About

Junior Grao

Engineering leader, AI practitioner, builder of teams.

I've spent the last two decades architecting cloud-native systems and growing the engineering teams that build them — from Petrobras in the early 2000s to CTO roles and, today, leading 30+ senior engineers as a Lead Software Engineer Manager at Evolve, where our work has contributed to a 400% profit increase over four years.

My focus now is bringing that same enterprise-grade rigor — Zero Trust, IaC, modern CI/CD, observability, cost discipline — to small and medium businesses that need to adopt AI without burning a year of runway figuring out what works.

I'm based in Orlando, FL and work with clients across the Americas and Europe in English, Portuguese, and Spanish.

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Experience

Two decades shipping mission-critical systems.

  1. Lead Software Engineer Manager

    2021 — Present

    Evolve

    Led 30+ senior engineers across AI, microservices, and platform teams. Delivered cloud-native solutions on AWS and Azure that contributed to a 400% profit increase over four years. Built Zero Trust CI/CD with Nullstone, Docker, Kubernetes and Terraform.

  2. Chief Technology Officer

    Previous

    Rio

    Owned end-to-end technology strategy and execution: architecture, hiring, security, and roadmap. Scaled the platform and the team while keeping operations resilient.

  3. Engineering Leadership Roles

    2007 — 2021

    Various

    Architect, tech lead, and engineering manager roles across cloud, data, and platform initiatives. Drove modernization, automation, and reliability for mission-critical systems.

  4. Full Stack Developer

    2004 — 2007

    Petrobras

    Built and maintained robust software applications with Java, .NET, ASP, SQL Server, and Entity Framework — delivering scalable, secure, high-performance solutions.

Credentials

Education & certifications

Education

  • Postgraduate Specialization in Digital Design
    INFNET2010 — 2011
  • Bachelor, Computer Information Systems
    UNIGRANRIO2002 — 2006
  • Computer Technician, Information Technology
    Colégio Flama1999 — 2002

Certifications

  • Microsoft Azure AI Essentials Professional Certificate
  • ServiceNow IT Leadership Professional Certificate
  • Program Management for IT Professionals
  • Introduction to IT Architecture
  • Artificial Intelligence Foundations: Machine Learning
  • Building High-Throughput Data Microservices
  • Succeeding as a First-Time Tech Manager