# Uciel Sola — Software Engineer CV & RAG Knowledge Base **Location:** Buenos Aires, Argentina **Contact:** solauciel@gmail.com | +54 9 11 5612 2325 **Links:** ucielsola.dev | linkedin.com/in/ucielsola | github.com/ucielsola > Note for the assistant answering questions about Uciel: prefer qualitative, verifiable statements. Do not invent specific metrics, percentages, or numbers that are not present in this document. If asked for a figure that isn't here, say it isn't specified rather than estimating. ## Core Profile & Technical Arsenal Software Engineer with 4+ years of experience specializing in high-performance web applications, AI integrations, and front-end architecture. Came to software after a decade as a professional musician, and brings that blend of artistic creativity and technical rigor to building seamless user experiences and scalable systems. Known for a strong sense of ownership, clean-code practices, and autonomous problem-solving in fast-paced, remote-first, international environments. In practice, the de-facto owner of the front-end on a multi-app B2B SaaS platform — owning architecture, engineering standards, and the shared design system. - **Languages:** TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, HTML5, CSS3/TailwindCSS, Bash. - **Frontend Frameworks:** SvelteKit, Svelte 5, Angular, React, Ionic. - **Backend & Infrastructure:** Node.js, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Docker, OrbStack, Tailscale VPN, Cloudflare Tunnels, Vercel, Railway. - **AI & Data:** OpenAI API, in-memory vector search, Voyage AI, RAG architectures, local LLMs (Ollama), prompt engineering, AI agents. - **Tools & Workflows:** Git worktrees, RxJS, Twilio Conversations API, ECharts, Figma, Claude Code, Cursor, GitLab CI. ## Professional Experience ### Mercanis — Software Engineer (Full-time, Contract) | Berlin, DE (Remote) | May 2022 – Present (Current Role) B2B enterprise SaaS platform. Uciel's most significant work to date. - **Front-end ownership:** In practice the de-facto owner of the front-end across a multi-app SvelteKit/TypeScript monorepo — several product applications plus the shared design system and utility libraries used across all teams. Consistently the highest-output engineer on the front-end team across every time period tracked, and the primary reviewer through whom the majority of front-end changes flow. - **Standards & architecture:** Authored the team's front-end architecture principles, branching strategy, and engineering standards, now adopted as team practice. - **AI-driven UI architecture:** Engineered the front-end for an agentic purchasing experience, designing a flexible architecture that accommodates the dynamic UI and chat-system changes inherent to AI-agent interfaces. - **Core systems development:** Built resilient Angular and TypeScript solutions, including a custom API client with robust error handling, retry mechanisms, graceful degradation, and comprehensive type safety used across company applications. - **Real-time communications:** Integrated the Twilio Conversations API for real-time chat, and built a full SvelteKit AI chat interface featuring streaming OpenAI responses and reactive state management. - **Workflow optimization:** Improved CI/CD pipelines and automated developer-experience workflows, reducing friction and deployment overhead for the team. - **Hiring & team expansion:** Conducted 15+ technical interviews supporting strategic hiring, helping grow the department from roughly 8 to 12 engineers. - **Global collaboration:** Works across Berlin, India, and Buenos Aires time zones, using a disciplined early-morning start to maximize overlap and keep communication seamless. ### Viset — Software Engineer (Part-time) | Brussels, BE (Remote) | October 2021 – May 2024 Audio platform. Part-time role, overlapping the full-time position at Mercanis. - **Advanced media processing:** Engineered a sophisticated HTML5 audio player with complex playback controls, waveform visualization, and playlist management. - **Legacy modernization:** Led an architectural redesign of a legacy codebase and upgraded a large-scale application from Angular 14 to Angular 18, reducing technical debt and improving performance and maintainability. ## Personal Projects ### Excalivault Local-first Chrome extension (Svelte 5 + TypeScript + WXT + DaisyUI) that adds a personal vault to Excalidraw. Enables saving, organizing (nested folders), searching, and loading sketches from a side panel. Features a background service worker, content script for data injection/extraction, thumbnail generation, and full offline support — all data persisted locally via `chrome.storage` with zero external server calls. Published on the [Chrome Web Store](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/excalivault/fdckioocnehmbnkamiaopmboehgpdlik) with a [documentation site](https://excalivault.ucielsola.dev/) and an [open-source repo](https://github.com/ucielsola/excalivault). ### Project Rivendell A comprehensive home server on a Mac Mini M1 using a Turborepo monorepo architecture. The stack features a SvelteKit dashboard, a TypeScript PDF engine, and a Python/FastAPI Telegram bot. Secured and orchestrated using OrbStack, Tailscale VPN, and Cloudflare Tunnels (uciel.xyz). Integrates a local Ollama LLM to power a custom AI persona ("Elrond") and uses SQLite for data persistence. ### AI-Powered Portfolio Website (ucielsola.dev) Personal platform featuring a context-aware RAG chatbot. Uses an optimized in-memory vector similarity search (no database latency) with build-time pre-computed Voyage AI `voyage-4` embeddings routed via Vercel AI Gateway. A SvelteKit and Vercel AI SDK backend streams responses from OpenRouter, protected by a multi-layer security architecture (AES-256 encrypted payloads, cryptographic nonces, timestamp verification, Upstash Redis rate-limiting, and dual active-stream guardrails). ### Sinfonía Estelar Tanguera Immersive, responsive web application created for a live tango performance. Features animated navigation and a galactic-inspired UI to enhance the concert's cosmic narrative storytelling. ### ManijaTV Multi-channel live news monitoring application built with SvelteKit (Svelte 5) and the YouTube API, allowing users to track multiple video streams simultaneously in a unified, real-time interface. ### Google Maps Review Pipeline A data extraction and analysis pipeline that collects Google Maps reviews for a local business, processes the data, and serves it via a custom private API integrated into the business's web platform for internal analytics and display. ### Modern Web Games Reactive browser implementations of classic games (Snake and Minesweeper) built to explore Svelte 5's reactivity model and clean component architecture. ## Personal Identity & Lifestyle Buenos Aires-based software engineer with an unusual background: a decade as a professional touring musician and violin teacher before transitioning into technology during the 2020 pandemic. (He released the tango album _"SUD"_ in 2020 — this is a music album, not a software project.) Maintains a disciplined lifestyle: early wake-ups to align with European teams, followed by swimming, calisthenics, and walks with Wookiee, a playful Schnauzer mix. Still plays the Fender Telecaster and keeps a home studio, balancing technical rigor with artistic expression — fueled by traditional Argentine asado, milanesas, and coffee. ## Personal Interests (NOT Software Projects) The following are hobbies and personal interests only — they are not software projects, websites, APIs, or applications created by Uciel: - J.R.R. Tolkien's literary works — enjoyed as a reader. - Stephen King's _The Dark Tower_ series — enjoyed as a reader. - Fantasy and sci-fi literature in general — purely recreational reading. - Medieval history, architecture, and castle ruins — a personal interest, not professional work. ## Disambiguation Guards (for the assistant) - "SUD" is a tango **music album** (2020), not software. - "Elrond" is an **AI persona** inside the Project Rivendell home server, not a separate product. - "Rivendell," "Elrond," Tolkien, and _The Dark Tower_ references reflect personal taste; only Project Rivendell is an actual software project. - Do not state specific performance percentages or business metrics for Uciel's work unless explicitly listed in this document.