Cristian Poncela Pérez
Engineering Manager & Senior Backend Engineer
Leading distributed teams. Shipping production-grade systems. Staying hands-on.
Valladolid, Spain
10+
Years in tech
5+
Years leading teams
90%
MTTR reduction
About me
Engineer by trade,
curious by nature.
I'm a Software Engineering Manager with 10+ years in tech — 5+ leading distributed, cross-functional teams delivering Java-based microservices platforms in high-availability, regulated environments.
I'm equally comfortable in the architecture forum with the CTO and in the codebase resolving a production incident myself. I've built teams from scratch across six time zones, owned end-to-end delivery from requirements through deployment, and kept ISO 27001 certification intact through two audit cycles.
Outside of work I'm drawn to science, history, and understanding how complex systems really work. I stay current through personal projects and courses, and I take mental and physical wellbeing seriously.
Career
Work experience
Team Leader
Led delivery of a web application for a health-sector client. Designed and built an iterative data migration pipeline reconciling heterogeneous, unsynchronised data from SQL Server and IBM DB2 — with AI-assisted semantic deduplication — architected for atomic, auditable go-live execution. Managed requirements, sprint planning, and stakeholder communication throughout.
Xeridia
Oct 2025 – Apr 2026 · Valladolid, Spain
Team Leader
Led delivery of a web application for a health-sector client. Designed and built an iterative data migration pipeline reconciling heterogeneous, unsynchronised data from SQL Server and IBM DB2 — with AI-assisted semantic deduplication — architected for atomic, auditable go-live execution. Managed requirements, sprint planning, and stakeholder communication throughout.
Engineering Manager
Led a fully remote, multicultural team of 10 engineers across Asia, Europe, and the Americas through two regional Team Leads. Owned end-to-end software delivery, incident management (Sev1), and platform security. Reduced mean incident resolution time by up to 90%. Maintained ISO 27001 certification through proactive vulnerability remediation. Built internal tooling improving operational efficiency by up to 25%. Collaborated with the CTO on roadmap and OKRs. Remained hands-on in the Java/Spring Boot codebase.
Team Lead
Built a distributed L2/L3 engineering team from scratch spanning Europe and Asia, later expanding to the Americas to achieve 20/5 support coverage. Designed Jira workflows and automation increasing deployment frequency by ~80% and release quality by ~140%. Owned production deployments end-to-end. Remained fully hands-on delivering features, fixes, and critical hotfixes.
Software Developer
Delivered full-stack feature development across a highly configurable SaaS platform. Diagnosed and resolved critical performance bottlenecks achieving ~20× improvements through query optimisation and backend refactoring. Implemented a hybrid relational/document data model (PostgreSQL + JSONB). Configured a complete end-to-end platform implementation for a major pharmaceutical client including SAP integration and Spanish localisation. Acted as Scrum Master as the team scaled.
HICX
Jan 2021 – Jan 2025 · Remote, Spain
Engineering Manager
Led a fully remote, multicultural team of 10 engineers across Asia, Europe, and the Americas through two regional Team Leads. Owned end-to-end software delivery, incident management (Sev1), and platform security. Reduced mean incident resolution time by up to 90%. Maintained ISO 27001 certification through proactive vulnerability remediation. Built internal tooling improving operational efficiency by up to 25%. Collaborated with the CTO on roadmap and OKRs. Remained hands-on in the Java/Spring Boot codebase.
HICX
Jan 2019 – Jan 2021 · London, UK
Team Lead
Built a distributed L2/L3 engineering team from scratch spanning Europe and Asia, later expanding to the Americas to achieve 20/5 support coverage. Designed Jira workflows and automation increasing deployment frequency by ~80% and release quality by ~140%. Owned production deployments end-to-end. Remained fully hands-on delivering features, fixes, and critical hotfixes.
HICX
Sep 2015 – Jan 2019 · London, UK
Software Developer
Delivered full-stack feature development across a highly configurable SaaS platform. Diagnosed and resolved critical performance bottlenecks achieving ~20× improvements through query optimisation and backend refactoring. Implemented a hybrid relational/document data model (PostgreSQL + JSONB). Configured a complete end-to-end platform implementation for a major pharmaceutical client including SAP integration and Spanish localisation. Acted as Scrum Master as the team scaled.
Junior Architect
Maintained three enterprise Oracle FMW applications for FCC. Assumed full project responsibility within four months as the sole developer on the account. Managed client requirements, change verification, and delivery sign-off directly. Trained and supervised a junior developer.
Everis (now NTT Data)
Sep 2014 – Aug 2015 · Madrid, Spain
Junior Architect
Maintained three enterprise Oracle FMW applications for FCC. Assumed full project responsibility within four months as the sole developer on the account. Managed client requirements, change verification, and delivery sign-off directly. Trained and supervised a junior developer.
Expertise
Skills & technologies
Core expertise
Supporting technologies
Backend
Databases
Cloud
Tooling
Leadership & delivery
Background
Education & awards
Academic
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering
2009 – 2014University of Valladolid, Spain
First class honours · Outstanding Graduate Award 2014
H.V.E. in Computer Applications Development
2007 – 2009I.E.S. Gregorio Fernández, Valladolid
First class honours
Distinctions
Award for Outstanding Graduate of the Year — Computer Engineering 2014, University of Valladolid
Winner, HackForGood — Valladolid 2013, University of Valladolid
Languages
Get in touch
Let's build something
worth building.
Whether you have a role in mind, a project to discuss, or just want to connect — my inbox is open.
Say hello →