Yhensel Benítez
I'm Software Developer
About
Software developer with over 9 years of experience, specialized in backend development using PHP, Symfony, and databases like MySQL and MongoDB. Passionate about building robust systems, writing clean code, and following best practices in architecture, including DDD and automated testing. I work with agile methodologies and enjoy collaborating with cross-functional teams to deliver scalable and maintainable solutions.
Senior Backend Developer.
Hi, I’m Yhensel! By day I’m a software engineer, and by night you’ll probably find me lifting at CrossFit, hanging with friends, or walking my dog. I have a thing for solving tricky problems—sometimes even creating side projects just to see how far I can push an idea.
- Birthday: 11 Dec 1989
- City: Barcelona, Spain
- Age: 35
- Education: Certificate of Higher Education in Web Development
I like to work with a smile and bring positive energy into projects. Over the years, I’ve been lucky to take part in interesting projects, helping them grow in a way that’s both well-tested and maintainable. I enjoy sharing ideas and brainstorming with others to find the most suitable solution for any problem. Outside of work, I like meeting new people, learning from different perspectives, and keeping life full of challenges and good vibes.
Soft Skills
Discover my soft skills—the ways I communicate, collaborate, and solve problems that help me thrive in any team.
Skills
Check out my skills to see the tools and technologies I enjoy working with and have mastered over the years.
Resume
Explore my resume to see the projects I’ve worked on, the skills I’ve built, and the journey that brought me here.
Education
Degree in Computer Engineering
2025 - Present
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Barcelona, Spain
Degree in Computer Engineering
2013 - 2015
Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Barcelona, Spain
Certificate of Higher Education in Web Development
2013 - 2014
Stucom, Barcelona, Spain
Certificate of Higher Education in Network Computer Systems Management
2010 - 2012
Salesians Sarrià, Barcelona, Spain
Professional Experience
Senior Developer
Dec. 2023 - Present
Stay, Madrid, Spain (Remote from Barcelona)
- Design, develop, and maintain backend services, ensuring clean architecture and consistency through DDD.
- Integrate third-party systems and APIs (e.g., hotel chains in the 360 project, fast-booking features, loyalty programs, Wallet integration).
- Work with data pipelines and synchronization processes, particularly with Tinybird for real-time analytics, handling dimension tables and optimized schemas.
- Configure monitoring and observability using Grafana and logs (Loki/OpenSearch) to analyze system performance and set up alerts.
- Collaborate on infrastructure in a Kubernetes + AWS environment, simulating services with LocalStack when needed.
- Write and maintain tests with PHPUnit and Behat, using test patterns such as Object Mother and ensuring reliable API behavior.
- Participate in refactoring legacy code (e.g., Doctrine mappings, data model changes) and standardizing API responses for better maintainability.
- Investigate and propose solutions for technical challenges (e.g., failure handling in data sync processes, schema evolution, performance optimizations).
Senior Developer
Mar. 2023 - Dec. 2023
GoTrendier, Barcelona, Spain
Part of a 3-member team focused on search and product-related functionalities for a second-hand clothing platform with 7M+ products and ~2M users across Mexico and Colombia.
- Developed and maintained the search system and product-related features, ensuring scalability and performance in a platform handling millions of products.
- Built and managed a validation and moderation tool to ensure quality and compliance of user-uploaded products.
- Collaborated closely with the team to deliver features end-to-end, from requirement analysis to deployment.
- Contributed to the stability, growth, and user experience of one of the leading second-hand fashion marketplaces in Latin America.
Mid-Senior Developer
2018 - 2023
Zinio, Barcelona, Spain
Team of 3–5 people (2–4 developers + 1 PO), responsible for ingesting and processing magazines for the B2C business and major publishers such as Meredith (People, InStyle, Fitness, Food&Wine).
- Design, develop, and maintain backend services, ensuring clean architecture and consistency through DDD.
- Integrate third-party systems and APIs
- Write and maintain tests with PHPUnit and Behat, using test patterns such as Object Mother and ensuring reliable API behavior.
- Maintained and supported a large legacy system used by staff and publishers while contributing to the design and development of a new microservices-based platform.
- Implemented asynchronous communication between services using RabbitMQ to improve scalability and reliability.
- Integrated observability and monitoring tools such as Kibana, CloudWatch, and Sentry, configuring metrics and alerts to ensure system stability and proactive incident response.
- Collaborated with the Product Owner to analyze requirements, propose technical solutions, and estimate delivery effort based on value and complexity.
- Delivered features end-to-end: design, development, unit/integration/acceptance testing, and deployment to production.
Junior Developer
2017 - 2018
Atabix, Barcelona, Spain
Member of a team of 3 people, at Atabix we redesigned and created from scratch the entire internal management tool for 2theloo, a company dedicated to the management and maintenance of washbasins in large commercial areas. The web application is in charge of managing the collection of the stores, the employees and the general billing of the company.
Junior Developer
2016 - 2017
AT SISTEMAS, Jerez de la Frontera, Spain
We work remotely with a 3-month stay abroad. We developed a bridge application in order to automate the transfer of reservations and room rates between different hotels managed by the client’s system. The tool was in charge of receiving information in SOAP format and mapping it against a JSON API. We used systems like RabbitMQ for queuing and Memcache for managing the cache