# Davi Reis Vieira > Davi Reis Vieira — founding team, tech at Refer. Programming since 11, when Counter-Strike mods turned into a career. Computer Engineer (Insper), AWS CTO Fellow, Fundação Estudar Tech Fellow. - Full name: Davi Reis Vieira de Souza - Current role: Founding Team, Tech at Refer - Location: Palo Alto, California, United States - Website: https://davireis.com (readable version: https://davireis.com/about) - Email: davi@davireis.com - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davireisvieira - GitHub: https://github.com/DaviReisVieira ## About I started programming at 11 because I was bad at Counter-Strike. Instead of practicing, I wanted to know what was going on behind the game — and whether I could change it. That curiosity turned into reverse engineering, bug bounties, GTA roleplay servers and Flight Simulator add-ons I sold as a teenager, and it is still how I work: open the thing up, understand it, make it do something new. Today I'm on the founding team at Refer, building the technology that matches exceptional engineers with the AI companies shaping what comes next. ## Experience ### Founding Team, Tech at Refer Jun 2024 – Present · Palo Alto, California, United States At Refer, we connect Stanford's brightest engineers with the AI companies shaping the future. Building the technology that matches exceptional specialized talent with forward-thinking teams. ### Tech Fellow at Fundação Estudar 2024 – Present · Brazil Selected as a Tech Fellow of Fundação Estudar, a highly selective fellowship supporting high-potential Brazilian leaders in technology. ### Lead Developer at Stone Sep 2021 – Jul 2024 · São Paulo, Brazil Designed and developed multiple applications, enhancing system performance and user experience. Led the multicloud cost optimization team, managing resources across Google Cloud Platform, AWS, and Azure. ### CTO at CP Legal Claims Jan 2023 – Jun 2024 · Brazil Led the strategic planning and development of the technology division focused on the acquisition of judicial assets. Optimized legal workflows for search, summarization, and classification using GenAI, custom classification models, and LLMs. ### Ambassador at Brazilian Technion Society Mar 2021 – Jul 2024 · Brazil Represented and promoted the organization, building strong relationships with key stakeholders. Facilitated events and initiatives to support its mission and goals. ### Senior Technology Consultant at Insper Jr. Jul 2021 – Jan 2022 · São Paulo, Brazil Provided technical support and project management for various clients. Led educational initiatives, fostering a collaborative learning environment. ## Projects ### StackPort **See everything running in your AWS emulator.** An open-source browser for AWS resources across 35 services, working against LocalStack, MiniStack, Moto, or a real AWS account through one interface. Read and write — browse S3, invoke Lambdas, push SQS messages — with live updates over WebSockets, a CLI for CI pipelines, and guided lessons that run against your own emulator. - Status: Open source · 158 GitHub stars · 35k+ Docker pulls · MIT license - Tech: Python, FastAPI, React, TypeScript, Cloudscape, Docker - stackport.cloud: https://stackport.cloud/ - GitHub: https://github.com/DaviReisVieira/stackport ### MD Formatter **Readable Markdown and llms.txt, the moment you open them.** A browser extension that notices when a page is a Markdown document and renders it in place — the way a JSON formatter handles raw JSON. Built for the llms.txt era: an index renders as browsable link cards rather than a wall of bullets. No configuration, no tracking, and no network requests of its own. - Status: Live · Chrome Web Store - Tech: TypeScript, Manifest V3, markdown-it, DOMPurify, Shadow DOM - About MD Formatter: https://davireis.com/md-formatter - Add to Chrome: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/jhikgiggooiokohjghdcojppgpildepg - Privacy policy: https://davireis.com/md-formatter/privacy More repos and experiments live on GitHub: https://github.com/DaviReisVieira ## How I got here ### 2011 — Bad at Counter-Strike, curious about it I wanted to know how the game worked behind the scenes and whether I could change it. A year of modding taught me what a programming language was, how to alter a game's behavior and how to create my first items. ### Teens — Reverse engineering & bug bounty Kept going as a hobby, purely out of curiosity: learning to program properly and taking software apart to see how it worked. My first paid work was bug bounty. I loved security, but it felt like a tricky field to build a career in, so I kept following the curiosity. ### Teens — GTA roleplay servers & flight-sim add-ons Then I realized I could build things people wanted: I ran GTA roleplay servers and made add-ons and modifications for Microsoft Flight Simulator X — some of which I sold. That's where hobby code started becoming products. ### 2014–17 — Science olympiads Gold twice at the Brazilian Astronomy Olympiad and bronze at the Brazilian Physics Olympiad — the same itch, pointed at the universe instead of a game. ### 2020–24 — Computer Engineering at Insper Formal foundations in computer science, plus consulting for clients as a technology consultant at Insper Jr. ### 2021–24 — Lead Developer at Stone Built applications used at scale and led the multicloud cost-optimization team across Google Cloud, AWS and Azure. ### 2023–24 — CTO at CP Legal Claims Ran the technology behind acquiring judicial assets, using LLMs and custom classifiers to search, summarize and classify legal documents. ### 2024–now — Founding team at Refer Building the platform that connects Stanford's strongest engineers with the AI companies shaping the future. Selected as a Fundação Estudar Tech Fellow the same year. ### 2026 — AWS CTO Fellowship & open source Joined the AWS CTO Fellowship, and keep shipping tools I wish existed — StackPort and MD Formatter among them. ## Education ### Insper Instituto de Ensino e Pesquisa Bachelor's Degree, Computer Engineering · 2020 – 2024 Skills: Computer Science, Containerization ### Colégio Ari de Sá Cavalcante High School, General Studies · 2015 – 2019 ## Certifications and fellowships - **AWS CTO Fellowship** — Amazon Web Services (AWS), Jul 2026 (credential ID 1a1495c9-b15b-4f1a-b882-10bfdd3a6761) - **Understanding Your Google Cloud Costs** — Coursera, Apr 2022 (https://coursera.org/verify/69AMD8QKCFN8) - **Valuation e Precificação de Ativos** — Suno Research, Aug 2021 - **AI Text Annotation with Watson Knowledge Studio & Integrated APIs** — IBM, Oct 2020 - **Data Science & Machine Learning Deployment with Jupyter & Watson ML** — IBM, Oct 2020 ## Awards - **Bronze Medal - Brazilian Physics Olympiad 2017** — OBF, Apr 2018. Bronze Medal at the Brazilian Physics Olympiad in 2017 - **Gold Medal - Brazilian Astronomy Olympiad 2017** — OBA, Oct 2017. Gold Medal at the Brazilian Astronomy and Astronautics Olympiad. Participant in IOAA and OLAA selection. - **Gold Medal - Brazilian Astronomy Olympiad 2014** — OBA, Oct 2014. Gold Medal at the Brazilian Astronomy and Astronautics Olympiad in 2014. - **Bronze Medal - Brazilian Physics Olympiad 2014** — OBF, Jul 2015. Bronze Medal at the Brazilian Physics Olympiad in 2014. - **12th Place - Ceará Science Olympiad 2015** — OCC, Nov 2015. 12th place in the XXIII Ceará Science Olympiad in 2015 ## Logbook Notes on what I build and like. All entries: https://davireis.com/blog ### I Built an Open-Source AWS Resource Browser Because I Was Tired of Running CLI Commands May 5, 2026 · https://davireis.com/blog/stackport-open-source-aws-resource-browser (Markdown: https://davireis.com/blog/stackport-open-source-aws-resource-browser.md) How a monorepo migration at Refer, a pile of aws --endpoint-url commands and a PR to MiniStack turned into StackPort — a visual browser for LocalStack, MiniStack, Moto and real AWS. ## Contact Email davi@davireis.com, or find me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/davireisvieira) and [GitHub](https://github.com/DaviReisVieira).