Leonardo Henrique Nascimento
Engineering Unit Manager & Generative AI Program Manager
- leocamello@gmail.com
- GitHub
- Portugal
I build engineering organizations and the operating models that make them profitable. Today I run an automotive embedded software unit of ~75 engineers — scaled to a peak of ~150 — with full accountability for its P&L, utilization, hiring, and talent development. In parallel, I lead the implementation of Generative and Agentic AI for software engineering projects across Portugal.
My track record is one of scaling: from individual contributor in C/C++ and computer graphics, to technical design authority on mission-critical semiconductor and automotive programs, to owning a unit's economics at +95% utilization. An Executive MBA from The Lisbon MBA and an immersion at MIT Sloan gave me the financial and strategic vocabulary to pair with that engineering depth.
What I care about is turning AI from an experiment into a durable operating advantage — measured in shipped value, not pilots — and building teams where technical judgement and business ownership live in the same people.
~75
Engineers in unit today
43 → 150
Scaled at peak
+95%
Sustained utilization
15+
Years in engineering
Professional Experience
Capgemini Engineering (formerly Altran)
Program Manager, Generative & Agentic AI
09/2024 – Present
- Implementation lead: Lead the implementation of Generative and Agentic AI for software engineering projects across Portugal — rolling out GitHub Copilot, GitLab Duo, and Claude Code to 50+ active projects and enabling 200+ engineers to ship more value with measurably better code quality.
- Portfolio shaping: Translate ambiguous business problems into concrete AI problem definitions and reference architectures, using LangChain, LangGraph, Microsoft AutoGen, RAG pipelines, and vector stores (Chroma).
- Executive reporting: Track and report initiative progress, adoption roadblocks, certification coverage, and solutioning pipeline to practice leadership.
Engineering Unit Manager — Automotive Embedded Software
05/2022 – Present
- Organizational leadership: Built and lead an engineering unit spanning AD/ADAS, Body, Chassis, Cluster, Infotainment, Platform, Powertrain, and Telematics — scaled from 43 engineers to a peak of ~150, and today a focused technical unit of ~75 engineers, architects, and engineering managers.
- P&L ownership: Accountable for the unit's revenue and cost structure (ARC/ADRC), sustaining an ARVE (utilization) of +95% and building the right pyramid shape for the team.
- Talent engine: Own hiring, promotion, salary, and career development, operating through 8 senior engineers acting as people managers — a model that maximized retention and practice attractiveness.
- Design authority & presales: Lead high-stakes solutioning with Industry Units, challenge architecture decisions, and drive delivery with direct volume increase (DVI) and add-on sales.
- Standards: Drive adoption of engineering standards and certifications across Functional Safety (ISO 26262), Cybersecurity (ISO 21434), AUTOSAR Classic & Adaptive, and Embedded Linux/Android/QNX.
Technical Project Manager, GenAI
09/2025 – 12/2025
Tier-1 Automotive Client
- Identified the highest-value opportunities inside a Tier-1 automotive software program where GenAI and Agentic AI could move quality and productivity.
- Architected and built a Python/Flask application on a hexagonal architecture that generates full test cases (precondition, action, expectation) from informal system requirements — deployable on-premises or on the hyperscaler of choice, backed by AWS Bedrock, Amazon RDS, Amazon SQS, and AWS CDK.
- Impact: Cut test case generation from 30 minutes to 1 minute plus ~10 minutes of human review — a ~60% productivity gain and a 2.7x velocity improvement, measured with a framework I put in place.
Team Leader & Technical Product Owner
05/2020 – 04/2022
Client · VDL ETG / ASML — Wafer Handling
- Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Technical Leader for the VDL ETG wafer handling program on TWINSCAN NXT/NXE/EXE lithography systems — pick/place and in-vacuum robotics, in C/C++ and Python.
- Grew the Embedded Application Systems department from 43 to 65 engineers while maximizing gross margin and direct volume and minimizing turnover.
- Owned modular, scalable architecture and design, on-target testing, and continuous process improvement under hard real-time and safety constraints.
Senior Consultant/Engineer & Team Coordinator
12/2018 – 04/2020
Client · ASML — Reticle Handling
- Technical leader and Scrum Master for the ASML reticle handling program, delivering embedded control software and algorithms in C/C++ and Python.
- Coordinated a team of 20 engineers and built the technical onboarding path for the Embedded & Safety Critical Systems unit — codifying field learnings into a repeatable enablement playbook.
BTG Pactual
IT Analyst — Life & Pension | Asset Management
07/2017 – 12/2018
- Drove the modernization of asset and pension platforms at Latin America's largest investment bank, decommissioning vendor software (Advent Geneva) in favour of in-house systems.
- Designed and delivered microservices (C#/.NET, WCF), Windows Services, and desktop applications integrating the bank's cash, asset trade, provisioning, and settlement ecosystems over IBM MQ and REST APIs.
Instituto Infnet
Executive Education Coordinator & Lead Professor
09/2016 – 12/2018
- Hired, coached, and developed a faculty of 6 professors delivering the "MIT in Software Engineering with .NET" executive specialization across 8 enterprise cohorts.
- Built the curriculum and enablement materials from scratch — my first experience designing a repeatable technical program rather than a single delivery.
Tecgraf PUC-Rio
Lead Software Engineer
04/2016 – 06/2017
- Led teams building desktop applications and serious games addressing critical oil & gas problems for Petrobras — including subsea blowout response simulation (C#/WPF, Oracle DB).
- Owned requirements, design, development, testing, and deployment end to end, with CI/CD on TeamCity and reproducible environments via Vagrant.
Computer Graphics Software Engineer
04/2014 – 03/2016
- Built VR and natural-interaction prototypes on Oculus Rift, Microsoft Kinect, and a custom CAVE system using C#, C++, and Unity — work that produced two peer-reviewed publications.
PSafe Tecnologia
C++ Developer
12/2012 – 03/2014
- Developed the full desktop portfolio of a high-growth Brazilian security startup (Protege, Lockbox, Turbo, ClickSeguro, Total) in C++ and Qt — PSafe Protege alone reached 35M installs and 7.5M monthly active users.
Web Developer
08/2011 – 11/2012
- Built internal systems and maintained the main product and company website using C#, ASP.NET, JavaScript, and jQuery.
Tecgraf PUC-Rio
C/C++ Developer
08/2007 – 07/2011
- Built a cross-platform (Linux/Windows) desktop application used by geophysicists to analyze seismic data for offshore oil exploration, with GPU-accelerated visualization in OpenGL, GLSL, and CUDA.
Publications
Virtual Reality as a Support Tool for the Treatment of Flying Phobia
11/2017
19th Symposium on Virtual and Augmented Reality (SVR'17)
- A pilot study presenting a VR application for systematic exposure to stimuli causing anxiety related to the fear of flying. Read paper →
Interaction Techniques for Laymen in Immersive Virtual Reality
10/2014
XIII Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computer Systems (IHC 2014)
- Challenges and navigation heuristics for first-time users of immersive VR headsets. Read paper →