João de Sousa founded Bezirk after working as a senior expert on IoT consumer applications at Bosch. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor with the Institute for Software Research at Carnegie Mellon University. He obtained a PhD in Computer Science from CMU in 2005 and became an Assistant Professor at George Mason University before joining Bosch in 2012. Before coming to the United States, João worked for 10 years as a chief architect and department head in the financial industry in Lisbon, Portugal.