Hi there, I'm Ernesto Tagwerker, Founder & CTO at OmbuLabs.ai, FastRuby.io | Rails Upgrade Services, and UpgradeJS.com | JavaScript Upgrade Services.

If you’re leading a product or an engineering team right now, chances are AI is already on your roadmap... but it’s not obvious where to start. Should you build an agent? Add RAG? Fine tune a model? Buy something off-the-shelf and hope it sticks? And how do you avoid burning months (and budget) on a demo that never survives contact with production?

This is the kind of work I do every day.

I act as a fractional CTO to teams that want cost-effective, safe, and secure AI adoption. My teams take a lean approach: define the problem, map the workflow, look at the data you actually have, and pressure-test the assumptions early.

If AI is the right tool, great. My team is always driven to validate problem/solution fit fast. We are proficient at discovery workshops, rapid prototypes, and AI Readiness & Transformation assessments. If AI is not the right tool, I’ll tell you that too.

The goal is to make the next step obvious, not to ship hype.

Once a use case is validated, I lead our teams through design and delivery. That includes AI agents, RAG systems, and custom ML solutions that integrate with your existing product, data, and tooling.

I’m pretty opinionated here: quality and reliability are not optional. Evaluation, monitoring, MLOps, and guardrails are what turn a clever POC into something your users trust.

I also invest a lot of time working with non-technical founders and decision makers. My job is to translate business goals into technical alternatives, make tradeoffs explicit, and help you invest where it matters.

AI can be a competitive advantage, but only if you’re clear about the problem you’re solving and the constraints you’re operating under.

And yes, “garbage in, garbage out” is real. Before we implement or scale anything, I help teams tighten their data foundations and engineering practices so the AI solutions you build have a fighting chance to work in production. I've seen too many transformations fail because the inputs weren’t ready.

On top of all that, I enjoy partnering with Managed Service Providers as their go-to AI partner. If you're an MSP and your customers are asking for AI adoption, automation, or secure custom AI development, I help you deliver it with confidence: from readiness and strategy to reliable implementation and long-term support.

If you’re exploring AI and want a pragmatic partner who will help you ship the right thing, safely, let’s connect!

OmbuLabs.ai is hiring! We are looking for Mid to Senior Rails Engineers interested in joining a fully remote and collaborative team. Learn more at https://www.ombulabs.com/jobs #rails #ruby #remote #react #developer #rubyonrails