Designing systems. Building teams.
17 years in design. The last several in energy systems, where the cost of a poor decision shows up in the physical world.
My work has been in energy systems for the past several years: predictive battery analytics, wind farm operations, grid-connected platforms. Environments where software is the infrastructure people depend on to make real decisions. Where a missed risk signal, a wrong maintenance call, or an opaque dataset has consequences in the physical world.
That context shapes how I think about design — not as screens, but as a system for turning complexity into clarity.
Building the right conditions for that work matters as much as doing it. I co-founded two companies early in my career, and what I learned is that a team is itself a system. One that gets stronger when people have room to grow, experiment, and find their best contribution. My way of leading is side by side: close to the craft, working with the team, keeping direction clear enough that people can move fast with confidence.
Design moves in cycles, and the current one — with AI reshaping how teams work — is a real one. I've navigated enough of these shifts to know the answer isn't in the tools. It's in staying clear on the problem and building teams that can move with confidence through the noise.
I work best when the problem is genuinely hard and the people around me know their domain. Most of my career has been spent earning the trust of engineers and domain experts by actually understanding what they're dealing with. That's not a positioning strategy. It's just how I prefer to work.I'm Brazilian, based in Garching bei München. I've been in Germany long enough to know that the directness I value in technical conversations is not considered unusual here.
Career arc
Started in graphic and digital design in Brazil, before UX was a defined field. Built craft across agencies and studios, then co-founded two companies — one in e-learning, one in digital product and branding. Learned what it means to build something from nothing under uncertainty, and what it takes to lead a small team when there is no safety net.
Returned to the market as an IC, progressively moving into more senior and influential roles. ExxonMobil brought the scale of a large enterprise and the challenge of driving design culture inside a structure that wasn't built for it. TWAICE brought three years of deep domain immersion in battery analytics — and the experience of shaping a flagship product without a formal leadership title. Shoreline Wind is where that domain expanded into wind operations, designing tools for the people who keep turbines running.
The through line is not the industry. It is the type of problem: complex systems, domain experts under pressure, software that has to earn trust before it can change behaviour.
Three threads
Energy domain depth
After several years designing for battery analytics and wind farm operations, I can speak the language engineers and domain experts use — electrochemical degradation, State of Health, turbine performance curves, grid imbalance, O&M workflows. That vocabulary isn't decoration. It's what allows a designer to earn trust in rooms where most designers would be ignored, and to make design decisions that hold up under technical scrutiny.
Leadership without the title
I've led in different configurations throughout my career. Co-founder of two companies. Led the Design Community of Practice at ExxonMobil — planned curriculum, mentored designers, ran cross-functional sessions that reached 100+ people across product, engineering, and project management. Self-initiated the Lithium Design System at TWAICE and drove adoption across teams without a mandate. The leadership evidence exists. The formal title is the next step, not the starting point.
Builder in 2026
The Wind ROI Calculator is a deployed tool I built to help wind farm operators evaluate the revenue impact of operational decisions — built with Figma Make, Supabase, and Slack automation, live at a public URL. That's the level I'm working at with AI tools: not experimenting, deploying. Beyond prototyping, I use GitHub Copilot with Claude models directly in the Shoreline Wind production codebase — concept testing that ends in a real PR, not a handoff document. The goal is always the same: move faster, validate earlier, and reduce the distance between a design decision and something engineers can actually react to.
“Leonardo has consistently demonstrated resilience and a highly collaborative spirit. His exceptional ability to clearly articulate design decisions facilitates smooth cross-functional collaboration and empowers less experienced designers.”
Oliver EcksteinHead of Product & UX, TWAICE“Especially from a Product Manager perspective he can do the heavy lifting from customer interview to tested and deployed solution.”
Jan SönnichsenProduct Manager, TWAICEIf the problem involves complex systems and people making real decisions under pressure — that's the conversation I'm built for.
If you're building operational software for energy systems — or something equally complex — and thinking about what design leadership looks like at your stage, I'd like to talk.
Get in touch