Florencia Hughes – Montevideo Labs

Located at the heart of the “Silicon Valley of South America,” aka Uruguay, Montevideo Labs, founded by Maximo Gurmendez in 2016, has experienced impressive and remarkable growth over the past years. The company has definitely made a name for itself as a leading big data and software development company, working for top-rated companies in the US, such as Mastercard, Roku, and Tripadvisor providing customized solutions with a particular focus on Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence.

Montevideo Labs is now part of Blend 360, a leading data science solutions provider specializing in integrating data and advanced analytics into large, complex enterprises. As a result of the acquisition, Blend360 is now well-positioned to expand its offerings and capabilities, further solidifying its position as a top player in the industry, and drive business results for its clients through additional ‘Best of the World’ talent and global expertise.

So, what is it that makes Montevideo Labs – A Blend 360 Company the go-to partner for blue chip companies like Mastercard? Well, there are several aspects to consider.

Top Talent

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Uruguay’s commitment to providing a well-rounded education, with a strong emphasis on computer science, and English proficiency, has enabled Montevideo Labs to recruit highly skilled engineers in the field.

Our team at Montevideo Labs consists of highly talented individuals, including Master’s degree holders from top-ranked US Universities, Fulbright Scholars, University professors and some of whom even serve as the technical leaders for our Fortune 500 client’s engineering teams.

It is through a rigorous process that the company ensures that each individual has the necessary skills to successfully execute complex projects, as well as an indispensable level of fluency in English. Today, even our clients have provided reviews stating: “Maximo and his ability to find superior talent. He is not only a top-tier engineer, he knows how to find the right balance between technical skills and human potential(…).”

Additionally, Montevideo Labs is constantly incentivizing continuous learning and for its employees to take certifications and courses to expand their knowledge and grow in their field. As Amazon Web Services Advanced Tier Partners with specialties in QuickSight and EMR our team at Montevideo Labs delivers premier-quality solutions from design to deployment. Clients have recognized and praised our expertise, as one customer review states, “Working day-to-day with Montevideo Labs engineers has been an amazing experience. The team is highly motivated, very knowledgeable, innovative, and dependable. They have tremendously helped us build and maintain our data pipeline using technologies like AWS EMR, Spark, Athena, S3, Kinesis data streams, Python etc”. (Simmons, 2020) Currently, 75% of the team is trained in AWS services and our engineers have set high standards and keep raising the bar!

You may have heard that location is everything in real estate and when it comes to nearshoring, this is no exception. Montevideo Labs’ location is strategically advantageous for clients and makes day-to-day coordination extremely easy.

When working with a team of individuals across the world, time zone alignment is truly everything. Our time zone is GMT-3, which puts us in sync with major cities on the East & West Coast of North America. This time zone proximity enables us to operate more efficiently and maintain ongoing and frequent communication with team members to minimize delays and swift problem-solving.

The region and in particular Uruguay’s competitive costs, combined with our exceptional education in the tech field, have enabled us to gain access to and rigorously select top-tier talent ensuring that Montevideo Labs can deliver high-quality products at competitive prices. “Montevideo Labs’ engineers fit the skill profile and cost profile that we needed for the project.” (Simmons, 2020)

Furthermore, the Uruguayan government has successfully incentivized businesses to invest in the country by providing various tax exemptions and financial incentives. Even Google has recently announced a $100 million investment to build a new data center in Uruguay. (Steers, 2021). These are some of the reasons why Uruguay is called to be “The Silicon Valley of South America”. The recently unveiled United States Uruguay Economic Partnership Act reflects the importance of the partnership between the United States and Uruguay. U.S. Senator Robert Menendez perfectly captures this by stating, “Uruguay’s growing technology and innovation sector, along with its inclusive economic growth, make it an obvious partner for expanding commercial and investment ties between our two countries.” With all this in place, it is no wonder we continue to witness the sustained growth of our technology.

State-of-the-Art Solutions

Whether it’s through staff augmentation or a project-based approach, we’ve tackled several different issues across all industries, ranging from A/B testing and data lake creations to processing millions of user interactions to predict the next best action used by several Fortune 500 clients as part of a loyalty program. While there are several accomplishments worth mentioning, one that we often like to highlight is the design and deployment of an automated and auto-training machine-learning model at a rate of 3 million decisions per second, predicting the outcome of a programmatic campaign through real-time simulation. This solution was developed 100% in-house and is a testament to the complexity of the challenges we help our clients solve. Specifically, these machine-learning models have helped our clients achieve an 80% reduction in costs for machine-learning job chains by fine-tuning the cloud.

Among other solutions, we are proud to have contributed to winning a “Time Innovation Award” in 2022 for a specific tool that we developed for one of our clients as well as optimized various parameters for thousands of ad campaigns, forecasting outcomes and estimating audience characteristics in real-time.

But perhaps the most significant recognition comes from our clients who have helped us attain a 92% Net Promoter Score (NPS), a testament to our commitment to success and our accomplishments, with top-rated US companies that have the highest quality standards.

Unique Culture

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A key factor in ensuring smooth integration with clients and partners alike is our cultural affinity with the US which has been instrumental in our longstanding relationships with our clients like Roku and Mastercard.

From our early days as a company, we have fostered a culture of collaboration, of delivering the best quality of service and truly committing to understanding the business needs of our client to deliver the best approach and solution We’ve seen firsthand how our similar work approaches and ethics have contributed to maintaining these relationships to this day. Will Simmons summed it up perfectly on clutch stating:

“I have known the founder of Montevideo Labs since 2009. Maximo Gurmendez is a brilliant engineer with an unparalleled work ethic. He has surrounded himself with a highly professional team. He has never stopped learning and improving himself and his team.” (Simmons, 2020).

But perhaps, another powerful statement by Scott Morgan from Mastercard “Hiring Montevideo Labs has made us all better engineers.” (Moran, 2021) reveals Montevideo Labs’ strong culture of collaboration. Sharing our expertise and world-class practices has enabled our client’s team to benefit from a wider pool of problem solvers, inspiring them to broaden their way of tackling complex problems.

For those of us having the opportunity to be part of Montevideo Labs, it not only means being part of the thriving tech industry, it truly enables us to work with industry leaders at the highest levels of quality, trust, and commitment at a place where you can dream big, make an impact and enjoy working every day with an extraordinary group of talented and fun people. As mentioned by a software engineer at Montevideo Labs, “It is knowing that when doing our work, we are always seeking excellence, to obtain the best results for our clients, our company, and our careers as engineers, all at the same time. It is also a place where we are innovative not only while doing our work, but also when enjoying our time in the office”.

Conclusion

As we move forward, we are determined to maintain our culture of high standards, where excellence is at the core of every end-to-end solution. Our truly exceptional and unique set of qualities, including top talent, bilingual proficiency, time zone, and culture alignment with the US, have been crucial factors in our company’s well-deserved position and proven track record of success. Although we have achieved impressive accomplishments over the past years, we are committed to continuing to harness our potential in this ever-evolving tech world. By combining our capabilities with Blend 360’s expertise in integrating data and advanced analytics we are exceptionally well-equipped to provide cutting-edge services and drive innovation in data science and engineering.

So, bring on the challenges!