Rui Travassos

Engineering leader with over 15 years running software teams in regulated, business-critical environments, including 3-4 years leading AI delivery. For the last four years I have operated at Head-of-Engineering scope at Instem, a life-sciences SaaS company: 27 to 30 direct reports, including a VP, three people managers, and a bench of tech leads, senior engineers and scrum masters, across seven product lines in five countries. I built the company's data and AI governance from zero in a GxP and 21 CFR Part 11 environment, and line-managed an 18-month regulated AI programme from concept to a validated, shipped product.

When GenAI tooling arrived, I instigated and ran the adoption programme: evaluated Claude, Copilot and Cursor, made the call (Claude for engineering, Copilot for the wider business, enterprise licences), then built what made it stick - standards, governance, third-party training. Sprints went from fortnightly to weekly and teams became pods. The tools are the easy part; my interest is the governance and ownership model that lets AI scale safely, not just fast.

I hold SC and NPPV3 clearance. I am looking for a Head of AI Engineering role building a senior AI function from the ground up.

Engineering Manager (Head-of-Engineering scope) - Instem - UK, US, France, Romania, India

(2022-03)

Life-sciences SaaS, regulated under GxP and 21 CFR Part 11. Reporting to the SVP of Engineering in a 120-person engineering function. Ran the function at Head-of-Engineering scope for around four years with 27 to 30 direct reports across five countries. Since early 2026, following an acquisition and restructure, focused on platform economics and cloud-migration strategy across the group.

• Managed seven product lines at the same time, protecting the revenue engine while leaving room for the teams to innovate from the bottom up.
• Acted as the trusted delegate to the SVP and CTO on engineering decisions, and presented outcomes on disaster recovery, business continuity, cloud licensing, and acquisitions in executive forums.
• When the Head of Development and several managers were removed in the restructure, I found the affected people and set up support before escalating. I then absorbed a VP of Development, more managers, and their teams, and kept delivery running through a 50 percent redundancy with nothing escalated to the board.
• Ran the full management cycle - hiring, reviews, development plans, performance plans, and the hard conversations. Mentored managers, not just engineers. Owned succession and workforce planning across five countries.
• Owned the team reorganisation, the DORA-based measurement, and the change management behind the move to quarterly releases. Shifted the culture from checking quality at the end to building it in from the start, putting testers into design and refinement rather than end-of-cycle gates.
• Built data and AI governance from zero, including the estate inventory, data dictionary, and engineering guidelines, and co-led the AI-tool policy now used across the company.
• Co-discovered the 5 million pounds of infrastructure and consultancy waste, and now advise on the Rackspace-to-Azure migration - sequencing, risk, and rollback - and on cost and operational standards across the acquired estates. Four direct reports, advising across more than 20 platform engineers in the US, UK, and India.

Senior Technical Authority - NDI Tech / Dacoll Ltd - UK

(2020-02 - 2022-03)

NPPV3 and SC cleared. Senior technical authority on a UK-wide vehicle-intelligence platform used by regional police forces. Led a microservices re-architecture and a real-time enrichment rebuild, and took the platform from unusable at peak load to stable under sustained operational demand.

Lead SQL DBA - Kindertons Accident Management

(2018-08 - 2020-01)

Built a business-intelligence function from nothing with a team of three, and delivered operational forecasting that changed how the business planned for demand. Engineered high availability on Azure using a configuration Microsoft did not formally support, and put it into production.

Senior DBA, developer, and application-support roles - Various - UK

Senior DBA, developer, and application-support roles across higher education, healthcare, finance, retail, and consultancy. SQL Server and Oracle estates, BI and ETL work, and .NET and C# development.

BSc (Hons) - Computer Science and Information Systems - University of Salford

Leaders Academy (executive leadership programme) - Instem