I'm Henrique, Product Owner at Nokia R&D for 5G Baseband software, inside Nokia's AI-RAN programme. I write the backlog for teams whose code I used to write myself.
Based in Lisbon. Happy to get on a plane.
I joined Nokia writing C++ for 5G cloud baseband software. Then I ran the sprints. Now I help shape the product. Three roles in under two years, all on the same product area, which means I know exactly what I'm asking my teams to build.
Day to day I own feature selection and backlog prioritization across two R&D engineering teams. I run effort estimation and risk assessment, translate customer and system requirements into work engineers can actually start, and keep Scrum Masters, architects and system engineers pointed in the same direction.
The part I did not expect to love is the human one. Building software taught me how to solve technical problems. Building products is teaching me which problems are worth solving, and that the plan is the easy part. The real work is the relationships. Staying close to people, knowing where they are stuck and what they need, is what keeps a plan alive.
Having written this kind of code myself helps. When an engineer tells me something is harder than it looks, I usually know why. When an estimate looks too optimistic, I can usually tell before the sprint does.
Where I'm heading: customer facing technical work. Technical account management, customer engagement, solutions roles. Places where the depth is the credibility and the relationship is the job.
What I'm doing now
Backlog, prioritization and risk for two R&D teams building 5G Baseband software inside the AI-RAN programme.
Finishing in 2027. Algorithms, distributed systems, AI, computer architecture.
Stakeholder management, customer conversations, and the parts of product that happen face to face.
Product ownership across two engineering teams inside Nokia's AI-RAN programme. I decide what gets built, when, and in which order, balancing customer value against technical constraints and release timelines. I run effort estimation and risk assessment, and clear cross team dependencies before they turn into delays.
Agile delivery for a cross functional team of 10 engineers, held in parallel with my engineering role. Cut average blocker resolution time by two days through structured dependency tracking, and introduced AI assisted sprint documentation that reduced ceremony preparation time for the whole team.
Synchronization mechanisms for Kubernetes pods in Nokia's Baseband environment, keeping distributed nodes consistent in real time telecom contexts. Integrated low level C++ components with containerized microservices and contributed to CI/CD and container orchestration.
Project based curriculum in C, C++, Python and JavaScript. Built a real time multiplayer web platform, a high performance IRC server in C++ handling 50 or more concurrent connections, and a 3D engine in C using ray casting. Where I learned to be autonomous and to debug anything.
Algorithms and data structures, operating systems, distributed systems, artificial intelligence, computer architecture and software engineering. Studying while working full time at Nokia.
I spent years in the Scouts, which is where I first learned that leading a group is mostly logistics, patience and food. Later, volunteering with Cascais Jovem on youth development, community events and education workshops.
Outside all of that: bouldering, Krav Maga, a camera I carry more often than I use, and a long running interest in electric vehicles and personal finance. I travel whenever the calendar allows, and I'm building toward a life where the calendar allows more often.
If any of this overlaps with you, that is usually a better opening line than my job title.
Things I spend time on
In the pipeline
What AI-RAN actually changes for the people building baseband software
In the pipeline
Estimating engineering work when you used to do the engineering