Rafael Costa

I lead GRIN’s Product, Engineering, Data, AI, and Security functions, with a focus on shaping the company’s next chapter around AI-native product development. My work sits across product strategy, technical architecture, engineering execution, data, security, customer value, and GTM alignment. I stay close to both the code and the business, helping the team move from ideas and prototypes into products customers can use. Key areas of impact: - Established GRIN Labs as an innovation engine for exploring, prototyping, and shipping AI-native product experiences. - Led the creation and development of Gia, GRIN’s agentic AI platform for creator marketing. - Partnered with Executive, Product, GTM, Customer, Data, and Engineering teams to connect AI strategy with customer value, expansion opportunities, retention, and market differentiation. - Helped shift the company from a traditional SaaS workflow mindset toward AI-assisted and agentic product experiences. - Continued to lead with a hands-on technical approach, staying close to architecture, product decisions, and implementation details. Gia — GRIN’s Agentic AI Platform for Creator Marketing Gia is GRIN’s AI-native platform designed to help brands automate and orchestrate complex creator marketing workflows. The product is built around specialized AI agents that assist with strategy, creator discovery, outreach, campaign execution, content review, performance insights, and workflow automation. What makes Gia meaningful to me is that it is not just an AI feature added to an existing SaaS product. It is a new product experience built around the idea that software should guide, automate, and collaborate with users through real business workflows.

KODIE is personal to me because it connects two parts of my story: where I came from and the opportunities technology created for my own career. I advise and mentor a nonprofit focused on helping people from underserved communities in Brazil become software engineers and access global technology opportunities. - Advise on curriculum, engineering expectations, hiring readiness, and career development. - Help align training programs with the skills engineers need to succeed in real-world product teams. - Use my experience and network to open doors for Brazilian engineers entering or growing in technology careers.

Led engineering through a period of organizational change, tighter constraints, and shifting product priorities while maintaining delivery, platform stability, and team focus. - Reduced cloud infrastructure spend by approximately 40% through cost governance, architecture improvements, and closer partnership with Finance. - Improved prioritization and operating rhythms between Product and Engineering, reducing roadmap thrash and helping teams focus on higher-impact work. - Introduced clearer ownership models, communication cadences, and accountability expectations across engineering teams. - Helped prepare the organization for a broader AI-native product direction while continuing to support the core SaaS platform.

Joined GRIN to help strengthen engineering execution, improve product delivery, and create a more scalable operating model across teams. - Led engineering teams responsible for core platform initiatives, product delivery, integrations, and customer-facing improvements. - Partnered closely with Product and Customer teams to better connect roadmap decisions to customer pain, retention, and business priorities. - Helped improve engineering execution, planning, and cross-functional communication during a period of product and organizational change.

- Led Route’s core engineering organization while partnering with Product, Revenue, Marketing, and GTM to keep the roadmap tied to revenue, retention, and merchant value. - Scaled engineering hubs in Brazil and Costa Rica, putting hiring, onboarding, and cultural practices in place so the team operated as one global org. - Simplified workflows between product, engineering, and customer-facing teams, increasing delivery speed and contributing to better customer success outcomes.

- Opened Route’s first LATAM engineering office, hiring the first non-US engineer and building a compliant hiring strategy across Brazil, Costa Rica, Argentina, and Mexico. - Helped position Route as an employer of choice in LATAM through branding, community presence, and strong candidate experience. - Partnered with recruiting, Finance, and HR to tune compensation, leveling, and hiring processes to support a global engineering model.

- Managed the B2B engineering team, enhancing Route’s public API and strengthening integrations with leading eCommerce platforms - Worked closely with brands to expand Route’s market reach, driving feature adoption across new eCommerce ecosystems

- Managed the Platform Integrations Team, delivering and maintaining plugins for Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and other platforms. - Reduced merchant onboarding friction by improving integration flows and developer documentation, contributing to higher activation and adoption rates.

- Led web and mobile engineering teams delivering digital products for multiple clients, instilling best practices in CI/CD, code quality, and modern front-end development. - Mentored engineers across React, Angular, and NativeScript stacks, raising the overall quality and reliability of client deliverables. - Drove improvements in deployment pipelines, reducing manual errors and increasing release frequency.

- Spearheaded front-end development using React, Angular, and NativeScript - Developed a cryptocurrency exchange platform, mentoring teams on security best practices in crypto storage and transaction management

Co-founded and grew a digital agency in Rio de Janeiro, building eCommerce platforms, web products, and digital transformation projects for Brazilian businesses. This was my founder chapter before moving to the U.S. It taught me how to sell, hire, lead clients, make technical decisions under constraints, and build a team from the ground up. - Grew the company to a 16-person engineering team. - Led architecture, technology choices, delivery, and client-facing technical strategy. - Delivered high-traffic web and eCommerce solutions for Brazilian businesses. - Built a reputation for reliable delivery, strong engineering culture, repeat business, and referrals.

- Developed multiplayer gaming experiences, integrating real-time functionalities with SmartFox Server - Built game engines using ActionScript, MySQL, and Adobe Flash

- Developed and maintained eCommerce platforms using WooCommerce, Magento, Laravel, and Vue.js - Led and mentored a small team of developers, ensuring on-time project delivery and best practices in software development - Implemented CI/CD processes, improving deployment speed and reducing manual errors - Contributed to front-end and back-end solutions, optimizing performance and scalability for high-traffic applications

- Developed interactive web applications and animations using ActionScript and 3D technologies - Expanded into back-end development, working on payment processing and fulfillment systems for eCommerce platforms - Gained experience in full-stack development, building and optimizing web applications for performance and scalability

- Developed and maintained the second-largest coding tutorial website in Brazil, helping thousands of developers learn programming - Created and optimized email marketing campaigns and new product pages to engage users and increase platform growth - Published technical articles on software development, including a widely read ActionScript tutorial that became one of the site’s top-viewed articles