Felipe Acosta

Mexico City, MX · Miami, FL · San Francisco, CA

I build software factories: the specs, checks and coding agents that let a small team ship like a large one.

Hands-on engineering leader. I'm taking on a small number of fractional and project engagements with US startups, in English or Spanish.

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Work with me

Prototype to production

Five-day audit, then a 10-day sprint

You built it with AI and it mostly works. I get it to production without telling you to rewrite it. The audit tells you what's solid, what will break first, and what to fix in what order. The sprint then does the fixing with you, in your repo.

Reliability and delivery diagnostic

Five days

For an app, backend or AI feature that's flaky, slow or expensive, or a team that keeps missing dates and can't say why. I read the code, the tickets and the incident history, and talk to the engineers. You get a written plan: where it actually breaks, the first fixes I'd make, and 30 days of work your team can run without me.

Fractional Head of Engineering

Monthly, two to three days a week

For seed to Series A teams that need engineering leadership before they can hire it. Planning, reviews, release gates and hiring, while still shipping code, until you hire a permanent leader.

Every engagement has a fixed price, quoted after a 30-minute call. An audit or diagnostic is credited toward a sprint if we keep going.

Experience

2021 – now
Backtrack · Yac, Inc.
2024 – now
Head of Engineering
2023
Software Engineering Manager
2022
Apple Platforms Engineer
2021
Full Stack Developer
2020 – 2021
Tecnológico de Monterrey
Software Engineer Intern. Built CarnetE.
2019 – 2021
Orion Startups
Business Engineering and VC Analyst

Across AI, event technology, edtech and venture capital.

Numbers

Backtrack

25,000+
in-person sales meetings recorded on the iPhone app, at trade shows and executive events
40,000+
meetings, calls and screen sessions recorded on the Mac app
30,000+
hours of recordings captured on the Mac app
30+
Fortune 500 companies whose people have used products I led, 11 of them in the Fortune 100
10+
event organizers that ran their shows on it, 2024–2026
1 → 7
people on the engineering team I grew, starting from just me

Used by people at Disney, Walmart, UnitedHealth Group, CVS Health, Sephora, Tiffany & Co., Honeywell, Gap, Ulta Beauty, AutoZone, Grainger, Cartier and Prada.

Before Backtrack

3,000+
people used CarnetE, the events platform I built at 18 for Tec de Monterrey
10,000+
event attendances registered through CarnetE
200+
university events run on CarnetE across Tec's campus network
20+
students mentored by big-tech engineers through a network I founded

About

Since 2021 I've been at Backtrack, a US AI startup. I joined as a full-stack developer and grew into Head of Engineering, reporting to the CEO. Along the way I built and led the team behind its web, backend and native Apple apps.

I still build the product myself: LLM-backed systems with human review where it matters, native macOS and iOS apps in Swift, and the backend behind them. I'm a co-inventor on a pending US patent application for AI grading of event meetings (US 19/688,513).

Before that, as a teenager, I built software and helped with technical diligence on applicants at Orion Startups, a venture accelerator in Chihuahua. At 18 I built CarnetE for Tec de Monterrey.

Most of what I know about delivery I learned by getting it wrong first. I care about unglamorous things: specs before tickets, release checklists instead of heroics, hiring on real work instead of interview theater, and coding agents that have to pass the same review as people.

Tools and practice

Questions

How do we contract? You're in Mexico.
I invoice you directly as an independent contractor, in US dollars or Mexican pesos. A platform like Deel works too.
What hours do you keep?
Mexico City is on UTC−6 all year, close to US Central. I overlap fully with US working hours.
Who owns the work?
You do. I'll sign your NDA, and I don't talk about clients publicly without written permission.

Contact

Book a 30-minute call or write to felipe@felipeacosta.ai.

Hiring full-time? Here's my resume.