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Elías Bernales

Software Engineer | Distributed Systems

Summary

Distributed Systems Engineer with 2+ years of professional experience designing and deploying resilient, concurrent backend services. Deep expertise in Elixir/OTP for fault-tolerance, demonstrated by my thesis on a federated e-commerce network. Hands-on experience building event-driven backend systems with Go, Kafka, and Docker.

Education

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso

2021 – 2026 | Engineering in Informatics | Ingeniería Civil Informática

Projects

Tololo Hub | Federated E-commerce Network ↗

Nov 2025 - Present | Elixir, Phoenix, OpenAPI | Thesis Project

  • Designed and built a proof-of-concept distributed system for federated e-commerce, allowing independent stores to cooperate within a larger network.
  • Architected using Elixir/OTP, leveraging the Actor Model to ensure fault-isolation and concurrency between federated store processes.
  • Defined a formal federation protocol using OpenAPI and implemented the Hub node with Phoenix.

Tololo (Store) | Event-Driven E-commerce Platform ↗

Mar 2025 | Elixir, Phoenix, Kafka

  • Developed a standalone e-commerce store featuring a full CI/CD pipeline with GitHub Actions for automated testing and releases.
  • Published events to a Kafka topic upon order creation to notify and allow for integration with external systems.
  • Implemented a full observability stack with Grafana and Loki for real-time monitoring and log aggregation.

Repo: https://github.com/ElixirCL/tololo (65+ Stars)

Personal Cloud Infrastructure

NixOS, Docker Compose, Caddy, Tailscale

  • Deployed and manage a suite of services on a personal VPS, declaratively managed with NixOS and Docker for reproducible environments.
  • Secured the internal network using Tailscale, creating a zero-trust overlay network for private services.

Freelance Software Engineer

Remote | Jan 2023 - Present

  • Backend Architecture & Development:

    Architected and developed modular, event-driven backend systems using Go and Python, designing for extensibility and clear separation of concerns to handle real-time data ingestion.

  • Full-Stack Implementation:

    Engineered and delivered end-to-end full-stack solutions for over 25 clients, including headless Shopify storefronts (Remix/React) and high-performance static sites (Astro), consistently achieving Lighthouse scores over 95.

  • Project Leadership & DevOps:

    Led projects from initial client consultation and requirements gathering through to deployment and maintenance, utilizing Docker for containerization and providing custom CLI tools to automate client workflows.

Skills Overview

Core Competencies

  • Elixir
  • Go
  • Distributed Systems Design
  • Event-Driven Architecture
  • Docker
  • Kafka
  • PostgreSQL
  • CI/CD (GitHub Actions)
  • Observability (Grafana)

Languages

  • Python
  • Rust
  • SQL
  • JavaScript/TypeScript
  • Gleam

Frameworks & Tools

  • Phoenix (LiveView)
  • Svelte
  • Git/Jujutsu
  • Nix
  • Tailwind CSS

Languages

  • Spanish: Native
  • English: Professional Working Proficiency