Void
Technical leadership across esports web, mobile, backend, and real-time delivery at Void.
About
I lead engineering teams, architect resilient systems, and build tools that empower developers.
I'm Santiago Molina, a full-stack engineer and tech lead based in Medellín, Colombia. Over the last 12+ years I've shipped products across commerce, SaaS, gaming, and real estate — working across the entire stack from architecture and backend services to CI/CD pipelines and developer tooling.
Right now my focus is on teams and systems: how to structure engineering organizations so they stay fast to ship, easy to maintain, and hard to break. I care deeply about developer experience — not as a buzzword, but as the measurable gap between a team that ships with confidence and one that ships with anxiety. Automation is usually how you close that gap.
I've led cross-functional teams of up to 14 people spanning product, design, frontend, and backend. I believe the most valuable thing a tech lead does is reduce the number of decisions engineers have to make under pressure — through clear standards, good tooling, and systems that fail loudly instead of silently.
Outside work I co-organize ReactJS Colombia, write about engineering workflows and DX, and find the intersection between good software and good products. When I'm not at a keyboard I'm probably reading, hiking, or watching something with a good score on Letterboxd.
Experience
12+ years
Leadership
Led teams of up to 14 across product, design, frontend, and backend.
Focus today
Automation, delivery clarity, and developer experience that compounds.
Social proof
Some of the teams and communities behind the work.
A few of the products, companies, and communities behind the portfolio. The value is in the work itself, but context helps people read the case studies with the right level of trust.
Team Liquid
Product engineering and fan-engagement systems shipped through Optic Power client work.
Rappi
AI martech dashboards and campaign workflows built during the Datagran modernization work.
Subway
Analytics and customer-data product work supported through Datagran.
Telefonica
Enterprise-facing marketing automation interfaces and reporting systems built at Datagran.
ReactJS Colombia
Community talks, workshops, and mentorship through one of Medellin’s most active React groups.
Principles
What I believe about engineering.
A few things that shape how I work, how I lead, and what I focus on.
01
Automate the friction, not the thinking
The best automation removes toil — repetitive, low-judgment work that slows teams down. It should never replace the thinking that makes products worth building.
02
DX is UX for your team
The developer experience of a codebase shapes how fast and confidently the team can move. Bad DX compounds. Good DX compounds too — invest early and measure it.
03
Leadership means fewer decisions under pressure
A good tech lead reduces ambiguity before it becomes risk. Clear standards, good tooling, and systems that fail loudly are how you protect a team's velocity at scale.
04
Performance is a product decision
Speed isn't a tech concern, it's a user concern. Every kilobyte and every render-blocking resource is a choice that affects real people on real connections.
05
Boring tech is often the right call
The goal is to solve the problem, not to use the newest tool. Stable, well-understood solutions let the team focus on the actual product.
06
Consistency beats perfection
A consistent codebase with some imperfections beats an inconsistent one with pockets of brilliance. Conventions compound. Exceptions cost.
Recommendations
What collaborators tend to value in the work.
LinkedIn recommendations are the public place for named references. On the site, these are the recurring patterns the work itself keeps surfacing across teams, clients, and community projects.
Hands-on technical leadership
I stay close to architecture, code quality, and delivery systems so teams get the benefits of leadership without losing technical depth.
Led cross-functional teams of up to 14 people while continuing to shape architecture, CI/CD, and day-to-day engineering standards.
Systems that make shipping calmer
A big part of the work is reducing avoidable decisions under pressure: better defaults, cleaner tooling, and release paths that are easier to trust.
Project work across Void, PADS, and Optic Power centers on release confidence, performance, and calmer execution under real product deadlines.
Developer experience that scales
I care about developer experience because it compounds. Clear conventions, strong feedback loops, and better automation create real leverage for a team.
That shows up in the products I build, the ESLint tooling I publish, the workflows I write about, and the standards I introduce inside teams.
Clear communication across functions
My best work usually sits at the intersection of engineering, product, and communication. I like helping teams align earlier so execution gets simpler.
The portfolio spans commerce, SaaS, gaming, real estate, and community work, but the throughline is the same: practical systems with clear business value.