About

Hello! I'm Daniel Gonzalez, a software engineer with a knack for developing solutions to complex problems. With a strong foundation in software development and a love for learning new technologies, I try to build software that makes a real difference to the people using it.

How I got here

I studied computer science at the University of Costa Rica and started at DAC Solutions in 2018, building a route and inventory app for truck drivers alongside its first user. In 2020 I joined Veterans United Home Loans, where I worked on .NET services, RabbitMQ integrations, and a move to Kubernetes. Since October 2024 I've managed engineers there while staying hands-on with system design and implementation.

What I'm into

I could talk for an hour about Domain-Driven Design and clean architecture: finding the right boundaries, modeling a domain so the code reads like the business, and using domain events so systems can react without being tightly coupled. That leads straight into event-driven systems, which I've built at work with RabbitMQ and play with on the side with Kafka.

I'm also a big believer in BDD. Most of my side projects have Gherkin scenarios that describe behavior in plain language before any code is written. Lately I've been spending a lot of time on AI-assisted development and how teams can use it well, not just quickly.

And since moving into management, I've come to love the people side as much as the code: helping engineers grow, giving them room to own hard problems, and building a team that enjoys working together.

Outside of work

Most of my time outside work goes to my family: our baby girl, born in July 2026, and Balto, our five-year-old husky shepherd mix, who is convinced every walk should be twice as long. When I do get a quiet hour, I'm usually building a small app for some corner of my own life. My bullet-journal app, a weather logger, and a handful of trackers all started that way.