José Manuel Pires

AI Engineer

ITSolution IntegratorC-level ExecutiveCTOSystem ArchitectBackend DeveloperSystem AnalystDevOpsProduct ManagerProject ManagerWeb Developer

My background is in industrial automation and IoT — building systems that connect physical hardware to cloud infrastructure, where things actually have to work. That foundation shaped how I approach software: reliability matters, complexity has to be managed, and the gap between a demo and a production system is where most things fail. Over the last few years I moved fully into AI and cloud-native engineering. At Certainly, a conversational AI platform, I've gone through most of the roles: Lead QA, Technical Product Manager, Software Engineer, and now Interim CTO. That progression wasn't planned, it happened because I kept being close to the problems that mattered most. As Interim CTO I define the AI strategy and technical roadmap, lead the engineering and data teams, and ship agentic AI features in production. I manage the full LLM lifecycle: integration, fine-tuning, token optimization, evaluation, deployment, alongside the cloud infrastructure that runs it all: AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, and a full observability stack. What I can help with: Designing and building LLM-powered systems that actually make it to production, RAG pipelines, agentic workflows, multi-model integrations. Defining AI strategy and architecture for teams that need technical direction without a full-time hire. Cloud-native infrastructure work: Kubernetes migrations, IaC, CI/CD, cost optimization. And if you need someone to sit between engineering and the business and make sure both sides are talking about the same thing, that's something I've been doing for a while. I work well with teams that are building something real and need someone who's done it before.