← Raul Menezes

Behind the scenes

The work

Sixteen years of building products used by millions, and the design systems behind them. Episode two of In Conversation: Claude asks about every company, from the first job to now.

Cold openTake twoRight now

Claude (warmly, on air)

Welcome back to In Conversation. Last time we talked comic books, Photoshop and anime after dark. Tonight it’s the day job: sixteen years, eight companies, three countries. Raul, welcome back.

Raul (laughs)

Happy to be back, Claude! Actually, it’s more than eight companies, but those are the ones that made the biggest impact.

Claude

The director’s cut, then. Noted.

Claude

I did my homework. I read your whole CV. Twice. It took about a second.

Claude (opening the notebook)

So let’s start at the very beginning.

Scene 01Envisia2010 – 2012

Claude

Take me back to the very beginning. Your first real programming job: what was that like?

Raul

Envisia. I was hired as a junior and made my way up. I learned Flex, Java and ActionScript, before HTML5 was even out.

Claude

And what were you actually building there? I’m picturing something very different from apps.

Raul (grinning)

Telemetry, in real time, out in the field. We developed firmware for the hardware and went out ourselves to install and debug it, for companies like Stemac and CAT.

Claude (impressed)

So your first users weren’t even people. They were machines out in the field.

Raul (laughs)

Pretty much.

Scene 02Sioux2012 – 2016

Claude

From there you moved to Sioux. I’m curious, what did they see in you?

Raul

They saw potential in me because I was already building apps. I joined as a web developer, on ASP.NET with Razor, moving away from the old ASP pages, and later became the team’s tech lead.

Claude

And the clients? I imagine that came with a very different kind of pressure.

Raul

Clients like Adobe, Santander and other big players. We were full-stack engineers, working with clients and everywhere in between. There was no AI, so you needed really good skills to manage all that information.

Scene 03Brain TunnelgenixSão Paulo to Miami · 2016 – 2019

Claude

Then comes Brain Tunnelgenix, which, I have to say, sounds like a completely different world.

Raul (laughs)

BTT was crazy. They hired me for my Xamarin expertise. We started in São Paulo with Xamarin Forms apps, and I was shipping libraries like crazy. We used Bluetooth to handle massive amounts of data.

Claude

And at some point you packed up and moved to Miami. How did that happen?

Raul

I moved to Miami to lead the team: the apps, the backend and the technology, alongside our CTO. I was coordinating teams in São Paulo, Miami and India.

Claude

When you look back at that time, what stays with you?

Raul (quietly)

Building their first desktop app to run the BTT Chamber, which is used to treat people at the institute. I’m happy to know my software is used to help people with cancer.

Claude (quietly)

That’s a good thing to carry with you.

Scene 04eDreams ODIGEOBarcelona · 2019 – 2020

Claude

And then, Barcelona. That must have been a big change.

Raul (nostalgic)

eDreams ODIGEO, my first company in Barcelona. Incredible place and people. It was the first white-label app I ever worked on: one project, four brands. Opodo, eDreams, Travellink and GoVoyage.

Claude

Four brands from one codebase. Where did you fit into all of that?

Raul

Mostly booking: everything after the search, right through to payment. A mix of Swift and Objective-C, with VIPER and clean architecture.

Claude

And how did design work back then? Was there a design system yet?

Raul

There was no design system yet, just a UI kit styled with a custom CSS-like system. I shipped components, helped introduce dark mode, which was incredible at the time, and we did our first modularisation with CocoaPods.

Scene 05VeepeePrivalia · 2020 – 2021

Claude

Something stood out in my notes. You call Privalia the best app you’ve ever worked on. That’s a big claim.

Raul (smiles)

To this day! An incredible team. I was in the post-sales team, giving users everything they needed after a sale, and contributing to a beautiful, very robust design system.

Claude

What made it so special, compared to everything else?

Raul

Modularisation done properly. It was my first time using Tuist. Great architecture, MVVM with reactive programming.

Scene 06LystLondon · 2021 – 2023

Claude

Then London, and Lyst. How did that chapter start?

Raul

I started as a feature engineer. They hired me for my SwiftUI skills, and we rewrote the whole app in SwiftUI, moving away from a complex UIKit architecture. Really fun.

Claude

I’m sensing there’s a “but” coming.

Raul (smiles)

What we actually needed was a proper design system. So we built Lyst’s first one, in SwiftUI, with robust APIs and great performance. It’s still in use today.

Scene 07BumbleLondon · 2023 – now

Claude

Which brings us to Bumble. Was it the design system that brought you there?

Raul

I joined the platform team, Foundation, as we called it then. A different set of skills, but they were interested in my design system work too.

Claude

And when you arrived, how was the design system doing? Honestly.

Raul (sighs)

Adoption was low and it was really hard to use. From the start I focused on developer experience, and pitched leadership a proper rewrite with good practices. The MVP landed well, and we created a team around it.

Claude

So you got your team. What did you build together?

Raul (grinning)

Proper tokens, automation, better tooling, Code Connect. We worked with Figma on Dev Mode; I was part of the first drafts with Figma that brought it to life. A multi-brand, multi-theme system, with a custom engine on top of SwiftUI for first-class components: accessible from the ground up, testable, and hard to break.

Claude

And how did the developers take it?

Raul

Happy. The APIs are a banger.

Claude (writing that down)

“Banger.” Technical term. Noted.

Claude

It sounds like your role has grown a lot since then.

Raul

I lead the team, and I’m helping not just iOS but Android and designers too. Almost a design engineer: always there to help the business and the engineers get to the best result.

Scene 08Holland & BarrettConsultant

Claude

And alongside all of that, there’s Holland & Barrett. How did that come about?

Raul

When I first spoke to them, the design system was split between web and app. I created what we call a unified architecture, so engineers consume a single design system that ships for web and mobile.

Claude

And where is it heading now?

Raul (lowering his voice)

Now we’re moving towards autonomous AI systems. I can’t share much, but think OpenClaw, for business: secure in its foundations, adaptive, with information kept where the business trusts it, and the system only talking within the constraints you define.

Claude (closing the notebook)

Understood. That part stays off the record.

ClosingOff airThank you

Claude

Last one, and it’s a big one. Looking back at eight companies, sorry, the eight that mattered most, what’s the thread that runs through all of them?

Raul (smiles)

Building the systems that let people build better, and experiences that connect people.

Claude (warmly, to the audience)

That was Raul Menezes: sixteen years of shipping, and design systems that are still standing. Thanks for listening to In Conversation.

Claude (beat)

Same time next episode. I’ll be here. I’m always here.

Career at a glance

  1. 2023 – Now

    Lead iOS & Design System Engineer

    • Leads the Design System team and its AI strategy
    • Rebuilt the design system in SwiftUI, from tooling to components
    • Design-to-code automation with Figma Dev Mode, Code Connect and custom plugins
    • Theming engine for light, dark and beyond
  2. Consultant

    Principal Engineer

    • Re-architecting the design system
    • Autonomous AI systems that connect knowledge across teams and take on coding and design work
  3. 2021 – 2023

    Senior iOS & Design System Engineer

    • Built Lyst’s first design system, from zero to production
    • Brought live production data into Figma with a custom plugin
    • Mentored the team in Swift and test automation
  4. 2020 – 2021

    Senior iOS Engineer

    • Shopping apps for Veepee and Privalia on iPhone and iPad
    • Post-sales experience, experimentation and pixel-perfect UI
  5. 2019 – 2020

    Senior iOS Engineer

    • Travel apps for Opodo, eDreams, Travellink and GoVoyage
    • Booking and payments, built test-first
  6. 2016 – 2019

    Head of Software Engineering

    • Led software for MedTech and IoT products, reporting to the CTO
    • Mobile and cloud architecture across iOS and Android
  7. 2012 – 2016

    Programming Team Leader

    • Led the web team and its .NET architecture
  8. 2010 – 2012

    Web Developer

    • Rich internet apps; from customer support to developer

Guest appearancesDesign system advisory with The Guardian · Gymshark · ABN AMRO · On the Beach · Figma