- Provide leadership, vision, and direction for the IT organization behind Wabtec's Intelligent Services – RM&D product portfolio, reporting to the VP of IT, Services & Customer Experience.
- Direct the RM&D Product Management team and partner with the Software Factory to deliver a secure product roadmap for platforms that remotely monitor and diagnose customers' locomotive fleets worldwide.
- Own the RM&D IT budget across personnel, vendor, and capital expenditures; oversee resource allocation to maximize business impact.
Global IT Leader
Luiz Almeida
Digital Product & Operations Executive
20+ years building and running digital product, application development, and IT operations organizations across manufacturing, financial services, and IT services in the US, Mexico, and Brazil.
01 About
I lead the IT organization behind Wabtec's Remote Monitoring & Diagnostics portfolio — the platforms that monitor and diagnose customer locomotive fleets worldwide — owning product management, budget, and delivery. My career is built on three repeatable outcomes: restructuring cost baselines without degrading service, converting unstable applications into reliable ones, and delivering products that unlock commercial opportunity.
I've led organizations of 300+ people serving 25,000+ users across the Americas, and communicate at the executive level in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
02 Experience
- Directed the full application development and support lifecycle for one of Mexico's leading life insurers, leading 24 internal staff and 100+ strategic-partner resources under agile (SAFe) delivery.
- Cut major incidents 38% in 8 months by refocusing the organization on problem management, root-cause analysis, and permanent corrective action.
- Introduced the application-owner operating model, raising accountability and quality across the portfolio.
- Led customer-focused delivery of Service Desk, Field Services, Service Management, Continual Improvement, and Automation programs across five Latin America branches of a global client.
- Owned project budget, revenue and cost, and operating margin; created savings through resource-utilization optimization.
- Negotiated service scope and delivery terms with clients, standing up a Continual Service Improvement practice and a prioritized automation roadmap.
- Led a 300+ person matrix organization delivering IT operations to 12 Heineken businesses and 25,000+ users across the USA, Brazil, Mexico, Panama, and the Caribbean.
- Ultimate owner of contract SLAs, revenue, cost, and operating margin.
- Partnered with sales to identify expansion opportunities and shape win strategies that improved services and grew account revenue.
- Delivered an aggressive 30% IT cost-out through budget strategy, contract renegotiation, and environment simplification.
- Deployed Lean Manufacturing applications on the shop floor of an electric-motor plant, cutting TAKT time 10% and increasing back-office support capacity 20%.
- Global Product Owner for ServiceMax, the platform managing O&G field-service technicians worldwide.
- Deployed a customized ServiceMax instance that enabled a $50MM services contract in Indonesia.
- Managed a $1MM infrastructure and operations budget across six Mexico sites; cut base cost 10%+ while achieving 97% SLA for 550 users.
- Brought GE industrial-internet infrastructure to the shop floor, enabling predictive monitoring on production machinery.
- Directed a $500K infrastructure modernization across three sites in nine months.
- Selected for GE's premier IT leadership rotation program; helped implement centralized L1/L2 help desk services for 29 GE facilities across Latin America.
- Coordinated ITIL-based help desk operations; launched first-day device delivery for new hires, lifting first-month productivity 30%.
03 Core Competencies
- IT Strategy & Governance
- Product Management & Roadmaps
- Intelligent Automation & AI
- Agile (SAFe, Scrum)
- Budget & P&L Management
- Vendor Management
- Contract Negotiation
- Program Management
- Lean & Six Sigma
- Executive Stakeholder Management
- Global Team Leadership
- ITIL Service Delivery
- Talent Development
04 Education & Certifications
Education
- M.S., Strategic Information Management Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil
- B.S., Information Systems Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais (PUC Minas), Brazil
Certifications & Executive Education
- Scrum Product Owner Certified (SPOC) · Scrum Master Accredited Certification (SMAC)
- Negotiation Mastery Harvard Business School
- Data Storytelling Purdue University
- Leading Adaptively · Personal Leadership Strategies GE Management Development Institute, Crotonville, NY
Languages
- English
- Spanish
- Portuguese
05 Contact
Open to conversations on IT leadership, digital product, and operations roles.
Download Full CV (PDF)