About
Staff Data Engineer in Curitiba, Brazil. Nearly a decade connecting data infrastructure, governance and business strategy.
I’m Leon Matheus, a Staff Data Engineer at Globo, based in Curitiba, Brazil. For nearly a decade I’ve worked where large-scale data infrastructure, federated governance and business strategy meet: data architecture, data modeling, data mesh and data products, and the culture that makes them work.
I believe information and language are the most powerful technologies we’ve ever used so freely. To shape a better world through data, we have to be technically present, strategically committed, and mindful of how we govern and reason about that power.
How I got here
I’m self-taught, and I came to data through risk.
- 2019–2021 · Juno. Risk analyst: confidential financial data, operational risk dashboards, anomaly detection, fraud prevention and reports to Brazil’s Central Bank.
- 2021–2022 · EBANX. Analytics engineer in global risk after EBANX acquired Juno: the bridge between risk product teams and the data platform.
- 2022–today · Globo. Data engineer on sales and revenue, then senior engineer leading complex data domains for subscribers and streaming, and since 2026 staff engineer in Data Enabling: data architecture and federated governance across the company.
How I think
- Fundamentals outlast tools. Concepts travel between implementations; tools come in waves.
- Understanding over knowing. Principles and guidelines over techniques and templates.
- Composition over complexity. Simple parts, combined well, beat clever monoliths.
- All data problems are people problems. Speed and scale don’t produce understanding on their own.
- Convenience is not utility. Neither is hype the same as what is fundamental.
- Learn in public, and share the references. Nothing here claims to be final.
Talks and community
I co-organize the Meetup de Dados Curitiba, a local data community, since April 2024.
- Data culture and governance, and how data roles have evolved · 1st Meetup de Dados Curitiba, at EBANX · April 2024
- Data mesh in practice and data culture · 2nd Meetup de Dados Curitiba, at Rentcars · June 2025
- Data architecture and data modeling · internal talk at Globo
Bookshelf
What shaped how I think about data, and about systems in general:
- Fundamentals of Data Engineering, Joe Reis and Matt Housley
- Practical Data Modeling and Mixed Model Arts, Joe Reis
- Data Modeling Essentials, Graeme Simsion and Graham Witt
- Bill Inmon’s work on the data warehouse
- Jessica Talisman, Juan Sequeda, Tony Seale and Giancarlo Guizzardi on ontologies and knowledge
- Hadoop: The Definitive Guide, Tom White
- Modern Operating Systems, Andrew Tanenbaum, and How Linux Works, Brian Ward
- Measure What Matters, John Doerr
- Antifragile and Skin in the Game, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, and Misbehaving, Richard Thaler
- Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
Certifications
Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer (2024) · Astronomer Apache Airflow Fundamentals and DAG Authoring (2022) · Information Security Ambassador at Globo (2024, 2025)
Elsewhere
- LinkedIn, where most conversations happen
- GitHub
- Arapuca, my project on data literacy and digital citizenship for Latin America
About this site
I build it with Saci, the name I gave the AI collaborator (Claude, by Anthropic) I think and build with. I write in whichever language comes best; Saci translates into the other two. Every text says which language is the original.