Founding Engineer / Full-Stack

Manuel Benitez

About

Full-stack engineer with 7+ years shipping production software across fintech, web3, and AI. Most recently at Labrys, Australia's largest web3 consultancy, working on-site with distributed APAC client teams. Previously: tokenized music royalties at Coda Digital, multi-chain dApps at Rusty Robot, enterprise systems at IBM.

Experience

Software Engineer Sep 2025 - Feb 2026

LabrysBrisbane, AU

Contract engineer inside Australia's largest web3 consultancy, shipping production work across institutional staking, a self-custody DeFi platform, and token launches.

  • Built the staking flow and account dashboard for an institutional ETH and SOL staking platform handling thousands per client. Owned the multi-step staking flow end-to-end on the frontend, plus a dashboard surfacing staking positions, transaction history, and wallet activity, integrated against an existing backend.
  • Shipped frontend for L1 blockchain, the user-facing product, a self-custody DeFi platform covering trading, cross-chain bridging, yield, portfolio tracking, and an interactive quest system.
  • Solo-built and shipped a token launch for a client in under a month, end-to-end across frontend, contract integration, and go-live.
  • Worked on-site with distributed client teams across APAC time zones.
CPO & Co-Founder Apr 2024 - Dec 2025

Coda DigitalRemote

Web3 platform tokenizing music rights: ERC-1155 issuance, fiat + multi-token checkout, on-chain royalty distribution, secondary marketplace.

  • 1,000+ wallets onboarded, $10k+ USDC distributed to rights holders, ~$70k primary + secondary volume.
  • Integrated ~20 smart contracts end-to-end on the product side (ERC-1155, royalty splits, marketplace), paired with Stripe fiat rails and multi-token crypto checkout and wallet abstraction.
  • Led product and engineering from zero to live marketplace, hands-on across frontend, backend, payments, and contract integration.

Awards2nd place, Etherlink track · Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Coda Digital track · $70k+ in non-dilutive funding secured.

Web3 Developer & Co-Founder Dec 2023 - Sep 2025

Rusty Robot Country ClubRemote

NFT and token studio shipping across IOTA, Shimmer, and BASE.

  • Shipped 5-6 dApps across IOTA, Shimmer, and BASE; sold out an 11,111-NFT collection and launched a native token.
  • Product-side integration of NFT and token bridges (LayerZero), on-chain coin-toss and raffle flows, and a portfolio tracker, pairing contract interfaces with production-ready frontends.
  • Owned frontend, indexing, and go-live coordination; integrated contracts authored by the Solidity team.

Earlier Experience

Full-Stack Tutor, DevelhopeRemote May 2023 - Apr 2024

Mentored aspiring developers through a full-stack JavaScript bootcamp: fundamentals, project reviews, and interview prep.

Full-Stack Developer, Forty Eight Point OneRemote Dec 2022 - Feb 2023

Built interactive websites for the London studio's agency clients.

Full-Stack Developer, Tangle Labs Apr 2022 - Nov 2022

Full-stack development on digital identity products built on blockchain rails.

Frontend Developer, ARTFABRIK GmbHInnsbruck, AT Jun 2021 - Apr 2022

Built animated websites for studio clients; co-developed a government-funded educational game teaching kids about local flora and fauna for use in schools.

Jr. Full-Stack Developer, IBMBuenos Aires, AR Aug 2016 - Aug 2017

Migrated legacy C++ banking systems to modern web applications using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Java, and SQL.

Career break · travel and non-technical work abroad 2017 - 2021

Skills

Full Stack
TypeScript · React / Next.js · Node.js / NestJS · API design · MongoDB · queue-backed ingest & background jobs
Fintech & AI
Modern Treasury · Stripe · payment orchestration & reconciliation · LLM pipelines · document extraction with verification loops
Blockchain / Web3
ethers.js / wagmi / viem · EVM, IOTA, Shimmer, BASE · ERC-20 / 721 / 1155 · LayerZero bridges · wallet abstraction · DeFi primitives
Languages
Spanish (native) · English (professional)

Education

Informatics Engineering 2013 - 2017

4 years completed, USAL - Buenos Aires - Argentina