--- title: "About - José DA COSTA" description: "Engineering Manager and CEO/CTO of ACCENSĒO, my own consulting and development company (4 people). 26 years of career: 13 years as an employee on critical IT systems, 18 years of entrepreneurship. Tomorrow, CTO of an early-stage startup or scale-up." locale: "en" canonical: "https://portfolio.josedacosta.net/en/about" source: "https://portfolio.josedacosta.net/en/about.md" html_source: "https://portfolio.josedacosta.net/en/about" author: "José DA COSTA" type: "presentation" generated_at: "2026-06-02T15:37:40.845Z" --- # About Engineering Manager and CEO/CTO of ACCENSĒO, my own consulting and development company (4 people). 26 years of career: 13 years as an employee on critical IT systems, 18 years of entrepreneurship. Tomorrow, CTO of an early-stage startup or scale-up. ## About My approach as an engineering expert comes down to 3 words: **human**, **conscious**, **responsible**. **Human** in knowledge sharing and listening to teams. **Conscious** in technical choices and their effects. **Responsible** in the durability of the code, of commitments and of my own trajectory. [**Engineering Manager**](journey/engineering-manager-project-manager-product-owner-technical-lead#pichet-engineering-manager) passionate about Software Engineering, previously **Technical Project Manager**, **Technical Lead** and **Senior Software Engineer**. **CEO and** [**CTO**](journey/cto-founder-directeur-technique-accenseo) **of** [**ACCENSĒO**](accenseo-founder), my own consulting and software development company founded in 2024 (4 people). A **deliberate** **dual track**: one foot in team operations, one foot in technical leadership. Growing Engineering Teams, carrying a strategic vision, shipping ambitious products, tackling technical challenges: that is what drives me. 26 years of career: 13 years as an employee on critical IT systems and 18 as an entrepreneur, 7 positions held, 4 companies founded. It all started in 1999 with the founding of [**Celiane**](celiane-founder), my **first company at 18 years old**. First employee position in 2008 as a Webmaster at the [**French Ministry of Health**](ministere-sante-webmaster), then 4 years on a B2B search engine, 3 years industrializing e-commerce sites with Symfony at [**Medialeads**](medialeads-senior-engineer), a stint as a Magento Enterprise lead at [**Smile**](smile-senior-engineer). Cofounder of [**AdsPower**](adspower-cofounder) between 2016, a startup automating Google Ads campaigns with Machine Learning. Then 5 years at [**Groupe Pichet**](pichet-group) 2019-2024 transforming critical IT systems ([ESB](achievement/engineering-manager-integration-entreprise), [PIM](achievement/pilotage-pim-akeneo-migration-saas), [DAM](achievement/dam-bynder-asset-management-project-manager), ...) moving from Tech Lead to Project Manager to [Engineering Manager](journey/engineering-manager-project-manager-product-owner-technical-lead#pichet-engineering-manager), with management of a team of 1 to 7 developers. On the [**ACCENSĒO**](accenseo-founder) side, I support SMEs and mid-market companies in trade, industry, and real estate: CTO advisory, custom development, IaC. I also designed and shipped several SaaS platforms (in real estate, accounting, ...), and I maintain a few open source projects. To understand the **genesis** of this journey, I invite you to explore the page dedicated to [**Celiane**](celiane-founder): that is where it all started, at **18 years old**, with my true first steps in software and entrepreneurship - and an early, tangible success that shaped the way I code, lead, and learn. ## My Values My approach as an engineering expert comes down to 3 words: **human**, **conscious**, **responsible**. Human in knowledge sharing and listening to teams. Conscious in technical choices and their effects. Responsible in the durability of the code, of commitments and of my own trajectory. - **Autonomy and independence** - Autonomy is my deepest motivation - the same drive that has pushed me to build my own ventures for a long time, and that guides me toward every context where I can decide the technical trajectory. I need to be told what to achieve, not how: handed a direction and then trusted to choose the tools, organize the time, and arbitrate the trade-offs. Without that space to decide, I dim ; with it, I become tireless. - **Innovation and problem solving** - Easy problems bore me, and what really draws me in is understanding why a tool solves a problem and what it costs in complexity, debt and training. I love ill-posed problems, the ones that force you to invent a frame before offering a solution. I gladly adopt recent technologies - but always in full awareness, never by herd instinct. To me, innovation is the elegance of a solution chosen for the right reasons. - **Achievement and measurable impact** - What drives me is achievement in all its forms: a system that runs, a polished presentation that carries a vision, a project led with rigor, a team that delivers. I love crafting - both a technical product and well-built slides - because each one carries a piece of the value we are trying to deliver. What impresses me the most is the moment that follows delivery - when I look at the result with a bit of distance and that quiet satisfaction settles in. - **Continuous learning** - Learning is not optional for me, it is a physiological need. I document, I get certified, I dissect incident reviews, I practice pair programming - even when my schedule is saturated. I am going back to higher education alongside my operational responsibilities, and I keep stacking trainings and readings because standing still is impossible. I prefer teams and problems that confront me and force me to grow over comfortable contexts that would let me stagnate. - **Technical excellence and rigor** - Technical quality is not a detail: it is what determines whether a team ships in 6 months or spends its time putting out fires. Standards of readable code, tests, observability and blameless post-mortems - all of it sustained over time, not just at launch. Rigor is not a posture: it is how I craft work that lasts, whether I have to ship code, secure a schedule or move a team forward without debt catching up with us. - **Knowledge sharing and collective uplift** - Knowledge I keep to myself is knowledge that serves no one - and to me, that is unbearable. I document my decisions, I structure my feedback as proof rather than a judgment, I take the time to explain why before saying how. I trust demonstration more than authority: a team that understands its choices ships better than a team that obeys - and that is what turns supervision into collective uplift. ## My Professional and Personal Project Today Engineering Manager and CEO/CTO of [ACCENSĒO](accenseo-founder). Tomorrow, CTO of an early-stage startup or scale-up? ### Vision My project has 2 horizons. • **Short term:** stay [CTO](journey/cto-founder-directeur-technique-accenseo) of [ACCENSĒO](accenseo-founder) or return as [Engineering Manager](journey/engineering-manager-project-manager-product-owner-technical-lead#pichet-engineering-manager) in a company (open to any opportunity). • **Mid term:** take technical leadership of a large early-stage startup or scale-up as CTO, cofounder or not. **Ambition:** defend a technical vision at the executive table, build or shape a team, set an architecture, arbitrate technical debt, ... ### Professional Goals - **Lead B2B SaaS product engineering**: roadmap, hiring, individual and collective performance, review, feedback, and coaching cycles, scaling beyond that. - **Work with data at scale**: data-intensive systems architecture, pipelines, business intelligence and data visualization. Manipulating massive volumes and turning them into readable decisions is what truly drives me in engineering. - **Integrate generative AI**: workflow, automation, development cycles, review, compliance, business processes, value creation. Imagining tomorrow's processes. - **Industrialize project delivery**: AI is already transforming how projects are run. Rethinking traditional frameworks - [SAFe](journey/certification-safe-product-manager-product-owner), [Scrum](journey/certification-pspo-professional-scrum-product-owner), Kanban, OKRs, ... - **Build autonomous teams**: delegate, refocus my role on vision, hiring, unblocking, and feedback. Leadership, not command and control. - **Sustain an author's practice**: articles, documentation, open source, write-ups, technical talks. knowledge sharing is not an option, it is my reason for being. ### Personal Aspiration Build long-lived products inside organizations where technical decisions are made quickly, ownership is taken seriously, and promises made to customers are kept. My entrepreneurial path, from [Celiane](celiane-founder) in 1999 to [ACCENSĒO](accenseo-founder) in 2024, is not anecdotal: it is a reminder that expertise is earned and that learning has no age. I wish to contribute to environments where the same rule applies to teams. ## My Key Human Qualities Qualities anchored in 26 years of career across software engineering, project management, and technical leadership. - **Analytical and systemic thinking** - I love breaking down complex problems, building mental models and keeping a systems view of dependencies between components and between teams. That is what carries me through software architecture as much as through multi-stakeholder project leadership. - **Intellectual curiosity** - I read every day, I explore frameworks, I follow technical debates and lessons from other companies. This curiosity feeds my active monitoring and helps me anticipate technology shifts - learning is breathing - without it, I shut down. - **Rigor and self-discipline** - Rigor is not a posture for me: it is my only way to hold a roadmap over time. I organize myself carefully, I finish what I start despite distractions, I follow through on the commitments I make and the schedules I announce. - **Leadership with vision** - I believe a team never follows an order, it follows a direction it understands - and one it sees embodied by whoever carries it. I mobilize through meaning, I decide quickly, and I lead by demonstration rather than by authority. - **Delegation through trust** - In my view, micro-management destroys engagement faster than it corrects mistakes. I do my best to delegate operational tasks and I keep some technical tasks, vision, hiring, unblocking and feedback for myself. - **Rational stress management** - Faced with an incident or a blocker, I start with a status assessment, decompose into sub-problems, and build a measurable action plan. Emotional reaction never bought time or quality. - **Tenacity and ambition** - When the project carries meaning, I produce a phenomenal amount of work in a flow hyperfocus state, I push through without stopping and I keep the commitments I make. - **Balanced optimism and personal accountability** - I build my trajectory step by step. Obstacles are real, but I would rather ask what I can do than wait for the situation to sort itself out. This conviction has stayed with me for a long time: each step taken matters more than the destination. ## My Main Interests Technical building, strategic vision, project delivery, continuous learning, and what happens outside work. ### Building and technical challenges I build complex things, technical challenges that last. That is what draws me most about engineering. I explore AI agents, LLMs and machine learning; I automate what can be automated; I work data to make it readable; I structure interfaces with design systems; I secure critical systems and I take things apart to understand them - because a system you cannot decompose is a system you do not master. - AI - LLM - ML - Automations - DataViz - Systems analysis - Design System - Security - Reverse Engineering ### Strategic vision and management Management is not a logical extension of engineering, it is a different craft. I train for it as seriously as for engineering. Leading a product, structuring squads, hiring, explaining an architecture decision through an ADR, setting OKRs or driving a change initiative: skills that I learn and practice every day. - Product leadership - OKRs - Change management - Squads - Technical recruiting - ADRs - Management ### Methods, workflow and project management Predictable delivery. The method adapts to the context, never the other way around. SAFe for multi-team organizations, Scrum when the cadence fits, Kanban for variable flows, Lean to chase waste, OKRs to align on outcomes, and the full Agile and DevOps chain - from discovery to CI/CD to capacity planning - to turn an idea into delivery. - SAFe - Scrum - Kanban - OKRs - Lean - Agile - DevOps - Discovery - CI/CD - Capacity planning ### Continuous learning and active monitoring I never stop learning. Learning has no age. I treat it as a discipline of its own. A Software Engineering Expert Master's, an MBA in Strategic Project Management, SAFe POPM and PSPO certifications: milestones I keep stacking, alongside a daily technical watch to stay current with a fast-moving field. - 2 Master's - Software Engineering Expert Master's - SAFe - POPM - MBA in Strategic Project Management - PSPO - Active monitoring ### Outside of work These practices are essential to me. They regulate my energy, refocus my attention - and that is precisely what makes everything else possible. Master swim competition and running teach me regularity and long-term resilience; bodyboarding and kitesurfing reconnect me to the moment; adventure travel and road trips fuel my curiosity and my knack for figuring things out; and family activities remain the anchor that gives meaning to all the rest. - Master swim competition - Running - Bodyboarding - Kitesurfing - Family activities - Adventure travel - Road trips ## Want to talk? If you are leading an ambitious project - an early-stage startup to launch, a scale-up to structure, a SaaS product to industrialize - and you are looking for an Engineering Manager or a CTO to build the team, secure delivery, and carry the technical vision at the executive table, do not hesitate to contact me. **Contact me** ## My Personality Test Results Several psychometric assessments have shaped my self-understanding in depth. Detailed results are linked below. ### Core assessments **[MBTI / 16 Personalities](https://portfolio.josedacosta.net/en/about/personality-tests/mbti.md)** Provides fine-grained typing among 16 profiles, useful for quickly understanding operational preferences in teamwork, project management, autonomy, etc. Popular and easily understandable, it's a good introductory foundation. Main strengths: Clear typology (16 types) Usage: Quick profile, communication, career choices Duration: ~10 min - Cost: Free Official website: 16personalities.com/fr **[Big Five / OCEAN](https://portfolio.josedacosta.net/en/about/personality-tests/bigfive.md)** The Big Five (or OCEAN model) is not a single test but a theoretical framework in scientific psychology. It describes personality across five major dimensions: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Tools like the IPIP inventory or NEO PI-R are used to measure these traits quantitatively. Main strengths: Scientific nuance, quantitative Usage: Nuances, evolution, credible/methodological support Duration: ~7-12 min - Cost: Free Official website: BigFive.ly **[Enneagram](https://portfolio.josedacosta.net/en/about/personality-tests/enneagram.md)** Allows exploration of deep motivation, fears, and levers for personal evolution through 9 major archetypes. This psychodynamic approach perfectly complements the two previous models by exploring internal and relational dynamics. Main strengths: Motivation, fear management Usage: Values, internal motivation, self-coaching paths Duration: ~10 min - Cost: Free Official website: enneagram-personality.com/fr **[DISC](https://portfolio.josedacosta.net/en/about/personality-tests/disc.md)** Useful for understanding workplace behavior, communication, and team or hierarchy adaptation; the model is widely used in HR and coaching. Main strengths: Relational, communication Usage: Team adaptation, behavioral dynamics Duration: ~5 min - Cost: Free (Premium option) Official website: Truity.com/test/disc-personality-test ### Specialized assessments **[Leadership Styles](https://portfolio.josedacosta.net/en/about/personality-tests/leadership-styles.md)** Identifies preferred leadership approach and how one naturally guides and influences others in various situations. _Duration: ~20 min - 16personalities.com/specialized-tests/trait-leader_ **[Leadership Styles II](https://portfolio.josedacosta.net/en/about/personality-tests/leadership-styles-ii.md)** Reveals desire to be a leader and willingness to delegate power, showing how one balances authority and collaboration. _Duration: ~20 min - 16personalities.com/specialized-tests/trait-monarch_ **[Goal Orientation](https://portfolio.josedacosta.net/en/about/personality-tests/goal-orientation.md)** Identifies the underlying motivation felt when confronting challenges and which goal orientation most influences one's approach. _Duration: ~10 min - 16personalities.com/specialized-tests/trait-learner_ **[Coping Styles](https://portfolio.josedacosta.net/en/about/personality-tests/coping-styles.md)** Identifies dominant and secondary techniques for handling crisis among four primary ways to cope with challenging situations. _Duration: ~15 min - 16personalities.com/specialized-tests/trait-acceptor_ **[Career Values](https://portfolio.josedacosta.net/en/about/personality-tests/career-values.md)** Identifies what aspects matter most in one's job and reveals career options that align with core professional values. _Duration: ~20 min - 16personalities.com/specialized-tests/trait-virtuoso_ **[Dark & Light Side](https://portfolio.josedacosta.net/en/about/personality-tests/dark-light-side.md)** Provides an honest look at attitudes, exploring moral complexity and both positive and negative aspects of personality. _Duration: ~20 min - 16personalities.com/specialized-tests/trait-grey_ **[Optimism & Pessimism](https://portfolio.josedacosta.net/en/about/personality-tests/optimism-and-pessimism.md)** Measures levels of both optimism and pessimism through a novel approach, revealing how one views the world and future. _Duration: ~20 min - 16personalities.com/specialized-tests/trait-realist_ **[Locus of Control](https://portfolio.josedacosta.net/en/about/personality-tests/locus-of-control.md)** Reveals who or what one feels is responsible for life satisfaction, happiness, and fulfillment - whether one is in control of their destiny. _Duration: ~30 min - 16personalities.com/specialized-tests/trait-deliberate_ **[Job Preferences](https://portfolio.josedacosta.net/en/about/personality-tests/job-preferences.md)** Identifies which job fields fit best based on preferences, addressing one of the most important life decisions about making a living. _Duration: ~20 min - 16personalities.com/specialized-tests/job-preferences_ **[Academic Exploration](https://portfolio.josedacosta.net/en/about/personality-tests/academic-exploration.md)** Identifies what areas of study might suit one's personality and reveals which subjects might be most satisfying. _Duration: ~30 min - 16personalities.com/specialized-tests/academic-exploration_ **[Traveling Preferences](https://portfolio.josedacosta.net/en/about/personality-tests/traveling-preferences.md)** Reveals preferred choices when leaving home to discover the world, uncovering travel personality and style. _Duration: ~20 min - 16personalities.com/specialized-tests/trait-wanderer_ **[Entrepreneur Test](https://portfolio.josedacosta.net/en/about/personality-tests/entrepreneur-test.md)** Comprehensive assessment of entrepreneurial skills, personality traits, and motivations to identify the most suitable entrepreneur profile and areas for improvement. _Duration: ~18 min - centraltest.com_