Matthew Rossi

Lisbon, PortugalVol. I · No. VII · October 2026
Software engineer turning toward sustainable urban mobility

I grew up outside Detroit — a place built almost entirely around the car. The near-total absence of alternatives made the connection between transportation and daily life hard to ignore. That stuck with me, and eventually became a serious interest in how cities move people and what happens when they can't.

I spent thirteen years in software engineering, working across payments, financial services, and cloud infrastructure, and am now shifting focus to urban mobility.

Updated September 2026Matthew Rossi

I live in Lisbon, with five years as a Senior Software Engineer at Heroku (Salesforce) in New York now behind me.

I've just started the EIT Urban Mobility Master's Program (SUMT) — a two-year double degree, first at Técnico Lisboa here in Lisbon, then at UPC BarcelonaTech in Barcelona.

Denormalized by Design

22 min read

Moving to Portugal made me question why Americans carry the paperwork between systems that never agree. The US already connects identity records to enforce obligations. What would it take to connect them in service of the person?

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