App maker spotlight: David Branco, director of technology

[Editor’s note: This is part of a series of articles about app makers, highlighting talented team members who embody the builder mindset at ArcTouch, and how they find creative new ways to apply the latest technology to our projects.]

When ArcTouch director of technology David Branco talks about great digital products, he doesn’t start with tech stacks. He talks about clarity — and perfume.

For years, David and his wife have collected and even created perfumes together. Every bottle has a story: a place they visited, a moment they shared, a feeling they want to remember. For him, a scent isn’t successful just because it smells nice. It has to be meaningful and memorable — something that stays with you.

David brings that same mindset to his work at ArcTouch. Over nearly seven years, he’s grown from team leader to director of technology. Today, he helps lead programs for key clients like Cirrus, partners closely with sales and delivery teams, and focuses on giving teams clarity about the problems they’re solving — so they can build products people truly love.

We sat down with David to talk about his journey, his unusual hobbies, and why he believes technology alone doesn’t make a great product.

About six months ago, I committed to getting healthier. I realized I wasn’t comfortable with the direction of my habits — especially thinking about my daughter and the future.

Since then, I’ve been using an app called Cal AI. You take a picture of your food, and it recognizes what’s on the plate, estimates calories, and tracks your meals. It’s simple and fits into my day. For me, it represents something bigger: technology that quietly supports the life I want to live instead of demanding my attention all the time.

Before I started my career in tech, I was fascinated by earth sciences. I dreamed of becoming a seismologist or volcanologist.

Studying tectonic plates and pressure taught me to look beneath the surface: to notice where pressure is building, how systems release it, and to anticipate what might happen next. Today, I use that same thinking when I’m looking at complex projects and organizations.

Music — and the ecosystem around it. Streaming platforms, audio engineering, recommendation algorithms… all of it. I use music to regulate my energy and stay focused. Spotify just told me my “music age” is 62, which probably means I like older music more than I thought. I’ll accept that.

It started when we noticed how many of our memories were tied to scents. Every place we traveled seemed to have a specific smell that would instantly take us back to a moment — a city, a hotel, a street, a feeling.

So we started collecting perfumes, and even creating our own. When we choose a perfume, we’re not just looking for something that smells good. We look for something that can transport us and carry a story. Otherwise, it’s just a pleasant scent with no purpose.

There’s a big parallel. When we build digital experiences, technology is just the medium. Features and functionality are important, but they’re not the outcome. A lovable product has to be memorable and something people connect with on an emotional level.

It’s like perfume: The scent is the medium, but the real value is in the feeling and memory it creates. In both cases, the craft is about designing something people feel, not just something they use. Engineering matters, but the experience is what stays with people.

“Think with clarity, especially when everything feels urgent.” This taught me that leadership isn’t about reacting faster. It’s about reducing noise and making decisions from a steady mind. In high‑pressure moments, with lots of competing priorities, my job is to bring psychological safety and clarity — not add more pressure.

My days are a mix of deep focus and context switching.

Some mornings, I’m in discovery or strategy calls with clients and our sales team, clarifying problems and outcomes before we talk about solutions. Other times, I’m working with managers and tech leads, reviewing roadmaps, unblocking decisions, or refining architectures to better match business goals.

I spend more time reading, writing, and talking than I do writing code: shaping proposals, reviewing docs, or stepping into tough conversations to lower the noise and bring clarity.

When I joined ArcTouch, I came in as a team lead — focused on delivery and mentoring engineers. It was very hands‑on and close to the code. Over time, I became more interested in how technology shapes outcomes for clients and for the company. That pushed me to think beyond a single platform or team.

Today, as director of technology, my role is about creating clarity across our delivery engines. I partner with teams, support managers, help shape new engagements, and think about long‑term direction. The evolution is really about scale: from one team to entire programs and a department.

Like many of our client partnerships, Cirrus first came to us with a specific challenge. I joined as one of the leads helping solve it, and later oversaw the project with my colleague Pedro Costa. We’ve spent a lot of time understanding their industry, company, and customers. This context shapes everything we do with them.

As the relationship has grown, I’ve grown with it. Initially, I was deeply focused on the details, defining architecture diagrams and doing code reviews. As our team scaled, my role has shifted to being more strategic to help them find ways of leveraging technology to exceed their customers' needs and expand their business.

I think the relationship has been successful because we’re flexible, predictable, and transparent. We work as one cohesive team - as true partners.

Working on my pilot’s license is a hobby that gives me a much deeper understanding of Cirrus users’ environment. When you’re in the flight deck, you see how critical timing is and how high the cognitive load can be. That changes how you think about the tools you’re asking pilots to use.

For example, when we were asked to build an app pilots would use during flight, I didn’t just think about the feature as an engineer, I thought about it as a potential user. I asked: How would this help? How could we improve it for pilots? That empathy adds an extra layer of responsibility to our decisions.

A rapid technology exploration project we did with HP. It was technically complex and cross‑platform, and required hardware, AI, and real‑time communications working together seamlessly. We started with a Discovery Workshop and delivered some working prototypes very quickly, leaning heavily on Vibe coding tools. 

Humor and directness. When projects get tense, my first goal is to lower the temperature in the room. Humor helps make the space feel human again. Directness helps lower the noise.

Under pressure, people don’t need more ambiguity — they need to feel safe and see a clear path forward. I’m not afraid to identify problems, simplify options, and say what needs to be done in a way that keeps us together as a team. I’m not there to be a dictator. I’m there with them.

So I try to remove fear, remove ambiguity, and remind everyone: We’re capable, we’re aligned, and we’re moving together.

First is AI — not just as a feature in products, but as a design and engineering partner. AI can help product development teams explore more options and move faster, but it has to be integrated thoughtfully into workflows. We're using AI in so many positive ways in our process at ArcTouch.

Second is MACH architecture. Companies need to try more and try faster without rewriting everything. A MACH approach lets you experiment and adapt without drowning in technical debt.

Above all, I’m excited about building experiences that feel personal and lovable, not just functional. That means balancing innovation with sustainability — moving quickly, but still caring deeply about long‑term quality.

Download our new book Human + AI: The new way to build apps that are lovable

I hope they remember that technology alone doesn’t make a great product. Clarity does. The clearer we are about the problem we’re solving, the outcome we want, and the experience we want to create, the better everything becomes — design, engineering, roadmaps, collaboration.

Great products are built by teams who reduce noise, make courageous decisions, and genuinely love what they’re creating. They aim for more than features that work. They aim for something people will love — the way a certain scent can bring back a memory years later.