/// FC-Dossier

Software developer

PORTO · PT

Currently···:··:··Porto

Public record · printed edition · franciscocascalheira.com

The City of Porto runs its youth-internship programme on software I built alone.

I'm Francisco Cascalheira, a third-year Computer Engineering student at FEUP. For opPORTOnities I sat in the requirements meetings, designed the 12-model schema, wrote all 294 commits, and deployed it. It is in production now.

Read the case studyGet in touch
Aldoar, Foz do Douro e NevogildeBonfimCampanhãCedofeita,Ildefonso,Sé,Miragaia,Nicolau,VitóriaLordelo do Ouro e MassarelosParanhosRamaldePonte ArrábidaPonte Luís IPonte S. JoãoPonte FreixoOCEANO ATLÂNTICORIO DOUROMATOSINHOSGONDOMARVILA NOVA DE GAIAFOZ DO DOUROBONFIMCAMPANHÃCEDOFEITA · SÉLORDELO DO OUROPARANHOSRAMALDEFEUPPROENÇA-A-NOVA → PORTO · 2024opPORTOnitiesPUBLIC RECORD — FIG. 0THE SYSTEM OVER THE CITY IT SERVESCÂMARA MUNICIPAL DO PORTO · 5.ª EDIÇÃO12 MODELS · 294 COMMITS · AGES 18–210 — 1 — 2 KMN41°09′ N · 8°37′ WCARTA ADMINISTRATIVA OFICIAL · EPSG:3763
fig. 0 — The matching network over the seven freguesias of Porto, engraved from the official administrative charts. The amber line is an accepted application — the door the platform exists to open.

Exhibit record

In production · API responding · 09:15 UTC

Client
Câmara Municipal do Porto
Commits
294 — sole author, verified by git
Positions
99 in production — 60 placed
Stack
TS · Node · Postgres · React

Full engineering teardown →

One system carries the argument.

Real systems with real users. The flagship gets the depth it earned; the second, a case study of its own; the rest is stated briefly and honestly.

Exhibit A

In production

opPORTOnities

A recruitment platform for the City of Porto. A full engineering teardown: the 12-model schema as an explorable map, the application state machine, the decisions that broke and how they were fixed — sourced from the real repository.

294
solo commits
99
internship positions
12
data models
Live
in production

Read the case study

Exhibit B

2026 · In development

UniSpot

Lead developer — 523 of 596 commits, with two colleagues

A staffing console that ran the bars at NOS Alive 2026 for FR Eventos — live, from a container behind the main stage. A full teardown: the 18-model schema, the shift lifecycle, and the idempotent console that outlasted a festival's network.

18
bars run
209
staff rostered
944
clock events

Read the case study

Exhibit C

EngineHER

Architecture & integration — team of 5

A mentorship app tackling the gender gap in engineering. Owned data flow and system structure; integrated the pieces the team built.

2026 · Delivered
Exhibit D

KeyBlitz

RTC driver + interface layer — team of 4

A typing game on the metal — C on MINIX 3. Wrote an interrupt-driven RTC driver and the game's interface layer — menu, on-screen keyboard, and text rendered glyph by glyph into the framebuffer.

2026 · Delivered
In production
someone other than me depends on it today
In development
being written now
Delivered
handed over, accepted, finished

Proof has a person behind it.

The short version of who I am when I step away from the editor.

Francisco Cascalheira — engraved plateFrancisco Cascalheira — engraved plate
Plate I — the author
“A CV is a claim. A system in production is proof.”

That conviction comes from the Austrian economists I read for fun: value isn't declared, it's demonstrated in exchange. It's why this site is built like a dossier rather than a portfolio — one system, in production, examined honestly — and why I care more about who depends on my software than what the course syllabus says.

I'm a third-year Computer Engineering student in Porto. I like owning a product end to end: sitting in the requirements meeting, designing the data model, and being the person who deploys it and answers for it when it breaks. Away from the editor: philosophy, ancient history, cybersecurity, and Porto's tech and startup meetups.

Into
Bitcoin & Austrian economics · Cybersecurity · Philosophy · Ancient history · Literature · Startups
Languages
Portuguese Native · English B2 · Spanish B1

The tools I reach for.

TypeScript on both ends, Postgres underneath, and whatever the problem actually needs.

Languages
TypeScript · Python · Java · C++ · SQL · Dart
Web & Backend
React · Next.js · Node.js · Express · Prisma · HTML/CSS
Data & Infra
PostgreSQL · Firebase · Git · Linux · Azure Blob · Railway
Practice
System design · Testing · CI/CD · Agile / Scrum · REST APIs

How I got here.

Work, study and the things I do because I want to.

  1. Jan 2026 — Present

    Head of Product

    Universal Linker

    Head of Product since May 2026, software engineer before that. Sole developer of a recruitment platform in production for Câmara Municipal do Porto; lead developer of UniSpot; contributor to the company product.

  2. Aug 2026 — Present

    Founding Engineer

    Monolítica

    An early-stage company building data and AI systems for factories and local government in northern Portugal. One of five founders, in parallel with Universal Linker; my part right now is the first conversations.

  3. 2025 — Present

    Secretary

    ACM FEUP — Porto Student Chapter

    Third-ranking officer of the chapter; full ACM international membership. Involved in student events and CTF activities with the U.Porto community.

  4. Jul — Sep 2024

    Software Developer

    Cascalheira & Filho Lda

    My family's machinery business, running since 1985. I built the internal software it uses to track sales and invoicing, replacing paper and spreadsheets.

  5. 2024 — 2027 (expected)

    BSc, Computer Engineering

    Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto (FEUP)

    Currently in the third and final year.

  6. 2026

    ISC2 Cybersecurity Certification

    In progress

    Network security, cryptography and vulnerability assessment.

  7. 2025

    EBEC Porto 2025

    Case Study Competition — organised by BEST

    Certificate of participation in the pan-European engineering competition.

Let's build something.

Open to internships, collaborations and interesting problems. The inbox is the fastest way in.

/// Available for work · stated 30 Sept 2026

francisco.cascalheira2006@gmail.com
LinkedInGitHubDownload CV

The other system I run on.

The numbered sections document what I built. This appendix documents what built me. Two things I keep coming back to: Plato's cave and Turing's machine — everything below is filed under one of the two.

Plato

c. 428–348 BC

The ancients

Engraved plate — PlatoEngraved plate — Plato
Engraved from the Vienna scan — threedscans.com, 2016

The cave half of the sentence at the top of this appendix. It asks what is real and answers: less than you see. I picked a degree that lives between his question and Turing's.

Read

  • The Republic (the cave, endlessly)

Connections

  • · the cave and the machine
  • · his life's transcript
  • · read through the scholastics
fig. A — the other system · every line is a documented debt · every plate engraved from a license-checked archive, credited beneath · politics deliberately absent

Appendix B — Provenance

The first systems I debugged had grease on them.

Cascalheira & Filho is my family's workshop in Proença-a-Nova — chainsaws, bicycles, tractor parts. I spent the summer before FEUP at the bench: open the machine, find the failing part, fix the actual fault, put it back together. The summer after first year I went back and replaced the paper records with software I wrote for them.

The method survived the change of material. Everything in this dossier — the schema, the production discipline — is bench work with cleaner hands.