Behind the Bet with Caio Brentano

Meet Caio - DevOps Engineer in the Betting Engine working in Krakow office. We caught up with him to ask a few questions about his career story, working in Grand Parade, moving to Krakow from Rio de Janeiro and more - read on!

Hello there! I am Caio. Maybe you can tell by the name that I am not polish :)
I am originally from Brazil and I have been living in Krakow since January 1^st 2018, 1 day before joining Grand Parade.

Tell us about your role and what it involves?

My current role is DevOps Engineer in the Betting Engine platform in USA/Liberty project. My daily activities involve automating processes as much as possible and keeping Betting Engine systems healthy and running. All in all, my work is mostly lending a hand to the team no matter how, so we can achieve great things together.

What excites you about tech at William Hill?

Scale!

The USA expansion is the biggest technical challenge I’ve got involved. We will “deploy” William Hill in 50 US states, where each state has its own regulations. This creates numerous technical challenges on how to efficiently deploy and operate so many “William Hills”.

Which projects are you most proud of that you’ve worked on here?

This is an easy one: Betting Engine. It is a huge and complex project, filled with really great people from Krakow, Leeds, and New Jersey, that I can work with every day.

How do you go one better every day?

I work with talented people every day, which makes me improve almost naturally. In addition to that, I like to read about the tools and technologies we use. O’Reilly is by far the GP benefit that I most use. But probably the most important thing is to combine all that with a healthy life balance, exercise and also enjoy the free time. This boosts my energy to improve each day.

Can you tell us a bit about your career story?

Before joining Grand Parade, I’ve worked in 2 media companies in Brazil. The first was Terra Networks, where I worked as a developer mostly with monitoring tools for IT infrastructure. The second was Globo.com, which is the internet branch Grupo Globo, third biggest media group in the world. At Globo.com I started as a developer and left as a DevOps in the storage team.

What made you decide to move to Krakow?

This began with the decision to move out of Brazil. My wife and I were living in the world-famous Rio de Janeiro (although we are from the very south of Brazil, far from Rio). It is, without question, a gorgeous city, but it is too big, too dangerous, and too expensive for the kind of life we’re looking for.

After receiving the offer from GP, we started looking for acquaintances who visited or lived in Krakow. It was impressive how well people talked about Krakow, we heard nothing but awesome comments from those people.

So, Krakow checked all criteria we were looking for. It is a small and safe city, super walking friendly. It has beautiful green parks, good bike lanes, public transportation... All these nice features, the opportunity to live abroad, to know new places and people, plus a job offer to work at GP, it was an easy decision.

What’s the best thing about living in Krakow?

It is hard to pick one best aspect of living here because Krakow has many things I enjoy. Numerous coffee shops, historical sites to visit, parks and lakes. My current passion is discovering the city and its surrenders by bike. If you’ve never cycled from Krakow to Niepołomice, you must do it. It is fantastic.

If we had just one day in Krakow what should we not miss?

If you are an enthusiast of famous tourist attraction, you can’t miss the Wieliczka Salt Mine. It is amazing. But if you rather a more urban activity, I’d recommend a walk by river, have lunch in Kazimierz, and later enjoy the evening in “Dolnych Młynów”.

If you could give one piece of advice to people looking to live in Krakow what would it be?

It is as good as it is cold (keep in mind this is a Brazilian speaking). I can proudly say that 2 Brazilian friends believed me and they are now happily living in Krakow.