Rafael Chacón is a seasoned software engineer with 17 years of experience building scalable backend systems and databases, now a founding engineer at Multigres based in New York. He has held senior infrastructure and staff engineering roles at Slack and Figma, driving reliability and large-scale service improvements. Rafael’s background spans API design, microservices, containerization, and database clustering—he contributed to Vitess, a well-known MySQL clustering project, and enhanced a Go-based SQL parser on GitHub. Comfortable both in hands-on coding and system design, he has led teams at consumer and enterprise companies including Under Armour and MyFitnessPal. His academic focus on education technology and media informs a pragmatic, user-centered approach to engineering. He combines deep backend expertise with a track record of improving database robustness and developer experience.
17 years of coding experience
15 years of employment as a software developer
Mastreado em Ciências da Educação Education Engineering Education Managment, Mastreado em Ciências da Educação Education Engineering Education Managment at University of Lisbon
Ingénierie des Médias pour l’Éducation Education Engineering, Ingénierie des Médias pour l’Éducation Education Engineering at Université de Poitiers
Computer Engineer Computer Science, Computer Engineer Computer Science at Universidad Simón Bolívar
Master en Tecnologías Educativas Education and Technology, Master en Tecnologías Educativas Education and Technology at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia - U.N.E.D.
Vitess is a database clustering system for horizontal scaling of MySQL.
Role in this project:
Backend & Database Engineer
Contributions:97 reviews, 483 commits, 204 PRs in 4 years 3 months
Contributions summary:Rafael primarily focused on improving the database and backend aspects of the Vitess project. The contributions involve fixing database tests, modifying database configuration refresh logic, and implementing and testing a feature for supporting appDebug database connections. The user's work resulted in improvements to the robustness of the database connectivity.
Contributions summary:Rafael primarily contributed to enhancing the SQL parser implemented in Go. Their work involved adding support for new SQL features, specifically `TRUNCATE`, and improving the parser's handling of comments in SQL statements. The user also integrated tests for the executor engine and addressed various code quality issues, such as fixing typos and improving comments for clarity. Furthermore, the user contributed to adding directives for features like skipping the query plan cache.
golangsql-parsersqlparser
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Rafael Chacón - Founding Engineer Multigres at Supabase