João Matos

João co-initiated Hacking Heroes with Dominik Kościelak and was one of the project's principal leaders. Together, they created its central concept and educational model: a cross-border programme in which young people would learn programming through experimentation, problem-solving and teamwork. They defined what participants would learn, how the groups in Portugal and Poland would work together, and how the project would progress towards a shared international hackathon.

João drove the programme in Espinho, taught the Portuguese participant group, co-created the curriculum and the model for cross-border collaboration, and co-designed and led the hackathon in Porto.

João Matos is a software engineer with eight years of professional experience recorded in the 2016 project documents. His work focused on web development, often remotely, across projects with teams in Portugal, the United Kingdom and Switzerland. Before Hacking Heroes, he worked on web projects at IDG UK (now Foundry), including pcadvisor.co.uk and macworld.co.uk, and later worked at shopcade.com, where he managed a team of developers, designers and salespeople. At the time of Hacking Heroes, he was lead frontend developer at EF.com, responsible for team-building and researching technologies for responsive, user-friendly websites. He also had several years of experience teaching individual mathematics and computer science lessons to children aged 10 to 14, and was taking a course towards the Certificado de Competências Pedagógicas organised by the Instituto do Emprego e Formação Profissional in Portugal.

For current work, projects and ways to connect with João, use his LinkedIn profile.

inConnect with João on LinkedIn