Julio Gonzalez
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Engineering Developer
Guatemala City, Guatemala Department, Guatemala
Toptal member since April 13, 2026
Julio is a senior back-end engineer with 12 years of experience building Node.js, TypeScript, and PHP systems with Laravel and Symfony, including REST APIs, event-driven microservices, and AI agent integrations on AWS and GCP. At Yalo, he reduced per-client API delivery time from one month to one week on a platform serving 200,000 active users. Based in US Central Time and fluent in English, Julio works with full overlap with US teams.
Portfolio
Experience
- Node.js - 10 years
- PHP - 10 years
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 10 years
- Symfony - 5 years
- MongoDB - 5 years
- Laravel - 4 years
- TypeScript - 4 years
- React - 1 year
Work Experience
Senior Software Engineer
BukHR
- Worked as part of the Workflows team and created new features and fixes that improved day-to-day operations. Added key functionality, improved UI details, stage status visibility and node editing feedback, and reliability.
- Grew through the Ruby on Rails learning curve, becoming proficient with the framework while delivering production changes.
- Oversaw launch processes, resulting in over 10,000 uses by customers in the first month.
Senior Software Engineer
Yalo
- Achieved a massive reduction in API development time, taking it from a 1-month time frame to 1 week per client.
- Improved platform processes with Express.js, message queues, and asynchronous event-driven APIs to accommodate a growing user base of 200,000 active users.
- Used AI-powered development tools, such as Claude, GitHub Copilot, and Cursor, to support code generation, refactoring, debugging, and documentation, integrating agentic development practices to optimize workflows and increase engineering efficiency.
Senior Software Engineer
Freelance Clients
- Worked for various clients, including ERP system companies, medtech apps, sustainability, and single-page applications (SPAs).
- Increased ERP data transfer efficiency by 70% by using PHP and Node.js scripts for internal data analysis to fast-track processes.
- Developed PHP modules for a social media tools startup. Implemented a speech emotion recognition system, Vokaturi, in a Laravel web application.
- Provided support and customizations to a wide variety of projects with Node.js, TypeScript, and Symfony for cemais.org.br.
Senior Software Engineer
PideloRapido
- Worked for a large-scale online shopping platform fully integrated with eBay and Amazon to facilitate product delivery to Central American and Caribbean countries.
- Assigned to eBay’s New York City office to lead the integration of PideloRapido’s platform with their APIs, achieving a fully integrated process in less than 6 months, increasing our customer base by 120%.
- Designed and developed custom REST APIs built with Node.js, Symfony, and AWS to accommodate over 160 million products available on our web page.
- Led the standardization of infrastructure processes, which reduced deployment errors by 70% with the use of Terraform, AWS, and Google Compute Cloud.
Project History
Survey App for a Census
Education
Master's Degree in Business Administration
Universidad del Istmo - Guatemala
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala - Guatemala
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Node.js, REST APIs, API Development, React, Claude API, Vue
Tools
Git, Dolibarr, Sequelize, GitHub, NPM, Webpack, Claude, Claude Code, RabbitMQ, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Terraform
Languages
TypeScript, PHP, JavaScript, HTML, SQL, GraphQL, Lua, Java
Frameworks
Laravel, Symfony, Express.js, PHP MVC, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), Jest, Angular, Bootstrap, NestJS, Serverless Framework, Ionic, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Next.js
Paradigms
Testing, Unit Testing, Back-end Architecture, Asynchronous Programming, Microservices, Event-driven Architecture, REST, Database Design, DevOps
Platforms
Docker, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS Lambda, Linux, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), DigitalOcean, WordPress
Storage
MongoDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, NoSQL, JSON, Databases, Redis, Google Cloud, Elasticsearch
Other
Back-end, APIs, API Integration, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), eCommerce, Code Review, Full-stack, DNS, Amazon API Gateway, Amazon EventBridge, Front-end Development, Web Development, Software Architecture, System Integration, Workflow Automation, Authentication, Webhooks, Back-end Development, API Design, Software Engineering, API Gateways, Team Leadership, Vite, Full-stack Development, Technical Leadership, Cursor AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), AI Integration, WhatsApp Business, ChatGPT API, Systems Design, Programming, IT Systems Architecture, CI/CD Pipelines, Business Administration, Corporate Culture, LangChain, RAG Systems
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