Who am I?

I'm a simple person, a fan of technologies that make life easier and an enthusiast of the open source movement, Infrastructure as Code, DevOps, GitOps and Cloud Native. I believe that sharing knowledge is one of the most efficient paths to building a fairer, more coherent and more evolved society — I believe knowledge should be free and that everyone should have access to it.

I'm 45 years old (May 12th), I have two children (Bia and Artur), a calico cat (Tweet) and a golden retriever dog (Paçoca). I'm neurodivergent, diagnosed with traits of ADD and RSD. I was born in Campo Grande/MS, son of a father from Rio and a mother from the Pantanal, great-grandson of a Bolivian (Indigenous) great-grandmother. I have a deep respect for nature — I grew up in the Southern Pantanal, in the Corumbá/MS region. I value democracy and a fair, balanced society, focused on people and education. Until May 2025 I lived in Brasília/DF; I currently live in Dourados/MS, my parents' city.

What do I like?

I like quality music — MPB, bossa nova, choro, jazz, blues, classical and instrumental music, good classic rock, electronica (to work to) —, as well as literature, poetry and especially cinema and TV series. I enjoy geek/nerd culture, I'm a fan of animation, science fiction and Japanese culture (manga, anime). I practice Karate, I earned my black belt at the Hayashi school, Shito style — in Karate I get those moments away from technology, and it helps me keep my physical and mental health in check.

I've been on the internet since 1995. I used mIRC a lot and went to several IRC meetups in the 90s with my friend @lupatini — we were from the #Campo_Grande (MS) channel on the BrasNet network. I'm on Team Linux and open source, things I learned with @UlyssesAlmeida in the early 2000s. I like to write: I've been an IT blogger since 2003 and I still blog — I started on Drupal, went through Joomla, WordPress, Octopress, Hugo, Publii and today I write on WriteFreely, at bolha.blog. I've been in therapy for about 6 years and I recommend everyone take care of their mental health.

What do I dislike? Social inequality, homophobia, transphobia, racism, xenophobia, ableism, hate speech, anti-science speech and anti-vaccine speech.

My relationship with computers

I started with computers on MS-DOS 6.0 and my first graphical environment was Windows 3.1; I even worked with Windows NT and Novell systems before the 2000s. Between 95 and 97 I started doing text typing, business cards and party invitations — those were the first pieces of art I created on the computer and the first freelance jobs I did. I taught computer classes between 96 and 98, did computer maintenance and network installation (first with coaxial cable, then UTP) and developed static websites in HTML. Back then I was pretty good with Photoshop and Dreamweaver, things I learned with Mr. @lupatini.

Around 1999/2000 I discovered the Linux kernel and took my first steps with Slackware; in 2001 I discovered Red Hat; in 2003, Conectiva and Debian, the Open Source Initiative, the GNU project and the FSF — and I've been using Linux ever since. I used Conectiva a lot (a Brazilian distro inspired by Red Hat), took all the courses and became a Conectiva instructor in 2004. That's when I pivoted from Windows sysadmin to GNU/Linux sysadmin. I attended FISL several times (as an attendee and a speaker) and helped organize editions of FLISOL in MS. Being in the middle of the Brazilian free software movement between 2004 and 2010 shaped my career and matured me a lot as a person and citizen.

What do I use day to day? For personal computers I've used Apple since 2010 — I like the integration and standardization. Even so, I work with GNU/Linux daily on all my projects. My home network is a UniFi stack (switches, load balancer and mesh APs) that works very well.

My professional career

I'm a SysAdmin by trade — my first formal job was in 1998, as a junior network administrator (Novell/Windows NT). Today my focus is on open source technologies, DevOps culture, Cloud Native, GitOps and the application of efficient methods to execute projects. In recent years I've specialized in infrastructure automation (Infrastructure as Code) and in the study and application of DevOps culture — which I've been studying since 2012. I organized 2 DevOpsDays in Brasília (2016 and 2017) and for many years ran meetups on DevOps, IaC, Puppet, GitLab, Docker, Kubernetes and other topics.

From 2014 to 2018 I was a partner at INSTRUCT, a pioneer in DevOps and Infrastructure as Code in Brazil. In 2019 I founded JAC in Brasília, specialized in Kubernetes and CI/CD (still healthy and active). In 2021 I sold my share in JAC and founded NativeTrail.io, focused on Cloud Native. After that I worked at several companies outside Brazil to see how they did infrastructure there. Currently I work as a Platform Engineer at a Baremetal/BMC company, handling image automation and the BMC Tinkerbell provisioning environment.

Time in Government

I started working for the Federal Government in 2005, on the CASA BRASIL social project, as a TEC (Computing Specialist Technician), installing telecenters in the Brazilian countryside — I worked mostly in the interior of MS and MT. During this period I had contact with quilombola communities, fishing villages, landless settlements and Indigenous villages, helping bring the internet to the most remote corners of these states.

I moved to Brasília around 2008/2009. There I worked on IT projects at Radiobrás (now EBC), MDA, the Ministry of Communications (GESAC), DataPrev, Caixa, Banco do Brasil, Anatel, Infraero, the Ministry of Justice, RNP, the Ministry of Health, STJ and the GDF (Detran/DF) — all involving Linux and, from 2011 on, DevOps, Agile, IaC and, more recently, containers, Kubernetes and Cloud Native. One of the things I'm proud of was presenting, back in 2011, an infrastructure automation case with Puppet in the Federal Government — one of the first of its kind. I was one of the first people to talk about DevOps and IaC in Brazil and one of those who pushed this movement in the public sector. Of the latest projects, the most important ones were at the Ministry of Health and STJ, where we began the Cloud Native journey, standing up Kubernetes clusters and building delivery pipelines.

Working in the private sector

Between 2014 and 2015 I became a partner in a São Paulo company focused on IaC and DevOps and started working heavily in the private market. We served companies such as Itaú, Equinix and the Stock Exchange — having helped build the first version of Itaú's internal cloud was one of the great milestones of my career. Between 2019 and 2021 I returned to the private segment with the new Cloud Native-focused company, serving everyone from RNP to small and medium businesses, with a lot of OnPrem-to-Cloud migration using containers.

From 2021 onward I ventured beyond Brazil: I did projects for companies in Canada and later worked for an information security company in the US, helping sustain the infrastructure of a global SaaS that processed — at the time — 40 billion requests per day, as well as planning the migration of the global infrastructure to Cloud Native. In 2024 I returned to work in Brazil and continue to do so.

Some numbers

• I've given more than 150 talks in the last 10 years (never charged for any of them).
• I passed 19 international certifications.
• I took 75 technical courses focused on infrastructure.
• I attended more than 90 IT events in Brazil and the US.
• I've trained more than 500 people since 2010, in government and the private sector.
• I was a partner in 2 pioneering IT companies that remain active.
• I've been writing about IT on blogs since 2003.
• I organized 2 DevOpsDays in Brasília (2016 and 2017) and started two others (POA and GYN).
• I created and maintained at least 3 custom GNU/Linux distros for the Federal Government.
• I was invited by PUC to teach DevOps in a graduate program in 2025.

Want to chat? Get in touch.