JM
Currently taking new engagements

AI ambition,
turned into engineering
reality.

I'm Jones Madruga — Fractional CTO and AI advisor. Twenty years shipping production AI for fintechs, scale-ups, and the boards that fund them. Hourly access to senior judgment, no retainers.

Book a 30-min call → See engagement formats
50M+
Customers on platforms I've architected
4×
CTO seats — two publicly listed
~$6B
Cash recoveries enabled
Jones Madruga, Fractional CTO and AI Advisor
JM Fractional CTO
Built & scaled at
Nu• arco tembici stoodi immplay geekie ELO SIRIUS Nu• arco tembici stoodi immplay geekie ELO SIRIUS
The Practice

Three fronts where I create asymmetric leverage with AI.

Most engagements anchor on one or two of these. The same framework whether you're a Series A founder figuring out where AI fits, or a leadership team that wants an experienced outside operator helping shape the roadmap.

FRONT 01

AI inside the engineering organization

How your engineering team uses AI to ship faster, with higher quality, at lower cost. Workflow integration, agentic tooling, governance, developer adoption. Not Copilot evangelism — operating model design.

Dev workflows Agentic tooling Governance
FRONT 02

AI inside your product

How AI creates real value for your customers — not as a feature checkbox, but as a wedge. Roadmap, architecture, build-vs-buy, and the hard tradeoffs between speed, cost, and reliability when you're shipping AI at scale.

Roadmap Architecture Build vs. buy
FRONT 03

AI across the broader organization

How product, ops, marketing, finance, and legal teams adopt AI day-to-day. Different solutions, equal importance — the compounding gains usually live here, and most companies are leaving them on the table.

Org enablement Workflow design Adoption
Receipts

What it looks like when this actually ships.

Selected results from operating roles. The same instincts and frameworks I bring to advisory engagements.

Fintech · NYSE-listed
66.5tNPS
AI agent on WhatsApp for debt renegotiation

Designed and shipped end-to-end. Customer-grade quality at scale across millions of conversations.

Fintech · NYSE-listed
10,000+
Calls made entirely by AI

Customers engaged on complex renegotiations in a safe space, on their own schedule, with personalized offers — end-to-end automation, no human handoffs.

Fintech · NYSE-listed
2wk → 4d
Internal agent cut policy & test cycles

Internal agentic tool reduced policy and test validation cycles from ~2 weeks to ~4 days, directly improving engineering velocity.

Fintech · NYSE-listed
800K+
Investors in an in-app NYSE IPO experience

Architected and shipped an in-app IPO investing flow inside an app used by 48M+ users.

EdTech · NASDAQ-listed
75%
Cloud cost reduction during transformation

~R$600K/month savings, availability up from <80% to 98.7%. Engineering turnover dropped from 22% to 8.9%.

Fintech · NYSE-listed
~99%
Average API latency reduction

From ~800ms to ~7ms; P99 from ~5s to ~95ms. ~97% reduction in DynamoDB rules-table cost with zero feature impact.

Who I Am

An operator who has shipped AI in production — not just advised on it.

I've spent 20+ years building and scaling customer-facing platforms across fintech, edtech, and mobility — combining deep backend, distributed systems, and AI/ML expertise with a record of hands-on technical leadership.

Most recently I was Director of Engineering at Nubank (NYSE: NU), leading the Global Collections platform — serving 50M+ customers and enabling ~$6B in cash recoveries — where I shipped AI-integrated experiences across WhatsApp and Voice channels and drove ~99% latency reductions in production.

I've held four CTO seats — at Arco Educação (NASDAQ), Tembici, Stoodi, and Immplay — built data platforms processing terabytes of unstructured government data, and teach applied Machine Learning at Sirius.

From the Field

Why founders, operators, and investors keep coming back.

"

Jones helped us move from AI curiosity to AI execution. He understood our product, our operating constraints, and our team maturity, then turned that into a practical implementation roadmap. Within weeks, we had clearer priorities, faster internal adoption, and a much better sense of where AI could create real leverage.

Chief Executive Officer
Series A Startup
"

Rare combination of deep engineering judgment, platform thinking, and pragmatic AI implementation experience. He helped us think through architecture, governance, developer workflows, quality controls, and adoption at scale. His work raised the technical bar while keeping the team focused on measurable impact.

Chief Technology Officer
Big Tech Company
"

An exceptional partner to our portfolio companies on AI implementation. He helps founders avoid the two common traps: overbuilding AI infrastructure too early, or applying AI only as a superficial feature. Clear path from strategy to execution, with the right balance of speed and commercial relevance.

Investor
Venture Capital Fund
How It Works

Light-touch, high-leverage.

Three formats. Most clients start with hourly access — no retainers, no minimums, no awkward off-ramps.

FORMAT 01

Hourly engagement

Default · Flexible
By the hour
Rate shared on first call

Senior judgment, hour by hour. Most clients use 8–24 hours per month. The fastest way to start, and the easiest to stop.

  • No retainer, no minimum commitment
  • Async + scheduled sessions
  • Slack & calendar access
  • Outcome-driven, not hour-counting
Book a 30-min call →
FORMAT 02

Defined-scope project

4–24 weeks · Deliverable-based
Fixed scope
Custom proposal

For specific work — an AI strategy, an architecture review, a CTO assessment, a board-ready roadmap. Fixed scope, fixed price, clear deliverable.

  • Architecture & code reviews
  • AI strategy & roadmap
  • CTO assessments & org design
  • Executive read-outs
Discuss a project →
FORMAT 03

Board & advisor seats

Ongoing · Long-horizon
By invitation
Selective by design

Independent board seats and formal advisor roles for companies where I can be useful for years, not weeks.

  • Independent board seats
  • Formal advisor roles
  • VC fund partnerships
  • Portfolio support & due diligence
Get in touch →
Next Step

If you have a real problem,
I have real time.

A 30-minute first call is the cheapest way to find out if we should work together.

Book a 30-min call → Send a brief
Email
contact@jonesmadruga.com
LinkedIn
/in/jonesmadruga
WhatsApp
Send a message