Leadership & Insights

From Cloud and DevOps expert to global scale: the journey of Thiago Maior

This article outlines Thiago Maior’s early career and transition into cloud and DevOps, the founding of EZOps Cloud in 2016, and the company’s international growth through the Upwork platform. It also covers the expansion to the United States, participation in the Vixul Accelerator, key delivery milestones, and the launch of ACE Dev, highlighting Maior’s human-first approach to DevOps and AI.

Thiago Maior’s journey began long before EZOps Cloud. Raised in Brazil, he fell in love with technology as a teenager. What started as curiosity quickly became an obsession: breaking things apart, putting them back together, learning systems from the inside out.

Thiago began his career in IT in the early 2000s, working first as a software developer and later as a project manager, long before DevOps emerged as a formal discipline. After graduating in Computer Software Engineering in 2008, his work naturally evolved toward infrastructure, cloud systems, and operational engineering as these areas started gaining relevance.

While peers chased titles, he was getting his hands dirty: deploying servers, managing CI/CD pipelines, solving late-night outages, and leading remote engineering teams before it was common. That deep operational experience gave him an edge; he understood not just how code is written, but how it behaves in the real world.

In interviews and webinars, Thiago often mentions that early in his journey, many people doubted that a South American engineer could lead high-impact infrastructure projects for U.S. companies. That challenge became fuel and shaped his belief that real skill and consistent delivery speak louder than geography.

Thiago Maior at EZOps Cloud first office in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2019).

Thiago Maior at EZOps Cloud first office in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2019).

Why he founded EZOps Cloud

The idea behind EZOps Cloud did not start as a traditional “startup moment.” It emerged gradually while Thiago was already working remotely for U.S.- based companies as a Cloud and DevOps engineer.

Between 2015 and 2016, as DevOps and cloud practices were consolidating globally and gaining broader adoption in Brazil, Thiago noticed a clear gap: U.S. companies needed reliable, high-quality DevOps services, but the available options were either extremely expensive or operationally inconsistent.

Therefore, he realized it was possible to deliver the same technical quality by building teams in Brazil, combining strong engineering talent with structured processes and close communication. That insight became the foundation of EZOps Cloud, officially launched in 2016.

At the time, Thiago was already receiving more work than he could handle alone. What started as individual contracts soon required collaboration, delegation, and process. That was the turning point when EZOps Cloud stopped being just projects and became a company.

Thiago Maior at EZOps Cloud's first office in 2018.

From the beginning, EZOps Cloud was built to operate like a product: process-driven, scalable, and focused on long-term partnerships rather than short-term engagements.

The Upwork chapter and international growth

A critical accelerator in EZOps Cloud’s early growth was Upwork. Thiago discovered the platform almost by chance and created a profile highlighting his DevOps and cloud expertise. The response was immediate.

Within months, he was interviewing weekly with U.S. companies and later earned the “Expert-Vetted” status, a selective recognition granted by Upwork to a small number of professionals, awarded through a platform-led interview and evaluation process, and not broadly available to all freelancers. As demand increased, he began inviting other Brazilian engineers to work with him, creating opportunities that did not exist in the local market at the time.

Thiago Maior and a few team of the members at EZOps Cloud's office.

According to Upwork’s official success story, EZOps Cloud grew from a single profile into one of the leading Cloud and DevOps agencies on the platform, completing hundreds of projects and generating millions in revenue.

From Brazil to the United States and Vixul

As EZOps Cloud matured, international expansion became a natural next step. With all clients based abroad, Thiago and his team participated in export and internationalization programs, which helped structure legal, financial, and communication aspects of operating globally.

In 2022, Thiago moved to the United States, supported by reference letters from clients as part of his immigration process. By then, EZOps Cloud was already a global operation, with delivery rooted in Brazil and leadership present in the U.S.

Also in 2022, EZOps Cloud participated in the first cohort of the Vixul Accelerator, listed alongside other startups in the program announcement. That chapter reinforced the company’s positioning inside an ecosystem focused on growth, execution, and long-term company building.

150,000+ project hours later…

Today, Thiago leads a full-time team of DevOps & Cloud engineers with more than 70 professionals working across cloud operations, SRE, security, and automation. The team operates without freelancers, following a full-time model focused on consistency and long-term delivery.

Thiago Maior and wife, Thaís Maior, at one of EZOps Cloud's anual team gatherings.

EZOps Cloud anual team gathering (2018).

They support fast-growing startups, SaaS companies, and enterprise teams across the U.S. and globally. Under Thiago’s leadership, EZOps Cloud has delivered 150,000+ project hours, 700+ successful projects, and supports more than 50 active clients.

Thiago often highlights that working across multiple clients accelerates learning: “If we solve a challenge for one client, we can apply that experience to every other client. That’s how the team evolves faster.”

2025: the year EZOps Cloud became structurally stronger than ever

In January 2026, EZOps Cloud marked 10 years of history and delivered what the team calls its strongest year so far: the highest annual revenue, the highest profit, an improved average ticket, a better client profile, and stronger financial predictability.

Beyond financial results, 2025 was also a leadership and operations milestone. The U.S. operation became fully stable and structured, supported by a more mature internal model with defined leadership across Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, Operations, Technology, Compliance, and Finance.

This maturity showed up in the “boring but essential” layer that serious clients care about: standardized and auditable processes, stronger governance, a dedicated Compliance function, and a culture positioned as transparent and accountable.

EZOps Cloud anual team gathering (2019).

Internally, EZOps Cloud framed 2025 as a platform for growth: clearer preparation to scale over the next three to five years and more structured professional development, with continuous AI training, practical AI application in day-to-day delivery, and an accelerated path for technical growth and leadership opportunities as the company expands.

Building the future of Cloud Engineering with ACE Dev

In 2025, Thiago and his team launched ACE Dev, Automated Cloud Engineer, a product shaped by years of real-world delivery. More than a chatbot or automation script, ACE Dev is a trained, rule-based AI Agent that combines automation with what most AI tools miss: context and customization.

Thiago’s core insight, repeated across conversations, is straightforward: generic AI automation breaks when it doesn’t understand the environment it is acting on. ACE Dev was designed to work with the context of real infrastructure, real constraints, and real operational priorities, so automation becomes dependable instead of fragile.

For Thiago, this is what comes next: AI as a teammate, not a tool. ACE Dev was shaped by years of hands-on operational experience and built on the belief that AI should enable people, not replace them.

Meet ACE Dev, the pioneering Agentic AI Cloud Engineer.

Human-first leadership in tech

Thiago still reviews architectures, joins onboarding calls, and stays close to delivery. But what defines his leadership is clarity, empathy for founders, and focus on solving real problems. He believes that DevOps is about trust, infrastructure is never “just tech,” and good leadership starts with listening.

In podcasts and talks, Thiago often reinforces that the biggest shift in tech is cultural: “AI won’t replace developers. It will force companies to rethink how teams work, how they learn, and how they create together.”

From expertise to influence: a voice for tech leaders: in 2025, Thiago began turning his experience into content, sharing technical and leadership insights for CTOs and founders on LinkedIn. That same year, he launched his monthly newsletter, From Cloud to Boardroom, focused on the intersection of engineering, leadership, and business strategy.

Final note

This article reflects Thiago Maior’s journey as it unfolded: from early IT work in Brazil to building a global Cloud and DevOps company, shaped by real delivery, real constraints, and real markets.