robson poffo
Robson Poffo

About

Robson Poffo

Senior Product Manager · AI & Data Platforms on Google Cloud (BigQuery, Dataflow) · Agentic AI · Platform Strategy & Cloud Economics

I build AI and data platforms that teams can trust, scale, and afford. Today I lead product strategy for the multi-tenant enterprise data & AI platform at TOTVS, a leading enterprise software company in Latin America, built on Google Cloud — the foundation other product teams use to ingest, process, and serve enterprise data, and increasingly to build AI agents. I own the roadmap and the platform economics, so every decision balances customer value, reliability, performance, and cost.

A few decisions I'm proud of: cutting storage costs ~46% through tiering changes in a year ingestion volume more than doubled; defining a batch-ingestion model ~84% cheaper per GB than streaming for eligible workloads; moving large-scale pipelines to SQL on BigQuery, where a core workload's runtime went from 57 minutes to 26 seconds and cost per run fell 99%; and taking TOTVS Clock In from concept to production in under four months — it now serves hundreds of thousands of workers daily and is protected by a granted U.S. patent.

I'm most useful where product strategy and architecture are tightly connected. I go deep with engineering on batch and streaming, BigQuery, Dataflow, observability, governance, and cost-performance trade-offs, and keep decisions anchored on customer and business outcomes. Before product, I was a software engineer and architect and taught university courses in databases and distributed systems, with five published papers on BI, lean systems, and identity-based cryptography. I'm a certified Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer.

Skills

Product & Leadership
Product Strategy & RoadmapsTechnical Product ManagementCustomer DiscoveryPlatform & Cloud EconomicsExperimentation & A/B TestingMetrics & OKRsGo-to-MarketCross-functional LeadershipMentoring
Data & AI
AI & Data PlatformsAgentic AI FoundationsBatch & Streaming PipelinesObservability & Data GovernanceReal-time AnalyticsLGPD / GDPR Compliance
Google Cloud
BigQueryDataflowPub/SubCloud StorageCloud RunLooker StudiodbtFirestore
Engineering
SQLPythonJavaMulti-tenant ArchitectureDistributed SystemsSSO / IdentityPerformance Optimization
Certifications
Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer (valid through 2028)AI Product Manager Nanodegree (Udacity)Product Management Certificate (Product School)Machine Learning — CourseraFundamentals of Project Planning & ManagementDigital Marketing CertificateJava SCJP / SCJAITIL v3 FoundationTOTVS Datasul HCM
Languages
Portuguese (Native)English (Full Professional)Spanish (Professional Working)

Timeline

Work and studies, most recent first.

  1. Now

    Executive Product Manager, Data & AI Platforms · TOTVS Labs

    Jul 2023 — Present · Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina

    Product lead for TOTVS's multi-tenant enterprise data & AI platform on Google Cloud (BigQuery, Dataflow, Cloud Storage), processing terabytes of enterprise data daily for thousands of customers. Lead 19 people across 4 guilds (Product, Data Engineering, QA, Projects) through 4 leads; partner with Engineering, Data Science, and business units.

    • Own product strategy, roadmap, and platform economics, keeping every decision anchored on customer value, reliability, performance, and cost
    • Cut storage costs ~46% year over year while ingestion volume more than doubled, by redesigning the storage-tiering strategy
    • Made the call to adopt batch ingestion for eligible workloads (~84% lower cost per GB than streaming), validated through a time-boxed POC before rollout, leading the trade-off analysis on workload segmentation, SLAs, and reliability
    • Led an in-memory data-access redesign that cut latency 87%, speeding up dashboard loads and freeing application resources that previously sat idle waiting on data
    • Defined a 3–4-year convergence roadmap to unify the company's data platforms into one architecture and retire redundant processing engines, aligned with the corporate data and AI strategy
    • Leading the integration of agentic AI with the platform — a reusable foundation for product teams to build and deploy AI agents on governed enterprise data
    • Built a production-critical telemetry and cross-product observability foundation (Dataflow, BigQuery, Pub/Sub, dbt) used for reliability, usage visibility, monetization, and cost decisions
    • Own cloud-budget governance, keeping platform spend aligned with operating targets while funding growth
    • Recognized with TOTVS's Bússola de Ouro (Golden Compass) leadership award for the Data & AI area (2025)
  2. 2019

    Senior Product & Design Manager · TOTVS Labs

    Jun 2019 — Jun 2023 · Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina

    • Led product strategy for the Carol Data & AI Platform (ingestion, transformation, enrichment, serving, app deployment, observability, governance) through a year the tenant base grew 2.4× and data volume 2.6×
    • Drove the 2021 shift to SQL-based processing on BigQuery, replacing legacy Dataflow and Elasticsearch patterns: core workload runtime dropped from 57 minutes to 26 seconds, cost per run fell 99%, and dashboard processing spend fell 92%
    • Extended the modernization with multi-tenant unification and event-driven dispatch: cost per tenant −70%, ~70% of no-op processing runs eliminated, and FY2022 closed 5% under cloud budget
    • Sustained 99.95%+ monthly availability through major platform changes while strengthening zero-data-loss controls and observability
    • Took TOTVS Clock In from concept to production in under four months (offline-first sync, facial recognition, EN/PT/ES, privacy by design) — now serving hundreds of thousands of workers daily; co-inventor on U.S. Patent 11,763,605
    • Managed and mentored Product, UX, QA, and project functions; set up product metrics and led LGPD/GDPR privacy and governance initiatives
    • Selected for TOTVS's long-term incentive recognition (2019, 2021)
  3. 2016

    Senior Product Manager · TOTVS Labs

    Oct 2016 — Jun 2019 · Mountain View, California

    • Grew an enterprise Big Data and AI platform from early adoption to use across multiple business domains, setting priorities from customer discovery and owning roadmap, releases, and migrations
    • Aligned U.S. and Brazil engineering, UX, QA, and business teams on one platform strategy and release cadence
    • Introduced product and operational metrics, automated testing, and load testing as the platform scaled — laying the foundation for later multi-tenant and processing modernization
  4. 2015

    Product Manager, Fluig Data · TOTVS

    Apr 2015 — Oct 2016 · Joinville, Santa Catarina

    • Hands-on technical PM for Fluig Data, a Big Data and AI platform for TOTVS's next generation of applications. Ran discovery with customers to set priorities across business segments and wrote detailed specs with engineering
    • Built the product dashboard for performance and usage, drove Selenium test automation and load testing, and served as the main link between U.S. and Brazil product and engineering teams
  5. 2015

    Product Manager, Fluig Identity · TOTVS

    Jan 2015 — Mar 2015 · Joinville, Santa Catarina

    Technical owner of architecture and roadmap for Fluig Identity, TOTVS's identity & access product — single sign-on (SSO) and provisioning of users, roles, and groups integrated with the HCM suite.

  6. 2011

    Master of Science (M.Sc.) · Instituto Superior Tupy

    Production Engineering — Production Systems Management

    Jan 2011 — Dec 2013 · Joinville, Santa Catarina

  7. 2010

    Product Manager, TSA (TOTVS Security Access) · TOTVS

    Aug 2010 — Dec 2014 · Joinville, Santa Catarina

    • Hands-on technical PM for TSA, which controls physical access through networked (TCP/IP) devices; owned technology choices, architecture, and roadmap
    • Stabilized the product and improved performance and device sync by reworking the web and device-communication architecture, validated with stress simulations — lessons that later informed the offline-first design of TOTVS Clock In
    • Led the team building HCM-integrated workflow features and worked directly with customers on issues and sales
  8. 2010

    University Professor · SOCIESC

    Jul 2010 — Mar 2015 · Joinville, Santa Catarina

    Taught undergraduate modules — databases, distributed-systems programming, scripting, and software development process — and validated final projects. Mentored computer-engineering and information-systems students. Honorable-mention professor awards in 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014.

  9. 2007

    Postgraduate · SENAI

    Software Engineering & UML

    Jan 2007 — Dec 2008 · Joinville, Santa Catarina

  10. 2004

    System Analyst · Datasul

    Aug 2004 — Jul 2010 · Joinville, Santa Catarina

    • Led the technical team; delegated tasks, mentored engineers, and evaluated performance
    • Determined project architecture from stakeholder requirements and built cross-functional teams supporting clients on products and projects
    • Notable projects: Rexam World-Wide Integration and MSA (Access Security integration)
  11. 2003

    Bachelor of Science (B.S.) · Instituto Superior Tupy

    Information Systems

    Jan 2003 — Dec 2006 · Joinville, Santa Catarina