vercel

Languages

PortugueseNative
EnglishFluent
SpanishFluent

Education

Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP)

B.Sc. in Computer Science

2011 — 2015

DeVry — Metrocamp

Post-graduate, Information Security Management

2016 — 2018

Certifications

CompTIA Security+

2017 — 2020

SAFe® 5 Agilist

2020 — 2021

Blue Prism Developer

2020 — Present

Paulo's AI Assistant

Ask me anything about Paulo

Press Enter to send, Shift + Enter for new line