# Fernanda De Macedo Alves

> Senior Backend Engineer

Location: New York, New York, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/fernandademacedoalves

I am a Software Engineer with four years of specialized backend experience architecting, building, and scaling microservices, APIs, and distributed backend systems across diverse domains. 

I currently work in the NASA Astrophysics Data Systems (ADS) team, where I drive the design and optimization of core services that power search and discoverability for over 30 million research documents. Some examples of my day-to-day tasks include re-architecting high-latency workflows, implementing resilient and secure APIs, and designing data pipelines that handle high-volume scientific metadata. 

Additionally, I actively contribute to infrastructure strategy, deploying and tuning services across Kubernetes clusters, enforcing CI/CD standards with ArgoCD, and leveraging observability tools such as Grafana and Graylog to ensure production resilience.

## Work Experience
### Senior Software Engineer, Backend @ Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
Jan 2025 – Present | Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

### Software Engineer, Backend @ Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
Jan 2023 – Present | Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Part of NASA ADS team.

- Optimized and scaled backend microservices powering NASA’s Astrophysics Data System (ADS), enabling search and retrieval across 30M+ scientific records.
- Re-architected PDF generation workflow, cutting processing time by 10x and improving reliability under high load.
- Enhanced and optimized large-scale ingestion pipelines for research metadata, improving system performance, reliability, and scalability.
- Built and maintained APIs supporting data-intensive pipelines, improving latency and throughput for end users.
- Drove infrastructure modernization by deploying services to Kubernetes clusters and enforcing GitOps practices with ArgoCD.
- Improved production resilience with proactive monitoring, logging, and performance tuning using Grafana and Graylog.
- Authored RFCs and defined architecture for new ingestion systems, driving cross-team alignment and long-term maintainability.
- Partnered with researchers and engineers to troubleshoot cross-service issues and ensure accuracy of scientific data delivery.

### Software Engineer, Backend @ Nubank
Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 | Remote - Brazil
Nubank is the largest financial technology bank in Latin America with over 90 million customers.

- Part of the NuInvest team

### Software Engineer, Backend @ Avenue Code
Jan 2021 – Jan 2021 | Remote - Brazil
Avenue Code is the leading software consulting agency focused on delivering digital innovations for enterprise organizations of all kinds.

- Developed the backend necessary to connect small shops to marketplaces, allowing them to easily sell their products all over the country while I managed the order lifecycle
- Migrated a monolith into microservices responsible for managing orders, payments, shipping and shipping fees, and inventory
- Used good software engineering practices such as clean code, automated testing with a minimum required test coverage of 80%, source control (Github), Continuous Integration and Delivery (CI/CD), Agile methodology (Scrum), and performed code reviews on a daily basis. Utilized tools and technologies like Python, Django, FastAPI, Django REST Framework (DRF) for building REST APIs, Pytest for automated testing, Docker and Kubernetes for infrastructure automation, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, RabbitMQ


## Education
### Undergraduate non-degree in Computer Science
Cornell University

### Bachelor of Science (BS) in Science and Technology
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte

### Bachelor's degree in Law
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/ferdemacedo

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Source: https://flows.cv/fernandademacedoalves
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/fernandademacedoalves/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-05