Marcelo Macambira
Founder · Engineering Leader · Educator
30+ years building software, from tax systems in Ceará to AI-native platforms in the cloud. Now I'm building my own company.
Fort Lauderdale, Florida · from Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil
- Years building software
- 30+
- Years teaching at universities
- 12
- Engineers & contractors led today
- 20+
- Pinnacle Award recipient
- 2×
About
From Ceará to the cloud.
I grew up in Fortaleza, in Ceará, in Brazil's Northeast. I started studying English at 13 and fell in love with the language. I was a top student from the start, scored 100% on every English exam in high school, and graduated among the top 10 students at Colégio 7 de Setembro. Even then, I dreamed of building a life in the United States.
In 1991 I earned a place in Computer Science at the Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC), Ceará's leading university, and a year later I was already writing tax systems for the State of Ceará.
In 1998 I made that dream real. I moved to the United States to work on Y2K projects, and I never stopped building. For more than two decades I've designed and led the data systems behind property information used across the U.S. real-estate market, first at First American, then CoreLogic, and today at Cotality, where I'm Director of Software & Data Engineering.
I believe the best engineers never stop building. That's why I still write code, teach at local universities, and why I founded MacambaX: to take everything I've learned and build software of my own, for people who are usually overlooked by enterprise tools.
Now building
MacambaX AI LLC
MacambaX builds AI-powered applications for independent professionals. It's named after the Macambira, a plant from Brazil's Caatinga that thrives where most can't, and after my grandfather, whose name I carry.
MacambaX.ai
Founder & CEO
Intelligent software, built to endure.
“My grandfather's name is on this company. That means it has to be built to last.”Visit macambax.ai
Caju™
First product
A class-management app for group fitness instructors: rosters, enrollment packages, and attendance in under two minutes from a phone. Built as a Progressive Web App that works on any device.
Join early accessSelected work
Three waves of modernization.
I've modernized the same core property-data systems three times: off the mainframe, into the cloud, and now to AI-native.
- 012010 – 2012
Off the mainframe
CoreLogic · Tech lead
IBM mainframe · Natural / AdabasSQL Server · SSIS · C#
Migrated CoreLogic's core Property and Property Transaction systems off the IBM mainframe. I led the technical migration of a large part of the Property system.
- Legacy migration
- Data engineering
- 022019 – 2024
Into the cloud
CoreLogic → Cotality · Tech lead
Data centerGoogle Cloud (GCP)
Part of the company-wide move of every core system to Google Cloud: moving the Property, Property Transaction, MLS, and Spatial applications out of a third-party data center and onto GCP.
- Cloud migration
- Property & MLS data
- Spatial
- 032024 – Present
AI-native modernization
Cotality · Director
Legacy codeSpec-driven, AI-native systems
Modernizing legacy systems with an AI-native, spec-driven approach, and using Agentic AI with Google ADK to automate operations that once required entire teams.
- Agentic AI
- Google ADK
- AI SDLC
- 042025
Legal-X
Cotality · Pinnacle Award nominee · Inventor
Recorded documentsStructured legal & vesting data
GenAI that reads recorded property documents and extracts the legal description, preamble, encumbrances, and buyer and seller vesting. I designed the approach; it now runs as an API inside daily operational workflows.
- Generative AI
- Document AI
- Production API
- 052025
APN Prime
Cotality · Hackathon winner · Team lead
Property data arrives once a year with the tax roll, so new construction can go missing for up to a year. APN Prime uses AI agents to find newly built properties between cycles.
- Agentic AI
- Hackathon winner
- 062026
Fast Legal & Vesting, rebuilt
Cotality · Customer-facing product · Hands-on, two-person team
C++ / CGI website (2003)Angular · FastAPI · GKE
With one other developer, I rebuilt a customer-facing website that had run since 2003, using an AI SDLC (Spec Kit) from spec to production. We added APIs customers can call directly, deployed on Google Kubernetes Engine, and decommissioned the legacy site.
- AI SDLC
- Spec Kit
- Customer APIs
- Legacy decommissioned
- 072026 – Present
Tax data platform modernization
Cotality · Technical lead
30-year-old legacy platformAI agents · event-driven cloud
Leading the technical side of rebuilding a 30-year-old platform that acquires and transforms property-tax data from about 22,000 tax agencies, redesigned around AI agents and a modern event-driven architecture.
- Python
- FastAPI
- Kafka
- Temporal
- Google ADK
- Angular
- PostgreSQL
Experience
Three decades of building.
From state tax systems in Brazil, through Y2K, to leading AI-native modernization of national property-data platforms.
Entrepreneur
Now
Founder & CEO
PresentMacambaX AI LLC
Florida
Building AI-powered software for independent professionals. First product: Caju™, class management for fitness instructors. Also runs MacambaPlants, a licensed Florida seed business.
Engineering Leadership
2002 – Present
Director, Software & Data Engineering
2020 – PresentCotality · formerly CoreLogic
Miami–Fort Lauderdale
Lead 20+ engineers and contractors, onshore and offshore, modernizing legacy systems with an AI-native, spec-driven approach and building greenfield cloud-native platforms on Google Cloud.
- Completed the move of core Property, Property Transaction, MLS, and Spatial applications from a data center to Google Cloud (2019–2024)
- Agentic AI with Google ADK to automate operations that once required entire teams
- Team engagement scores of 93% (Q2 2024) and 95% (Q4 2024), among the highest in the company
- Two Pinnacle Awards and a 2025 Pinnacle Award nomination for Legal-X, a GenAI solution I invented
- Hackathons: led two teams in 2024 (one winner, one finalist), won again in 2025, both in Operational Improvement; now on the hackathon committee representing the CTO and an orientation speaker on AI and the AI SDLC
- Hands-on builder: Python, FastAPI, React, Angular, PostgreSQL, GCP
Manager, Software & Data Engineering
2014 – 2020CoreLogic
Miami–Fort Lauderdale
Led onshore and offshore engineering teams across the USA, India, and Europe delivering property-data systems, and began moving the core Property, Property Transaction, MLS, and Spatial applications to Google Cloud.
Senior Systems Analyst / Developer
2010 – 2014CoreLogic
Miami–Fort Lauderdale
Tech lead for migrating a large part of CoreLogic's core Property system off the IBM mainframe (Natural/Adabas) to SQL Server, SSIS, and C#.
Senior Systems Analyst / Developer
2002 – 2010First American Real Estate Solutions
Miami–Fort Lauderdale
Full development life cycle of property processing, sales-transaction, auto-update, customer match & append, and Quantum Data Access (QDA) systems.
Consulting & Y2K
1996 – 2002
Senior Consultant
1998 – 2002CGI · for First American Real Estate Solutions
Florida
Design, development, testing, and training on the Data Express, Data Integration, and RIDE projects; led enhancements that optimized mainframe data delivery.
Senior Consultant: Y2K
1998SCB Computer Technology · Mississippi State Government
Mississippi
Senior Consultant: Y2K
1998American Community
Clearwater, Florida
Information Systems Consultant
1996 – 1997Independent
Fortaleza, Brazil
Built and maintained information systems for retail and finance clients.
Public Sector, Brazil
1992 – 1998
Systems Analyst / Programmer
1992 – 1998Ceará State Government: Agency of Finance & Taxation (SEFAZ-CE)
Ceará, Brazil
Built critical state systems: Taxpayer Registry, Monthly Tax Collection Control, State Tax Collection, Tax Delinquency Case Control, and Production Support.
Recognition
Awards, hackathons & AI leadership.
Hackathon Winner, 2025: Operational Improvement
APN Prime: Agentic AI that finds newly built properties between yearly tax-roll cycles, so new construction no longer goes missing for a year
Cotality
Hackathon Winner, 2024: Operational Improvement
Agentic AI solution for property-data operations
Cotality
Hackathon Finalist, 2024
Tax Roll Intelligence
Cotality
Hackathon Committee, 2025 & 2026
Selected as the engineering leader representing the CTO on the company-wide hackathon committee
Cotality
Orientation Speaker, 2025 & 2026
Presented hackathon orientation sessions on AI and the AI-driven software development life cycle (AI SDLC)
Cotality
Pinnacle Award
Daniel's Law Compliance & Risk Mitigation Team
Cotality
Pinnacle Award
QCPI: Quality Rules Solution for Property Transaction Data
Cotality
Pinnacle Award Nominee, 2025
Legal-X: GenAI that extracts legal descriptions and buyer and seller vesting from recorded property documents
Cotality
Team 2000 Mission
Y2K compliance
Recognition for Y2K delivery
Teaching
Twelve years in the classroom.
Teaching keeps me sharp, forces clarity of thought, and keeps me connected to the next generation of engineers.
Broward College
Adjunct Professor, Information Technology
2014 – Present
- Computer & Internet Literacy
- Excel Data Analysis
- Data Integration & Manipulation with Tableau Prep
- Data Analytics Management with Tableau
- Information Systems Management
Barry University
Adjunct Professor, PACE Information Technology
2014 – 2019
- Introduction to Programming with C++
- Java Programming
- Foundations of Information Technology
- Software Engineering
- Databases
- Database Programming & Administration
Education
Where it started.
Master of Science, Computer Information Systems
Nova Southeastern University
Fort Lauderdale, Florida · 2004 – 2008
Bachelor of Science, Computer Science
Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC)
Fortaleza, Brazil · 1991 – 1994
Ceará's leading university, consistently ranked among Brazil's top 20
Continuing education
- Intro to Machine Learning
- Big Data Modeling and Management Systems
- Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python (edX, Verified)
- Computational Thinking Using Python (edX, Verified)
- Software Engineering Basics for Everyone (edX, Verified)
Beyond work
Roots, literally.
MacambaPlants
Ceará is cashew country. I grow cashew trees in my South Florida backyard and, as a licensed Florida seed dealer, share fresh, hand-harvested seeds with growers who want a piece of the Northeast of Brazil in their own gardens.
Visit macambaplants.comContact
Let's talk.
AI-native transformation, legacy modernization, building teams that ship, teaching, or MacambaX: I'm always glad to connect.