Victor Fernandes Spent 7 Years Automating Power Plants. Now He Builds Data Platforms.

Victor Fernandes is a data platform engineer from Fortaleza, Brazil — and his path to get there is unlike anything I've heard before. Seven and a half years automating power plants and steel factories, then a single phone call in 2021 that pulled him into the data world. We talk about what it's like building for U.S. teams from Northeast Brazil, the cultural shock of his first American standup, and how he thinks about AI on production systems. You'll come away with a very different picture of what Brazilian engineering talent actually looks like up close.

🎧 Host | Brian Samson – Founder of 💻 Plugg Technologies
🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/briansamson/

🎙️ Sponsored by Plugg Technologies – Connecting U.S. companies with top-tier software developers across Latin America.
🌐 https://www.plugg.tech

🌎 Follow The Nearshore Cafe Podcast
🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6KYcgpmN77fJm6B25469B8
🎙️ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-nearshore-cafe/id1775525954
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-nearshore-cafe
🌐 Website: https://www.nearshorecafepodcast.com
🔗 All links: https://linktr.ee/nearshorecafepodcast

Transcript

Welcome, Sponsor, And Guest

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Welcome to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Sampson. On this podcast, we talk about all things near shoring. And one of the most exciting things is when we talk to engineers doing real work like we're going to on this show today. Before I introduce our guest, let me thank our sponsor, Plug Technologies, P-L-U-G-G. Great way to connect talent from all over Latin America to growing U.S. companies. Victor Fernandez, we are so happy to have you. A real life, amazing engineer based in Brazil. Thanks so much for joining. So tell us just a little bit about what you're doing today, just a little bit, and then we'll rewind the clock and go through your career journey. What are you doing today?

SPEAKER_00 1:04

I'm a data platform engineer. I've been doing data platform engineering for the last six years. I work helping other teams doing their stuff. I'm I'm working developing new features for the engineers. So I'm a I'm a computer engineer. I have a bachelor in there.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

I think that's a good good endpoint for us to build into.

Growing Up In Fortaleza

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Well, maybe let's just start off with the basics.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Where did you grow up? I grew up here uh in Fortaleza, I I was not born here. I was born in South Brazil. Yeah, I'm in northeast Brazil, far away from I I was born. Um here's a really nice city to to live because we have a stable uh weather, but it's sunny all over the year. So yeah, I I grew up here. I've already traveled for other uh places, but I like to be here. I like to have grown here.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Yeah. And you know, one of the things I think is really interesting about Brazil is it has had a lot of different cultures and immigrants, you know, come from all over the world. Um, you know, huge Japanese population and Sao Paulo and so on and so forth. Um were your were your parents born in Brazil? They were born in Brazil.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

My grandparents, uh they and grandgrandparents, they came from other from came from Italy. I've not met him, but I know that my family came from immigrants.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Yeah, amazing, amazing. Yeah, I think um uh Brazil is is really famous for that as a melting pot of really, really, you know, amazing backgrounds that have built uh an amazing

Curiosity, Computers, And Early Games

SPEAKER_01 2:47

country. Now, were you always uh a technical guy? Were you always kind of tinkering and putting stuff yes, yes, I was thinking about that the other day.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Uh I was the guy that break the stuff to see how they work, but I was never uh able to put it back uh to work again. So, yes, I grew up like this. Uh I've I've always been curious. Um, and I remember when my brother bought our first computer, I got fascinated about that. I think since I was five or six, something like that. I was always fascinated about computers and how it works. My brother used to scripting a little, now he's a lawyer, but I think he introduced me in some way of the about like the engineering stuff, computer engineering stuff. So I really like that since I was a kid.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Do you remember um the model of your very first computer?

SPEAKER_00 3:38

Phase six, two, something like that. A hundred. But look, I was five or six. My brother was 13, he was seven years old older than me. So I barely remember the the model.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Yeah, but you uh I mean, um big big moment, I think, in your life, you know, probably is you.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Yeah, totally. I remember when 206 megabytes of RAM was too much, and I couldn't open like two browser screens, and when I upgraded that I was able to run some stuff. I was, oh my god, that's perfect today. There's nothing. So it's funny to think about this.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

That's so funny. Growing up in your in your neighborhood, did you meet other other kids that also shared an interest in computers and coding?

SPEAKER_00 4:24

Yeah, mainly from school. Uh I was I was like uh I wasn't new a lot of people, but I I got some closer friends and not some it was a fewer friends. Uh but they all used to like to play games in computers, like RPGs and board games. Like computer stuff, like to do as well. So yeah, I I grew up with this kind of people, which is I really enjoyed.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Yeah. And what what were some of the um early computer games that you used to play with your friends?

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Tibia. I love I played a lot of tibia, Ragnarok, Gunbound, Need for Speed Underground. I remember when the first time I could turn in my car, oh my god, that was amazing. I have a lot of great experience in remembering. I used to go to a friend's house. I at the time I was I had I didn't I didn't get uh cable internet. I got after midnight after and a Friday and Saturdays after two. I don't know if where you live was like that, but here uh I had that kind of problem. My my I remember my my friend having a good internet. We played gumball for 24 hours free. Oh my god, that was amazing. I read live stream in front of the computer, just stopping to go had good times in my childhood.

Learning English Through Gaming

SPEAKER_00 5:48

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

And then how about uh English? When did you first start to to practice that and learn that?

SPEAKER_00 5:53

I think with games, like for sure, because I used to play Pokemon on the Game Boy, and I like you I know today that we have to read stuff to understand what to do in the Pokemon, but I wasn't able to understand what it it was saying. So I I remember trying to go to the dictionary and see the words, what they were meaning, and I think that it helped me a lot. At the time there was not not a lot of translations to Portuguese for the game, so I had to learn what everything was saying, and I think that helped me a lot. Then I went to like when I was 15, I did a course uh English, so which helped me a lot. In the school, we had also classes, English classes. So putting all this together, I think it made a good base for what I know today.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

I think what you brought up is really interesting because you know, we um, you know, growing up, like we all kind of take a language in high school, secondary school, but you had a you had a real reason to do it, and that was too, you know, I remember like totally, totally.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

And I used to play one game called Bristol Tao, and the best updates came from the Korean server. I tried to play uh to learn Korean. Today I know the how to speak, but I don't know what what I'm reading, what I'm saying. I just know how to pronounce the the symbols, but I'm trying to learn that the Net was hard.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

That's so fun.

From Automation Engineer To Data

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Uh okay, so did you go right into platform engineering? So you studied computer science and straight away, or tell us more about your career.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

No, no, not and that's why because when I was in the graduation, this data world was not a thing. It was still like um this data is a new uh oil, is was kind of uh something that we used to hurt. But I I I grew up, like I graduated computer engineer, but my first work, and I worked for that for like seven and a half years, was like an automation engineer. I used to work in power plants, factories, commercial buildings, and I what my work there was to automate some machines, some machinery, and adapting that machinery to safety standards and creating supervisory systems for the for whatever I was automating. We had a team there, and it's a company needed my pipelines. And I worked seven and a half years for this company, so I did not start it as a data engineer, but it crossed my path uh in 2021. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

And then, you know, as an automation engineer, that's interesting, you know, working in power plants and things like that. Were you were you like interviewing users and trying to understand the process first before you automated it?

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Yeah, yeah. We had to understand what was going on there, and it was always something different, which is kind of nice, right? Because you we go from power plants to steel factories, like I said, to sewering uh sewer treatment plants also. So we always learn something new. This is a pro of the job, right? But there was a lot of cons of that job as well. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

What kind of uh languages were you programming in?

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Today.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

I program when you were in the the autom the original automation seven years, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

We used to program because we program not a usual computer like you imagine, maybe. We used to program PLCs. It's a programmable logical controller with a kind of industrial computer. So there's a specific language for this kind of computer. Two of three languages. I used to to program instructional lists, yeah. And for but for the supervisory system, which is Kata system, uh, we used to code in VB script, basically.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Okay, okay, great. And then 2021, uh, we're right in the middle of COVID. Yeah. Yeah. Tell us uh this shift into um platform engineering. How did that happen? And what were what were some of the first uh projects?

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Yeah. Um it was kind of I was not expecting a call from my friend. He he lives in Sao Paulo. I I we graduated together today. Uh like uh luckily he's from my family today because some of our relatives got married. So we're from the same family. But he called me saying, I have a friend which is looking for someone. I think that uh we worked together in the past and he liked the way I worked. So he said, uh, I know that you're not able to move to Sao Paulo, and usually the jobs that we have here you have to move. But this one is totally a work from home, and they were approaching the work from anywhere. So I think this is a good opportunity for you. And I said, of course, let's go, let's let's try it out. And I was not at first, I was even not aware of what was the data platform, and I was not into this data world. I was more of a data producer sending data to the cloud and that stuff instead of all the governance side and consuming that data. So that's how this data engineering came to my path.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Yeah. Tell us about um uh just some of like the very first

First Data Lake Ingestion Engine

SPEAKER_01 11:26

projects. Like what were you trying to make sense of?

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Yeah, I remember first project, and I was lucky to get this project at my first experience, it was building a ingestion engine for like to bring data from databases, APIs, and different sources to a data lake. At that time, we didn't like I didn't have a lot of experience on this data consumption part. So that's what I did. Like I created this ingestion engine purely in Python, and I got uh like a great experience with my teammates because they were like extraordinary people and taught me a lot about governance, taught me a lot about software engineering as well. So I was blessed by this experience for sure.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

Yeah, that's amazing. And uh tell us more about the project that you're on today. What are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Yeah, I work a lot of with CI CD pipelines and automating stuff for the data engineers to deliver faster and with a good governance in the background. Um, data platform team is uh is a lot of working with people for people, and I like this position because our clients they are not directly the clients of the company, they are engineers from the company, so we

CI CD And Internal Platform Tools

SPEAKER_00 12:50

kind of create some bounds, right? Yeah, and I like to work with people. I like to say, can I can you have a quick call and hear the people, uh the person, you know, and I think that I like this kind of scenery with people, this warm way of working. Yeah, so we I create I basically create automations and develop uh new services for internal portal that we have. Everything usually I I do with Python and uh a lot of scripting as well.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

Yeah. And the other engineers that you're working with and and building for, where are they all based?

SPEAKER_00 13:28

They are based in the US or India, which is pretty common there. I work with a guy from Sri Lanka, and he's like, imagine the time zone difference that we have. I'm working 10 hours and a half from uh from the state that the company's based, which is eight hours and a half from where I'm living now. When I it's like it's morning for me and almost afternoon from him, you know, almost evening. So it's I say sometimes in the Friday, I tell him, dude, go away, go take a rest, because it's late night for you, 11 in the night, come on, just stop working, but it's

Remote Teams Across Time Zones

SPEAKER_00 14:08

it's on the theme.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Yeah. How about when you're working with uh people in the States? Tell us about you know the cultural similarities, the cultural differences, how you all kind of you know put it together.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

That's funny you asked me that because when I first started working for a US company, it got me by surprise how the things were, how the people talk to each other and how the people behave in the meetings. I was used to something more warm, approachable, more informal way of talking with each other. Usually in Brazil, when you join a meeting at the like the first 30 seconds, people are already talking and asking how was your weekend, what you did, how your family, and warm way of talking, right? But when I started in the US company, like I joined the first daily human talk, and there was a silence, and I was what is happening here? Am I not hearing the people? Are they talking? So and they just thought, okay, let's go, let's do the daily. And it, you know, I felt it, but it shocked me, you know, you know. Yeah. Today I am totally comfortable with trying to have this this prior conversations with the the team. I know the team better than I used to. So I have friends there now, which which is good. We have a good time talking with each other, but you know, that got me by surprise how things work.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Yeah. Well, hopefully you're able to maybe bring some of the warmth of the Brazilian culture. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And um uh you know, maybe um you could talk a little bit more about just like Brazilian culture for those who've never had a chance to visit, you know, what what should people know if they, you know, they're say from the States and they visit Brazil or they're from the States and they um start working with an engineer from Brazil, what are some things that they should be aware of or or or ready for?

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Yeah, I think that we like to talk. We like to have good conversation and that stuff. But it also depends where the because Brazil is

Brazilian Work Culture And Myths

SPEAKER_00 16:21

huge, right? We have different cultures from all over the Brazil. So people from the south, they're more self-contained, let's let's say that way. But here in Northeast, we are known by our irreverent way of talking and do some jokes with another. So kind of depends where you're hiring the people from uh and where you're visiting. So if you come to Northeast or North, you have a great time. We have a great time, we have great landscapes, we have great people. I think that Brazilians are very receptive. So you will not like uh regret coming to Brazil, having some time here, or even hiring someone from here because I have an idea that we are hardworking. So when you have an opportunity to work speaking another language or knowing someone different from from our daily lives, we kind of put our hearts hearts on the job and put our hearts on what we are doing. So that's that's the feeling that I have. That's the way how I try to to behave daily and how I feel.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Yeah, a lot of uh passion for everything, business, family. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. And sometimes there are there are myths, you know, like things that we hear, but we don't know if they're true. Sometimes there are myths about working with Brazilians and they're always two hours late or three hours late. Can you can you confirm or deny your experience?

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Yeah, I I this is a myth, I think. I think uh it depends a lot of the person itself. Um but I can say some some people usually get uh I mean look for for some stuff, but for jobs is different. If I go, uh it's common sometimes here where I live. If you schedule something to someone and like be here at 7, sometimes they they show up 7 at 30 or 8 sometimes, which is not good. Some people just got used to it, some people just get mad with that. Uh, but it's different with jobs. Here we're kind of punctual.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

Yeah. Victor, how is AI changing the way you changing the way you work, the way you approach your

Using AI Without Breaking Production

SPEAKER_01 18:39

job?

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Oh, yeah, good question. And what I can say is AI is saving a lot of time, but when used by the the correct people, right? So in my job, when I have a well-scoped work, so AI helped a lot on delivering faster, um, but it also brings some responsibility of what you were doing actually and what you're putting in production, because sometimes it can provide you some code or some advice that may not fit well with the company, you know, with the system that you're building or where it is already running in production. So you have to basically judge a lot when using AI, because sometimes the advice is not good enough or not well suitable for the problem. It is good if you're building something from the from the scratch, but adding some stuff on something that is already running and producing value, you have to judge a lot of what AI is doing. So it helps a lot, and all the companies are pushing the employees to use AI to be faster, but you have to be careful.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Yeah, yeah, good advice.

Fortaleza Travel Tips And Farewell

SPEAKER_01 19:56

As we start to uh wind down the show, I'd love for you to tell us more about your current city and you know play tour guide for a minute. If anybody listening is like, oh my gosh, I I have to visit, what should they do? What should they eat? What should they know?

SPEAKER_00 20:13

Yeah, here we have a lot of options to go out. We have a pretty active nightlife here because I live in a touristic city. Fortaleza is the sixth most populated city in Brazil. So it's a huge city. We have great landscapes, we uh we are next to a lot of beaches. So from where I live, I live like 20 or 30 minutes away for three different beaches. So we have a lot of things to do to see. We have Japanese food, Italian food, Arab food, all kinds of foods here. So you never run out of options of where to go during the night or have a great lunch. Yeah, so like from hours from here, you can be in another another state with also a lot of good beaches. So uh if you have any opportunity, come to Fortaleza and and have a great time here. We're always always like acceptable with new people and just come visit us. It sounds like a warm place in the weather and and yeah, yeah, we are kind of 84 Fahrenheit, which is 30 32 Celsius all over the year. Even if it's rainy here, it's rainy and hot. So you you don't have to bring your jacket and all that, all that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

That's great. Well, Victor, this has been uh such a pleasure. It's just really interesting how you've gone from automation and into uh data engineering, platform engineering, and how you're incorporating AI. I've learned a lot, and I think our listeners have too. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

Thank you so much, Brian, for this opportunity. And always that you need, you can join me again and can have a great talk here today.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

Absolutely. Well, let me thank our sponsor again, Plug Technologies, P L U G G dot tech. Great way to connect talent from all over Latin America to growing U.S. companies. I'm your host, Brian Sampson, and this is the Nearshore Cafe Podcast. We'll see you again soon.