Optimization
Slow tiles, heavy bundles, jittery interactions — we audit your stack and bring map performance back into spec. Vector tile pipelines, style refactors, render budgets.
Geografa · est. 2005 · Portland, OR
Web mapping support at the ready
Twenty years of geospatial work — from environmental GIS, to building Mapbox's startup technical-support engineering team, to a long, ongoing list of small experiments in the open. We help teams ship maps that hold up under pressure.
01 · The work
A small studio that scales like a collective.
Geografa runs lean by default and assembles the right team from a trusted network of engineers, designers, and developers — under one P&E manager so support and continuity stay high-touch.
Custom map products
From a single embed to a full application — Mapbox GL, MapLibre, Three.js, vector tiles, custom geocoding, geofencing, 3D models. Delivered as code your team can own.
Strategy & advisory
Choosing a basemap provider, scoping a migration, hiring your first geo engineer. Twenty years of "I've seen this before" — applied to the decisions that matter most.
02 · Selected work
Maps in production, and a few in the wild.
A mix of client work and personal experiments — most of the experiments end up teaching us something we use the next time around.
FWC26 Travel Times
Isochrones to every World Cup 2026 host venue — by car, transit, and air — across the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.
Open project →Firefly Health · Nearby
A clinic locator and care-network explorer for a virtual-first primary-care provider — built to feel calm under load.
Open project →Boise Lights
Every streetlight in Boise mapped at night — a soft glow at city scale built from open infrastructure data.
Open project →03 · How we work
Geografa is committed to a customer- and client-centered approach — assembling just the right team for each project, then keeping the relationship close as it grows.
Most engagements start with a conversation, not a SOW. We listen first, then scope: what's already working, where the bottlenecks are, who on your team will own this after we hand it off.
From there, we tap a committed network of engineers, designers, and developers and assemble the smallest team that can ship the work well. Everything routes through one P&E manager so you get high-touch, consistent account support — no rotating contacts, no relearning your stack on every new ticket.
And we leave you the code, the docs, and a clear way to keep going without us.
— Rafa04 · Kind words
From the people we've worked alongside.
A few notes from former teammates at Mapbox — the kind of context that doesn't fit on a résumé.
“
In a fast-paced environment, he shined as an empathetic leader. Always ready to pair with a teammate or experiment with a new process to improve the team's workflow, Rafa leads by example.
Former Mapbox colleagueCustomer Solutions
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Rafa and I worked side-by-side helping Mapbox customers understand the product and work through technical problems. He's one of the most empathetic, encouraging, and relentlessly helpful people I've ever worked with.
Former Mapbox colleagueTechnical Support Engineering
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Not a day passes that I'm not amazed by Rafa's institutional knowledge of the Mapbox universe. He's a walking encyclopedia of our products and the history behind them — why they were built, what was unique about them, which challenges they helped users solve.
Former Mapbox colleagueProduct
05 · About
Twenty years of paying attention to maps.
Portland · OR
Rafa Gutierrez has spent the last two decades in geospatial — first as a GIS manager in environmental consulting, then helping build out Mapbox's startup technical-support engineering team during the years it grew from a small group into a global product.
Geografa is what he runs now: a focused dev shop for web mapping, with a roster of long-time collaborators on call when projects call for more hands.
2024 →GeografaFounder · web-mapping consultancy
2018 — 2024MapboxBuilt & led startup technical-support engineering
2005 — 2018Environmental consultingGIS management · field-to-data workflows
AlwaysMaps in the open40+ experiments in the archive
06 · Get in touch
Let's make a map.
Whether you're optimizing a stack you already have, scoping a new product, or just trying to figure out which basemap to use — drop a note. Most replies come within a day.