Jonathan Contreras, Engineering Director

About

Building at the intersection of engineering & product

I build engineering organizations and the platforms they run on. Over the last decade I've led teams in fintech, proptech and media across Latin America, from early-stage startups to regulated financial companies.

At Clara I lead the foundations that the rest of engineering builds on: the internal developer platform, infrastructure, and AI enablement. A big part of that work is making AI useful for the whole company, not only for engineers.

I care about making the right path the easy path: good defaults, clear ownership and fast feedback. I've rebuilt teams while they kept shipping, and I still write a lot of code myself.

Outside of work I run Digger, a platform for independent music talent in Mexico that started as a music publication 10+ years ago, make music with Futuremen, and build small apps and tools for the things I enjoy.

Location

Mexico City, Mexico

Current role

Engineering Director · Clara

Focus

Platform Engineering AI Enablement Developer Experience Org Building

Industries

Fintech Lending PropTech Media

Languages

Spanish (native) · English

Interests

Music Automation Pizza Space

Focus

What I work on

Platform & Developer Experience

Internal developer platforms where every service ships with observability, ownership and safe deploys by default, so teams spend their time on product.

AI Enablement

Bringing AI into day-to-day work across the whole company: shared tooling, agents and access to models for engineers and non-engineers alike.

Building & Rebuilding Teams

Hiring, org design and growing engineers into leaders. Turning teams around while they keep shipping.

Regulated Fintech

Payments, lending and credit products in Latin America, including technology for a regulated savings and credit institution.

Experience

Where I've built

2022 to Present

Clara

Engineering Director2024 to Present

Engineering Manager2022 to 2024

Clara is the complete suite for finance teams in Latin America, from corporate cards and payments to expense management. I lead the foundations engineering builds on: the internal developer platform, infrastructure and AI enablement. Before that, scaled product engineering teams through Clara's growth stage, including the mobile team.

Fintech Platform AI Enablement LatAm

2021 to 2022

Homie.mx

CTO

Led technology for a proptech marketplace reinventing home rentals in Mexico. Rebuilt the engineering team and split a monolith so customer-facing and operations workloads could no longer take each other down.

PropTech Marketplace Ruby on Rails

2017 to 2020

Resuelve tu Deuda (now Bravo)

CTO2019 to 2020

Product Owner, La Tasa2017 to 2019

Led product, design and engineering at Latin America's largest debt-relief fintech, including the technology for a CNBV-regulated savings and credit institution and the company's move to remote work. Before that, owned La Tasa, a peer-to-peer lending platform, end to end.

Fintech Lending Regulated Elixir

2016 to Present

Digger.mx

Founder

Started as an independent music publication and grew into a platform for independent talent in Mexico: free tools for artists and labels to manage their profile, releases, press and shows, plus a record label and industry services. Bootstrapped product, content and tech for 10+ years.

Music Platform Founder

2009 to 2017

Earlier

Development & Innovation Director, Lunave Multimedios

Digital development and innovation for a media group, IT leadership at the advertising agency Olabuenaga Chemistri, the vans.mx site, and web development roles where it all started.

Media Web Agency

Projects