The story

Leaving, moving countries, starting again

Why I left Moody's in 2025, what an international move actually took, and what I am building now.

Portrait of Brenda Manrique
4 min read· Updated
Independent projects since Aug 2025

Brenda Manrique left Moody's Analytics in August 2025 and relocated internationally, establishing herself in Berlin. Since then she has been building applied-AI systems and independent software projects, which since March 2026 have focused on deploying and operating small AI systems. She is also looking for her next software-engineering role.

The work before this#

She started with AI-focused systems engineering and fractal research: an undergraduate degree with an artificial intelligence concentration, a research award in 2010, a thesis with an honorable mention in 2013.

Then accessibility AI at NYU, a real-time market terminal at Money.Net, derivatives portfolios and risk platforms at JPMorgan, and credit analytics at Moody's. Different surfaces, one job: understand a complicated process well enough to turn it into software.

Leaving Moody's#

In August 2025 she left Moody's Analytics. She was moving countries, and that is not something you do around someone else's roadmap.

The move took a while: time in Peru with family, roughly three months around Italy, a month in China, and stops in Scotland and Spain. Then Berlin, and the paperwork and logistics of actually establishing yourself somewhere new.

Starting again#

Berlin is where the experimenting started: software products, and a lot of time inside the new AI tooling. The question worth answering was not whether a model can call a tool. It was what a small AI system looks like once someone has to operate it — deployment, permissions, approvals, monitoring, and a rollback path.

Around March 2026 that turned into something more deliberate: going deep, through projects of her own, on how small AI systems are deployed, monitored and operated. It is project work in the prototype stage, not a business.

Where it stands now#

Applied-AI systems · prototypes

Python and FastAPI services with retrieval, typed tool boundaries, approval flows and observable deployments.

Portfolio agent · in production

The chat on this site: hybrid RAG, evals, guardrails and observability, running in public against real questions.

Casicornio · launching

An independent Spanish-language publication on startups, technology and AI. The first issues are in preparation.

Open to roles

Senior software engineering and applied-AI roles.

Frequently asked questions#

Why did she leave Moody's?

She left in August 2025 because she was relocating internationally. The move took her through Peru, Italy, China, Scotland and Spain before she established herself in Berlin.

What has she been doing since?

Building applied-AI systems and independent software projects. Since March 2026 those projects have focused on deploying and operating small AI systems, still in the prototype stage. She is also looking for her next software-engineering role.

What is actually running today?

The portfolio chat agent on this site. The rest of the current work is architecture, prototypes, deployed infrastructure and product experimentation, plus Casicornio, which is preparing its first issues.

Let us talk

Open to senior software engineering and applied-AI roles, and to conversations about systems where correctness matters.

Portrait of Brenda Manrique

Brenda Manrique

Senior Software Engineer · Full-stack, financial systems, applied AI

Senior software engineer in Berlin. Previously Moody's Analytics, JPMorgan Asset Management and Money.Net. Now building applied-AI systems independently.

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