Years in software, from engineer to CTO
Hiberus → IdoniaHealth → Oniria
Open to engineering leadership roles
Co-Founder & CTO · Technology Leader
Cristina Berrocal
I lead technology and the teams that build it — from strategy and architecture to delivery — without losing touch with the code. Eight years from engineer to co-founder and CTO.
Away from the keyboard I'm president of the Aragonese Judo Federation. The tatami teaches what production does: learning to fall is part of the method.
What I lead hover a layertap a layer
- 01 Strategy Roadmaps, funding and the decisions that set direction. RoadmapsPublic fundingStakeholders
- 02 Teams Mentoring, code review and delivery rhythm — remote or on site. MentoringCode reviewRemote teams
- 03 Architecture APIs, services and the interfaces built on top of them. TypeScriptReactNode.jsMicroservices
- 04 Delivery Cloud, pipelines and keeping it running in production. AWSGCPAzureDockerCI/CD
01 Signals
The short version
Eight years from writing the code to leading the people and the strategy behind it — and never more than one step from the terminal.
Years as co-founder & CTO
Oniria Studios · still hands-on
Years directing technology at a national federation
RFEJYDA · NextGenerationEU
CTO roles, one of them fully remote
Oniria Studios · TennisDNA (USA)
02 What I do
Lead, build, stay technical
Open any card to see what the work actually involves — no buzzwords, just the parts I'm accountable for.
Setting direction and making it real: strategy, roadmaps and the architecture decisions that follow from them.
- Technology strategy and roadmaps as co-founder & CTO of Oniria Studios and CTO of TennisDNA
- Technical ownership of NextGenerationEU and CSD-funded programmes at RFEJYDA, from specification to reporting
- Architecture and integration decisions for multi-location, multi-stakeholder platforms
StrategyRoadmapsPublic fundingArchitectureStakeholders
Teams that ship: I mentor, review and set the standard from inside the repository, not above it.
- Mentoring developers and running code review as co-founder & CTO
- Coordinating multidisciplinary teams — coaches, physiotherapists, data engineers and designers — at RFEJYDA
- Leading fully remote, across time zones, as CTO of a US company
MentoringCode reviewRemote teamsDeliveryMultidisciplinary
Why the leadership works: I can still design the API, read the diff and debug the deploy.
- Full-stack TypeScript — React, Next.js, Angular, Node.js — plus Python
- Cloud delivery on AWS, GCP and Azure with Docker and CI/CD
- LLM integration and explainable AI, with a PhD that keeps me sceptical of what models can do
TypeScriptReactNode.jsAWS · GCP · AzureCI/CDLLMs
03 Selected work
Where I've led
Two CTO roles, a national federation and a health-tech frontend team — across sport, health and client products.
01 2022 — present 02 2019 — present 03 2024 — 2026 04 2021 — 2022
Oniria Studios
Co-Founder & CTO Technology strategy, the engineering team and end-to-end delivery of cloud-native products for clients — while staying hands-on in the code. TypeScriptNode.jsMicroservicesCloudRFEJYDA
Director of Innovation & Technology Technical owner of NextGenerationEU and CSD-funded digitalisation: athlete monitoring and performance platforms, built and run end to end. PlatformDataEU ProjectsTennisDNA
CTO — Virginia, USA (remote) Technical lead for the digital platform of a tennis school across 11 locations: architecture, delivery and integrations. ArchitectureIntegrationsRemoteIdoniaHealth
Frontend Tech Lead — Cloud Medical Imaging Frontend architecture for cloud-based DICOM viewers: API integration, performance at scale, GDPR and clinical data security. ReactPerformanceHealth Tech04 How I work
Three rules I don't bend
The habits behind the teams I've led and the systems they still run.
Own the whole cycle
The engineer who designs the API should also feel the deploy, the failing test and the person on the other side of the screen.
Lead without leaving the code
I mentor, review and set direction — from inside the repository. Decisions made far from the codebase tend to cost the team later.
If it can’t explain itself, it doesn’t ship
From explainable AI research to production systems: opacity is a bug. Logs, metrics and model explanations are part of the feature.
05 Writing
Notes from the work
Technology leadership, sport tech and explainable AI — written from inside the organisations I work with.
Explainable AI in Sports Management: From the Lab to the Federation
The hardest part of bringing AI into sport isn’t the model — it’s trust.
ReadDigital Transformation Beyond the Buzzword
What it actually means to modernise legacy processes, from the inside.
ReadTechnology Leadership: Building Teams That Actually Ship
Why the best technical leads are translators — and still write code.
Read Column Aragón Compite · Tribuna de Opinión
Caer, iterar, levantarse
I also write an opinion column on technology, sport and the discipline both of them demand — where judo and engineering turn out to teach the same lesson. In Spanish.
Read the column Talk GEDA Aragón · Desayunos de Trabajo
Artificial intelligence applied to sports management
Speaker and workshop lead, with Carlos Castro. AI fundamentals, data science and cybersecurity for sports managers, with hands-on workshops using tools such as Claude, NotebookLM and Gamma on real cases from facilities and events.
See talks & workshops06 Contact
Looking for my next leadership role
Engineering management and executive technology roles — Engineering Manager, Head of Engineering, Director of Technology or CTO.