Building systems
and the teams behind them.
I'm José María Cabeza Rodríguez — an Engineering Manager based in Berlin with 15+ years of experience delivering backend systems, distributed architectures, and high-performing engineering teams across France, Scotland, and Germany.
My story
My journey started in Madrid, where I studied Computer Science at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and was selected — on academic merit — to do R&D at Teldat SA. That early taste of real-world engineering, writing communication systems and patching Debian kernels, set the tone for everything that followed.
From Madrid I moved to the south of France to join Amadeus IT, where I spent six years across three teams. I designed reporting infrastructure used by American Express and Airplus, built PCI-DSS-compliant integrations, and delivered a proprietary algorithm for Japan Airlines that reduced ticket coupon computation from O(n!) to O(n³) — cutting response times from minutes to under 100ms.
After a stint in Edinburgh working on banking transaction pipelines, I joined the Merchant Partner Account Infrastructure team in Berlin. I grew from Senior Software Engineer to Engineering Manager, and today I lead a team of 8 building the critical systems that power payment integrations for 1,700+ merchants weekly — handling 1.4M+ requests per week through services I designed and still evolve.
The shift into management wasn't a pivot — it was an extension. The highest-leverage thing I can do is make the engineers around me more effective. I never stopped being an engineer; I just became a different kind.
Experience
Engineering Manager — Partner Account Infrastructure
Klarna·Berlin, Germany 🇩🇪
Lead a team of 8 (4 mid-level engineers, 2 senior engineers, 1 PM). Oversee security and quality of 7 critical services handling API integrations with 40+ distribution partners (Adyen, Mollie, Stripe, etc.). Spearheaded a major Stripe integration onboarding 1,700+ merchants weekly. Designed and implemented a global merchant tracking service handling 1.4M+ requests per week. Proposed and co-built a custom framework to decouple our main system from services and queues — enabling automatic retriggering, call prioritisation, and chaining, significantly reducing maintenance overhead. Conducted 40+ Java technical interviews and coached a Senior Engineer to Lead Engineer.
Senior Software Engineer — Merchant Account Infrastructure
Klarna·Berlin, Germany 🇩🇪
Automated partner pricing setup, reducing manual work from 4 days to 15 minutes. Led migration from Salesforce to a custom in-house system across 3 services. Developed a KPI monitoring dashboard in Grafana to improve system performance tracking. Coached and mentored junior engineers, resulting in multiple promotions to Senior Engineer.
Senior Software Engineer — Data Platform Team
NCR·Edinburgh, Scotland 🏴
Maintained and enhanced legacy banking transaction analysis pipelines using Java, Dropwizard, Cassandra, HBase, and Hadoop.
Senior Software Engineer — Aftersales Pricing Orchestration
Amadeus IT Group·Sophia Antipolis, France 🇫🇷
Refactored Amadeus Ticket Changer, simplifying debugging and enhancement via XML-based configurations. Designed and implemented a proprietary discount coupon algorithm for Japan Airlines, reducing computational complexity from O(n!) to O(n³) — generating results in under 100ms (vs. minutes), avoiding the need for a new dedicated backend.
Software Engineer — Issuance, Documents & Reporting
Amadeus IT Group·Sophia Antipolis, France 🇫🇷
Designed, architected and built the module responsible for gathering and managing reporting features across Amadeus products (Selling Platform, Sell Connect, Amadeus e-Travel Management), including integration with American Express and Airplus International.
Software Engineer — Leisure Shopping
Amadeus IT Group·Sophia Antipolis, France 🇫🇷
Integrated Amadeus with American Express BTA, ensuring PCI-DSS compliance. Responsible as functional analyst and front-end developer for new rail market features for Trenitalia, SNCF, Swedish Rail, and DBahn in Selling Platform and Amadeus e-Travel Management.
Software Engineer
Cystelcom·Madrid, Spain 🇪🇸
Led development of Veedia Seminar Portal for Polycom Inc. to facilitate remote video conferencing. Built an ICEfaces 2 web app for Helvetia Seguros to monitor trader activity in real time. Design and development manager for a Flash-based web application creating an Interactive Voice Response system via flowcharts for Vodafone Spain.
UPM Scholarship — Programmer
Teldat SA·Madrid, Spain 🇪🇸
Selected on the basis of outstanding academic performance by the Telematics Laboratory of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Led modification of a Debian-based OS to automate marketing study installations. Designed, developed and maintained a communication system between two modules of marketing studies software using facial recognition via webcams.
Education
M.Sc. in Computer Science
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Final Project: Web app to manage research group information — Honors
Specialization in Web Computer Software
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Certifications & Courses
Certifications
Oracle Certified Java Programmer
Oracle · 2013
Oracle Certified Java Associate
Oracle · 2011
Online Courses
Flux Step by Step — AI Influencers & Fanvue Models FAST
Udemy · Dominik Felber
Realistic AI Images with Stable Diffusion & Fooocus
Udemy · Dominik Felber
OKR Goal Setting 101
Udemy · Axel Ritterhaus
Spring Boot 3, Spring 6 & Hibernate for Beginners
Udemy · Chad Darby
React — The Complete Guide
Udemy · Academind
CSS — The Complete Guide
Udemy · Academind
Machine Learning Specialization
Coursera · University of Washington
Machine Learning: Clustering & Retrieval
Coursera · University of Washington
Machine Learning: Classification
Coursera · University of Washington
Machine Learning: Regression
Coursera · University of Washington
Machine Learning Foundations
Coursera · University of Washington
Machine Learning
Coursera · Stanford University
Data Analysis and Statistical Inference
Coursera · Duke University
Engineering principles
These aren't aspirational. They're the lens through which I evaluate every technical decision and engineering interaction.
Simplicity is a feature
Complex systems fail in complex ways. I ruthlessly cut scope and complexity. The best code is often the code you don't write.
Observability-first
You cannot debug what you cannot see. Every system I build ships with structured logging, distributed traces, and meaningful metrics from day one.
Strong opinions, loosely held
I form clear technical positions and defend them with data — but I change my mind when presented with better evidence. Intellectual integrity over ego.
Autonomy through context
The best teams don't need micromanagement. I invest in giving engineers deep context on business goals so they can make great decisions independently.
Ship, learn, iterate
Perfect is the enemy of shipped. I lean into iterative delivery, measure outcomes, and compound learnings. Momentum beats perfection.
Write more than you think
Writing clarifies thinking. RFCs, post-mortems, ADRs — documentation is not overhead. It is how knowledge outlives the people who had it.