As we continue to improve our user experience for our creators and their patrons, we wanted to give a behind-the-scenes look at the people building Patreon. In this series, you’ll meet the Mobile Team led by Shannon Ma.
Pedro Veloso is an Android engineer on the Mobile Team who joined Patreon after working for several startups, including Audible. We had a chance to sit down and learn more about Pedro.
Tell us three fun facts about yourself:
- I speak a few languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Chinese.
- I have lived in New York, Florida, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
- I have traveled around the world.
What excites you most about your role?
I’m part of the Mobile Team at Patreon, and that means I get to work at the center of what the company is doing. The work our team does every day directly impacts a significant portion of patrons and creators on the platform. Also, operating at scale in itself is interesting. The work we’re doing requires a level of craftsmanship and attention to details that is highly compelling to me.
What drew you to Patreon? Are there unique pursuits you’ve found here?
Coming from Audible, something that was very distinctive from the start and appeals to me is that Patreon is still in the early stages of its journey. The creator economy is an immense market and there’s so much opportunity for creative solutions and an eagerness to excel. I get a sense that I’m actively contributing to the definition of a new market segment, as opposed to focusing on more operational or smaller iterative contributions.
As a mobile engineer, what challenges do you enjoy the most?
The challenge that I enjoy the most is how rich and diverse the creators on the platform are, and what that means for us as we’re trying to serve them the best we can. You have visual artists that require a space where images don’t have to be bound by size constraints and where it is of the most importance to keep the original image quality intact. And then you have audio artists who might be musicians that want to organize their content as albums, or podcast creators whose content follows an episode-based approach, just to name a few. There are dozens of great experiences for us to build, each one with its intricate set of requirements, and there’s an incredible appetite to build them well.
How has your experience at Patreon shaped your career as an engineer?
There is a lot more to be learned than I realized. It has given me the opportunity to experience and participate in a lot of the conversations around defining the foundations for how a company can grow and operate at scale. There’s a sense that every decision matters. The whole process is by no means pre-defined and requires a lot of curiosity and active listening.
What types of lessons or growth opportunities have you experienced in your role?
As we mature as a company, I’ve already seen transformative changes that require us to shift how we do things. Adaptability and pragmatism are two skills that I have had to exercise and that I feel have grown over time. As for the future, given the way we operate, I see Patreon as a great place to collaborate with several other teams outside of the mobile domain, learn from them, and take on ownership of exciting new projects with novel technologies that I haven’t worked with before.
What do you enjoy most about working on the Mobile Team?
We’re at the foundational moment of the engineering Mobile Team. It’s still a small yet incredibly talented group of people. Taking into account that the past couple of years were mostly behind Zoom, there’s a surprising sense of camaraderie and playfulness that makes it a really fun and fulfilling place to work. I can’t wait to celebrate the wins with my teammates in person!
