Juan Pablo Chapa (00:00):
And throughout your career at those three companies you mentioned, which are Uyala, IPAM, and C3AI, obviously you've scaled engineering teams across Mexico and even Latin America from tens to thousands. What would you say are the critical ingredients for a successful software engineering team building expansion?
Carlos Quirarte (00:00:31):
For me, it comes down to three things. One is cultural alignment with global leadership. The second one is talent strategy. And the third one is scalable operations.
So like, for example, in terms of cultural alignment with global leadership is understanding the company's expectations and translate those into locally in Mexico, right? So as I was saying, how is it culturally speaking, is it that we can merge and make this work? Because the company already has its own culture and coming to a brand new region with, again, a different culture, different language, different ways of thinking and doing things. That's the piece that is also, like, very, very important for me in acting as a kind of like a mediator and as a translator in terms of how is it that things work in Mexico and how things work with the company in other regions or if it's coming from America. How is it that we can combine the strengths and the abilities from both sides and make it work, right?
Then in terms of talent strategies, building strong new grad programs and partnership with the universities, which is something that I did with these three companies — with Uyala, EPM, and C3AI. Because this gives the companies the opportunity to work with this talent that is eager to learn and to apply everything that the students learn when they were at the university. And how is it that we can kind of help them just go through the right processes and the way that the companies really work and how's the real life from a professional standpoint, right?
And then in terms of scalable operations, establishing processes early that can grow with you — like KPIs, delivery governance, documentation, and strong onboarding frameworks — are key. This helps us to build a very strong foundation, and then from there we can grow, and this will help us to scale. If you don't have these components, it would be challenging or harder for the company to be successful in any landscape.
