Pablo Girardi is Rail-Flow’s Chief Technology Officer and member of the Executive Team. He oversees the full technical stack from infrastructure and security to deployment pipelines and production stability, leading a team of 99 people. He co-owns the transformation plan, serves as gatekeeper for all AI tool adoption, and is responsible for ISO certification and security compliance across the Rail-Flow Group. He also plays an active role in the company’s AI Innovation initiative.  

Pablo, your role at Rail-Flow seems to touch almost every corner of the engineering organisation. Can you walk us through what keeps you busy on a day-to-day basis?

Most people run into me because I’m a little bit of everywhere and that’s by design. My core focus is our technical stack: making sure our infrastructure is solid, our deployments run smoothly, and that we’re governing our products properly. But the role goes well beyond that. On any given week I might be deep in our CargoBeamer implementation, supporting the RCG project, collaborating with the SCV team on our mobile apps, or reviewing our ISO certification and security posture. 

Ultimately, my job is to make sure that what our developers build reaches production and that production stays secure, safe, upgradable, and future-proof. That means a lot of cross-team coordination, a lot of context-switching, and a lot of conversations. But that’s exactly what makes it exciting: no two days look the same, and every project brings its own set of challenges and learning opportunities. 

AI is the talk of the company right now. What’s your favourite AI tool at Rail-Flow, and why?

Cursor, hands down. We’ve learned a lot about how to use it and, just as importantly, how not to use it. The real breakthrough came when we stopped treating it as a magic question-answering box and started orchestrating it with proper context and structure.

A great example: we recently needed to compare two Oracle APEX environments, which would normally take a full team about a week. Instead of relying on ad-hoc queries, we approached it in a structured and controlled way. We prepared a clear business case, created skill files to guide the tool in interpreting the data, and defined a consistent output template.

Even though we work with source control, changes can still occur during end-to-end and customer acceptance rounds. To ensure full confidence in the outcome, we take a “better safe than sorry” approach by adding an additional validation step.

The result? One person, thirty minutes, and a thorough gap analysis that clearly showed what had changed, whether everything had been transferred correctly, and where any discrepancies remained.

That’s the real power of AI tooling. It’s not about asking random questions; it’s about guiding the system with the right instructions, context, and safeguards. We’re now seriously considering making this type of automated comparison a standard step in our deployment pipeline. It strengthens our control over the process and helps ensure we can deliver reliably even in time-critical situations, such as when a project demands a release patch just before a rollout. 

How do you balance infrastructure work, security, and product development when planning each quarter?

Production always comes first, that’s non-negotiable. If something is broken or at risk in production, everything else takes a back seat. After that, I try to spread the effort as evenly as possible across the different pillars, but in reality it shakes out to roughly 30 % infrastructure, 30 % security and “save the day” work, and the remaining 40 % goes to making sure we can deploy, update, and keep our software moving forward. 

It’s a constant balancing act, and the proportions shift depending on what’s happening: a major customer go-live or a security audit can quickly tip the scales. But keeping those three pillars healthy is what lets the product teams ship with confidence, and that’s what I optimise for quarter after quarter. 

A bonus question:
You have a rugby background and love hands-on work at home. Do those sides of you show up in how you lead?

More than people might expect, actually. Rugby taught me a lot about performing under pressure: trusting the people around you, communicating constantly, and sometimes stepping up for the team when it matters most.  That mentality shows up directly in time-critical situations, where alignment, ownership, and teamwork make all the difference.

The DIY side ,what I like to call constantly destroying and rebuilding my house, is really about understanding how things are put together. I enjoy getting my hands dirty, working with materials, and seeing something take shape from the ground up. It keeps me grounded. Maybe it’s the rugby player in me; working close to the fundamentals  just feels natural. 

But honestly, work is my hobby too. I don’t really switch off, I just channel the energy differently.