Álvaro Guimarães

How I can help

Technical hiring

You bring the candidates. I use practical tasks and interviews to assess engineers and analysts: their technical skills, judgement, communication, and how they work with others. You get a clear recommendation and make the final hiring decision.

Software improvement

I review code, architecture, and infrastructure to find what is slowing the business down. Then I help prioritise and carry out improvements to performance, reliability, maintainability, and running costs.

Practical AI adoption

I help you assess where AI is worth using, test its work, and compare the costs and benefits. We look at where human judgement is needed, who controls your code and data, and how changes in provider pricing, usage limits, or availability could affect your business.

Advice for CEOs

A technical person you can call when you need a second opinion. I help with roadmaps, spending, staffing, and difficult engineering decisions. An advisory retainer gives you regular access to my judgement, with day-to-day team management staying with your business.

Technical handovers

I help you understand how your platform runs, what it depends on, and what a new team needs to take it over. We look at company access, backups, deployment, and documentation, and build a practical continuity plan.

Working together

1. Tell me what is happening. The hire you need, the software problem, the work you want to automate, or the decision you are facing.
2. Agree on the work and the cost. A defined project or a monthly advisory arrangement, with clear responsibilities and time limits.
3. Work directly with me. Practical assessments, clear recommendations, and agreed next steps. Hands-on work and support for new hires can be included in the scope.

A little about me

My work brings together two things: understanding software and understanding the people who build it. I specialise in assessing technical ability and improving software that has become difficult to change, unreliable, or too slow.

Previous experience with AI. I use AI every day. In my own work, it has helped me handle DevOps, infrastructure, and database operations without separate specialist hires. I’ve also reduced cloud spending. For your business, I start by understanding your systems, team, and costs before recommending changes.

I’m also good at working through disagreements with technical people. I help leaders understand the concern behind a technical argument, challenge it constructively, and get people working toward an agreed direction.

You deal directly with me, from the first conversation through to the work itself.

Have something in mind?

Tell me what you are trying to hire, fix, or decide. You do not need a technical brief to start a conversation.