Author
August 11, 2023
Devoted father, leader, techie, biker, and globetrotter are just a few of the ways to describe our dynamic, inspiring, and dedicated Head of Cloud Engineering & Global Operations, Tiago Bernardinelli. Tiago’s enthusiasm for Digibee is infectious, read on and see for yourself. 
Why Digibee?
Tiago’s journey to Digibee is unique in that he played a role in the company’s journey right from its inception, despite only being employed with Digibee the last two years.
Tiago worked previously at Amazon Web Services (AWS). His AWS journey landed him in South Africa, then back to Brazil to Cubo, the well-known hub for start-ups, where Digibee’s offices also resided. As he was connected with the founding team, Tiago stayed well-informed about the company’s activities. Occasionally he served in a consultancy role whenever he was needed. As a tech professional in the cloud provider sector, his insights were invaluable as Digibee grew its customer base and sought to structure and formalize operations.
Tiago received several awards at AWS, leading to a promotion. But, as a customer-facing role, it was unfortunately, greatly impacted by the pandemic. Facing the tedium of no longer working with customers on a daily basis, he decided he needed a change. Tiago then moved to a major retail company and grew a team from 25-120+ people.
Two years ago, an opportunity presented itself for him to join the Digibee team. Tiago saw this as “a calling” to leverage his knowledge and experience into something he could really own. His strong belief in Digibee’s mission and technology, combined with his desire to use his expertise for company growth, made him eager to be a part of the team. When he reflects on these two years, he is very proud of his accomplishments.
Life at Digibee
When I asked Tiago to tell me his favorite part about working at Digibee, he struggled to pinpoint just one answer due to the numerous exciting and inspiring opportunities the company provides him.
First, Tiago spoke about finding great satisfaction in his role as a manager at Digibee. He thrives on forming strong connections with his team members, as well as with partners, customers, and contractors. Being available for his team to provide guidance, mentorship, technical discussions, and strategic input is crucial to him. The advantage of managing a smaller team allows for more personal connections where he can foster mutual trust and reliance. He’s proud of the collaborative environment they’ve cultivated which ensures collective accountability, effectively manages expectations, and helps drive strategic initiatives. Tiago also takes great pride in his team’s contribution to influencing significant decisions through field analysis and translating strategies and ideas into tangible actions to increase Digibee’s value.
He also appreciates that he’s given opportunities to introduce new features with a lot of autonomy while remaining in the field with the team. He enjoys doing on-call shifts to assess the status of our operations and utilizing feedback to continue to reshape, scale, and improve Digibee’s offerings. Tiago envisions expanding the company’s global presence to reach new customers in different markets. His goal is to be even more distributed architecturally to our customer’s locations to enhance scalability and reliability. Ultimately, this will make Digibee the go-to platform for developers to connect their workloads.
Tiago is “a fan” of Kubernetes, the foundational open-source system of Digibee’s iPaaS platform. His fascination lies in researching and observing the evolving technology used by his team to ensure the software remains updated and progressive. However, this is also the challenge he faces. The rapid pace of technology can be overwhelming, demanding IT professionals stay informed to remain relevant. Managing the growth of a rapidly expanding company while finding time to stay ahead of technology is difficult. But for Tiago, this challenge aligns with his desire to excel as a manager. He recognizes the importance of “speaking the technical language” to effectively mentor, support, and lead his team.
The larger challenge he faces now is expanding his team, especially with the pace of Digibee’s growth. Digibee is hiring and as a manager, Tiago wants to find the right people, at the right time to further enhance the team. There is such exciting current and future work at Digibee. Tiago wants to inspire candidates to recognize the unique opportunity Digibee has to change the integration industry, and the part each team member plays in building that incredible success story. We agree on the fact that Digibee’s culture is truly special. I have never experienced an environment with such a shared vision and dedication across the company. That drive translates to a workforce teeming with energy, passion, collaboration, and purpose.
The Future Ahead
Tiago sees a bright future ahead for Digibee. He foresees continuous growth and evolution with each passing year, building on the significant progress achieved since its inception six years ago. He’s enthusiastic about the company’s potential, particularly in the US market, even as he acknowledges that expansion won’t be without its challenges. Fortunately for us, Tiago has a proactive approach to challenges. Tiago leads with several inspiring mantras: “Face each challenge. Aim to do your best. Be happy with every victory. Be open and be candid. Do the right thing.” (Put these on a mug immediately!) He attributes this mindset in part to his upbringing by his older brothers, who instilled in him a drive to always give his best. Now, he can channel that passion into Digibee – eagerly tackling new challenges, refining the platform to accommodate growth, and devising strategies to break into different markets globally.
“Face each challenge. Aim to do your best. Be happy with every victory. Be open and be candid. Do the right thing.”
According to Tiago, Digibee not only has the potential to disrupt the integration space but also to inspire the software engineering community. Digibee has consistently prioritized empowering software engineers and enabling them to build integrations efficiently, rapidly, and securely. That is a game-changer for a profession used to often being forced to gain specialized certifications and experience while the work they were actually hired for builds up. Tiago perceives a substantial opportunity in Digibee’s future to build mutual advocacy, collaborate with, and motivate software engineers to advocate for our iPaaS, emphasize its unique differentiators, and fundamentally change the integration landscape.
Balancing Work & Life at Digibee
Tiago is the proud father of a three year old boy, named Teo. If you are doing the math, Teo was born during the height of the pandemic! That proved to be a blessing in disguise as it enabled Tiago to work remotely and spend valuable time with his family. Tiago, who used to dedicate long hours at the office, has reprioritized his life to find balance between his professional dedication and devotion to his family. As a parent of two myself, our conversation resonated on the constant change and joys of parenthood.
Teo is also autistic and Tiago is navigating the challenges that come with that as a new parent. But, as someone who has always been self-motivated to seek improvement every day to do more, to do better, he is grateful for the challenge. Teo gives him another reason to strive for constant growth and self-betterment. Tiago was generous enough to share some beautiful stories about Teo and it was immediately apparent to me how much Tiago adores being a father and his devotion to the role.
Tiago is also a motorcycling and mountain biking enthusiast. He loves finding adventurous experiences and connecting with both nature and his biking friends. In the past, Tiago embarked on an impressive 2,000-mile journey on his motorbike. He resides in the highlands of São Paulo and frequently spends Sunday mornings mountain biking through the scenic Serra do Mar mountain range, enjoying the blend of mountains and ocean views. His competitive spirit drives him to improve his own performance, aiming to achieve greater speed and skill with each biking endeavor. (I could obviously relate to all of this with my daily two-mile bike ride to my son’s school, where I take in the view of houses and sidewalks and strive to look less winded in front of other parents).
Traveling is also an integral part of Tiago’s life. His global exploration includes living in South Africa, Brazil, and Colombia, and traveling to Israel, eight European countries, seven Latin American countries, and ten US States. His globetrotting journey is far from over and he plans to relocate soon with his family to the US. Tiago has already experienced glimpses of American culture through his visits and activities like attending a hockey game and a Formula 1 race, and he eagerly anticipates further immersion in American life.
At Digibee, we have a team of incredible individuals working together to bring our innovative enterprise integration solution forward in the US and globally. It was inspiring talking to one of our first and exceptional “Digibees,” Tiago, about his journey and work at Digibee. Keep reading our employee highlights to learn more about this amazing team of people working to make Digibee’s mission possible.
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