Meet the team: director of engineering, Renan Gemignani
In an industry known for being secretive and exclusive, we want to share an inside look at the team building Databento. By being open and transparent, we hope to debunk some stereotypes while also introducing the people behind our product.
Today, please meet our director of engineering, Renan Gemignani! Renan is from Brazil and lives in the Netherlands. He spends his summers in Amsterdam and winters in Rio de Janeiro, aka "chasing the sun" throughout the year.
Renan's tenure at trading firms ignited his passion for innovation within the market data industry. With firsthand experience in integrating trading venues and collaborating with data providers, Renan shares the complexities that brought him to Databento:
"When I worked in the connectivity team at Flow Traders, we traded on hundreds of venues with multiple different protocols, many of which I was responsible for integrating. I got a lot of exposure to how difficult it is to onboard new venues and how long and complex the process of data licensing and acquisition is.
Joining a firm that was attempting to disrupt this market with easy-to-use APIs and quick onboarding was very attractive to me!"
As manager of the core engineering team, Renan describes his team’s day-to-day experience as dynamic and varied, stating,
"No two days are the same. The team is responsible for developing new datasets and features, as well as handling operational tasks such as maintaining our data capture setup and managing live data gateways.
Because of our small company size, we all end up doing a bit of everything—from requirements gathering to development, testing, deployment, monitoring, and business strategy alignment."
Operating a market data platform requires a dependable team across time zones. Renan highlights that each of his colleagues embodies Databento's team values, one of which is taking extreme ownership.
"The sense of ownership everyone has is amazing. The team is deeply invested in the product, and I can go to sleep with full confidence that whoever is on duty will do their best to ensure continued operations (and they can expect the same from me!).
Maintaining a live market data platform is a 24/7 job—there are always some markets trading somewhere. Our team is spread across eight time zones to ensure our customers are always covered."
Reflecting on his career, Renan recalls a proud moment from his time at Flow Traders:
"I rearchitected our existing OMS testing system (which relied on the exchanges' staging environments to verify application behavior) to be able to save and replay those tests against new application versions. Over time, this saved countless hours of staging environment manicuring from our connectivity teams and allowed us to streamline our testing process.
There are some other interesting things, but I can't discuss them in a public post because of NDAs."
Renan draws inspiration from the entire engineering team, noting their exceptional talent and expertise.
"The whole engineering team inspires me a lot. These are people who, in any other firm, would likely be the top performers and the technical reference of a team—and we are full of those people!
Working with individuals of such a high technical caliber motivates me to improve constantly."
When Renan isn't in engineer mode, he enjoys traveling and outdoor activities, with cycling being a top choice.
"I love cycling on my road bike! The Netherlands has a huge cycle path infrastructure, and you can go really far and see a lot of the country. I like taking my bike, cycling as far as I can, and then dropping on a train to go back home.
In the spring, the Dutch tulip fields bloom, and you can cycle around them for kilometers—it's amazing!"
If Renan's career path sounds interesting to you, explore our careers page for open positions. We're always on the lookout for outstanding talent, so feel free to send your resume to careers@databento.com if you don't see the right role.