The Optimist Engineer

Stop Coding Tasks, Start Designing Systems

How to shift your mindset from "how it works" to "why it matters" to grow your career

3 hrs ago • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

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Ensuring Data Compatibility and Consistency in Microservices with Schema Registries

Put a Schema Registry in your life and ensure nobody hurts you

Mar 18 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

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You're already a senior dev - now what?

The three paths will guide you in the ride

Mar 11 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭 and Jorge Castaño

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RFCs: The Most Underrated Skill in Software Engineering

How writing down your decisions sharpens your thinking, improves your PRs, and grows your technical influence

Mar 4 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

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February 2026

MCP Architecture Overview

An app that implements the Model Context Protocol, how does it look like at architecture level

Feb 25 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

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Does your developers need another MCP?

Many Platform Engineering teams are creating MCP for their dev team but, when is it a good idea?

Feb 18 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

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OpenCost: what it is, what it fixes, and where it stands today

A practical rundown for platform engineers building cloud-native apps

Feb 11 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

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Playbook - How to become (and be seen as) a Staff Engineer

A practical one-page playbook to stop waiting for promotion and start building evidence

Feb 4 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

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January 2026

3 Steps To Demonstrate You Are Up For Staff Engineer Role

Act as the role you pursuit, and then the promotion will come

Jan 28 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

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Software Architecture for ETLs

Hexagonal, MVC, Layers, custom, ... I tend to keep it simple

Jan 21 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

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Writing about Software Development

How I organize my time for writing

Jan 14 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

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December 2025

Building a Product Platform Engineering Team

You must help yourself before helping others

Dec 17, 2025 • Marcos F. Lobo 🗻🧭

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