BERLIN · OCTOBER, MMXXVI PRODUCT · ENGINEERING · LEADERSHIP

Curious about how
things work,
and how they break.

A product & engineering lead with seven years building financial, crypto, and platform products — from trading platforms to digital wallets, insurance protocols, super-apps, and payment rails. Currently a Senior Product Manager at Bitpanda, on the Vision DeFi wallet.

READ ON
I.An introduction

I've been curious about how things work for as long as I can remember, taking things apart and wanting to build them myself. That led me to electronics engineering, then to data analytics and backend development, and eventually to product, where I've spent the last seven years.

I've worked on trading platforms, digital wallets, insurance protocols, super-apps and payment integrations, from zero-to-one launches to scaling products across mobile and web.

The engineering background never really left, and it shapes how I lead: close to the architecture, comfortable with technical trade-offs, and part of the same conversations as the engineers. The rest is a bit of everything. Hiring, system design, stakeholder management, sprint processes, CI/CD, platform migrations.

Since October 2026 I'm a Senior Product Manager at Bitpanda, working on Vision, their DeFi wallet. Before that, I co-founded Kmino, a software agency, in 2025 and led product there until early 2026. Earlier still, years as a product and engineering lead at startups at different stages, building teams, defining processes, and figuring out how to ship reliably when everything is moving fast.

I've lived in Brazil, Italy, the US and now Berlin, working with teams across APAC, India, EMEA and the Americas.

7yrs
Product & Eng
20+
Folks Led
UTC−8→+11
Timezones Worked
2×
Ankles Sprained · Skating
Also: snowboards blue runs only, dives to 12m max, and still hasn't hit lv. 100 in Path of Exile.
II.A résumé, in brief
2026–
Bitpanda
Senior Product Manager · Web3
Berlin, DE +

Product for Vision, Bitpanda's DeFi wallet, on the Web3 team.

web3defiwallet
2025–26
Kmino
Co-founder & Product Lead
Berlin, DE · Remote +

Co-founded a software agency focused on Web3 companies and fintech startups. Product definition, technical direction, hiring, delivery. Full-stack founder ownership: finance, sales, marketing, and internal tooling.

  • Led Syscoin's ecosystem products' migration: rearchitected the entire product line onto a new L2 (zkSys), reducing operational risk
  • Defined pricing & engagement models (Product Build, Senior Pod, Advisory Sprints) connecting product direction to business value
  • Shipped AI-powered features into production: LLM-based capabilities, skills, agent automation
  • Launched in-house products: Flowbar (macOS-native task tracker) and Suilana (tx-hash explainer for Solana/Sui)
platformaihiringweb3greenfieldmacos
2024—26
Lunos
Engineering & Product Lead · via Pollum → Kmino
Dubai, UAE · Remote +

On-chain coverage platform (former UNO Re). Appointed lead after SysLabs acquired a majority stake. Inherited isolated workflows, left a scalable platform and a pivot in progress.

  • Re-organized the team post-acquisition; introduced structured 1:1s, performance reviews, career development paths
  • Unified isolated workflows into a single scalable platform: onboarding, verification, claims, compliance
  • $21M covered in on-chain policies · $700k paid in claims
  • Led a product pivot toward KYC-native blockchain, worked directly with legal & compliance
platformrearchitecturefintechinsurancecomplianceleadership
2022–25
Pollum
Technical Product Manager
Florianópolis, BR · Remote +

Led 20+ person cross-functional teams across multiple concurrent crypto & fintech products. Owned hiring, mentoring, roadmaps, and delivery, while also owning CI/CD hygiene with DevOps.

  • SuperDapp · 0 → 240k sign-ups. Decentralized super-app with E2E messaging, multi-chain wallet, and AIDA, an LLM assistant shipped to production
  • AI Agent SDK (superdapp-js) deployed across 700+ communities, developer API for agents
  • Pali Wallet · 22.2k downloads, 11k+ WAU. First UTXO+EVM browser wallet; led the MV2→MV3 compliance rewrite under a hard Chrome deadline
  • Owned payment rail integrations (Coinify, Changelly) from research to delivery, including SWIFT, credit/debit, APMs for on-ramps
  • Launched Pali Mobile from scratch, spun up a new mobile team, shipped greenfield
multi-productmobileaipayments20+ teamcompliance
2022–23
Luxy
Technical Lead · via Pollum (acq. SysLabs)
Dubai, UAE · Remote +

Digital asset marketplace on ERC-721/1155. Reviewed the AWS microservices, restructured the architecture and the engineering process. Drove the technical improvements behind the company's acquisition.

  • −45% infra cost, −180× load times: restructured Lambda, EC2, MongoDB, websocket services
  • Launched a novel on-chain royalty engine, plus payment gateways and launchpad tooling
  • Restructured sprint cycles; cut meeting overhead ~40% and improved delivery predictability
  • Built monitoring dashboards (transaction volume, platform health, performance) and reliability improvements
awsmicroservicesmarketplaceacquisitionmonitoring
2019–22
Brick Abode
Engineering & Product Manager
Virginia, USA · Remote +

Product & engineering management across crypto trading, enterprise network automation, communication platforms, and internal financial tooling.

  • Covario: owned research, UX, MVP delivery for a financial data platform aggregating exchange APIs
  • Oversaw a comms platform across 10+ teams in 7 countries — Android, iOS, Web, Desktop, backend, QA, DevOps
  • Led 5–6 engineers on WeWork's network automation team, focusing on network management across regions (EMEA, LATAM, US/Canada)
  • Redesigned the engineering hiring process: ~3.5 months → 3 weeks. Wrote the internal management handbook; trained new managers
  • Standardized internal payment tooling: unblocked the finance team across every contract
cross-teamfinancial-infrahiringdocumentationenterprise
2019
Brick Abode
Backend Software Engineer
Virginia, USA · Remote +

Short engineering stint before transitioning into management at the same company.

  • Built a custom order matching engine for a crypto exchange. F#, Python, PostgreSQL
  • Limit + market orders via an OMS integration; end-to-end testing of the full trading flow
  • Configured CI/CD (GitLab CI, GitHub Actions) and Docker-based dev environments
engineeringtradingf#postgressystem-design
2018–19
RD Station
Data Analyst
Florianópolis, BR · On-site +

One of the fastest-growing SaaS platforms in Latin America. Built the reporting layer that drove operational decisions on the corporate education team.

  • Automated dashboards & reporting infrastructure for growth/operational KPIs
  • Data pipelines in Python, Power BI, Google Data Studio
  • Delivered insights that drove data-informed operational decisions
dataanalyticssaaspythonsql
— and the tools of the trade

Product & leadership

Product strategy Platform roadmaps 0→1 & greenfield Continuous discovery Stakeholder alignment Hiring & onboarding Performance reviews Sprint cadence Commercial & pricing

Financial & crypto

Payment rails KYC / AML Exchange integrations Smart contracts UTXO + EVM Settlement & reconciliation Tokenized assets Regulatory compliance

Technical

Python · F# · PostgreSQL AWS (Lambda, EC2) MongoDB System design API design CI/CD

Tools

Jira · ClickUp Notion · Confluence Figma Power BI · Data Studio Google Analytics SQL
✦

Also: a published academic author.

A Reinforcement Learning Approach to Directed Test Generation for Shared Memory Verification — using RL to validate hardware tests before it was a career buzzword.

DATE 2020 · Grenoble, FR IEEE Xplore ↗
III.Selected work
SuperDapp
№ 01 SUPERAPP · AI · WEB3 · 2023–25

SuperDapp — a decentralized super-app

What started as a rebrand of an encrypted communication app grew into a multi-platform super-app with an AI assistant, community monetization tools, and an agent SDK. No clear roadmap, too many stakeholders, tight time to market; and 240k sign-ups in the opening months.

240k+
sign-ups
700+
communities
AIDA
AI assistant shipped
productaimobileweb3paymentsleadership
read case
Lunos coverage platform
№ 02 INSURANCE · WEB3 · 2024–25

Lunos — on-chain coverage platform

Appointed engineering and product lead after SysLabs acquired a majority stake. Brought in a new team, managed the transition from the old one, unified a fragmented platform that covered $21M in assets before leading a full product pivot toward KYC-native blockchain infrastructure.

$21M
covered
$700k
claims paid
pivot
KYC-native blockchain
fintechinsurancecomplianceleadershippivot
read case
Pali Wallet
№ 03 WALLET · MULTI-CHAIN · 2022–25

Pali Wallet — the first UTXO + EVM browser wallet

Took over a struggling open-source wallet with a shaky v2 launch, a mountain of bugs, and a hard Chrome compliance deadline bearing down. Stabilized the product, hired the right people, and shipped the MV3 migration without taking the extension offline.

22.2k
downloads
11k+
weekly actives
V2→V3
migrated
walletbrowser-extopen-sourcecompliancegreenfield
read case
Luxy NFT marketplace
№ 04 MARKETPLACE · INFRA · 2022–23

Luxy — a digital asset marketplace

Brought in as technical and product lead to a struggling NFT marketplace. Restructured the team, slashed cloud costs by 45%, reduced endpoint response times by up to 180×, shipped the features that drove traction, and left when SysLabs acquired the company.

−45%
infra cost
180×
faster endpoints
SysLabs
acquired
awsmicroservicesacquisitionmarketplacenftleadership
read case
Covario trading terminal
№ 05 TRADING INFRASTRUCTURE · 2019–22

Covario — a unified layer over exchanges

Three distinct chapters at Covario: as a backend engineer building the order matching engine, as PM shipping a Bloomberg-style trading terminal for HFT traders, and later connecting real-time feeds from Binance, Kraken, Gemini, and others into a single low-latency API.

3
iterations
4+
exchanges integrated
0→1
MVP delivered
tradingapiproductengineeringleadership
read case
IV.From the journal
→ All stories, on Medium
V.Correspondence

Say hello.

Building something interesting, or want to talk product in fintech and crypto? My inbox is open. Fastest reply by email or LinkedIn.

Post
brunozimpel@gmail.com
LinkedIn
/in/bruno-zimpel
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@brunozimpel
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@brunozimpel