Good morning to the event organizers, fellow systems analysts, professors, guests, and, of course, colleagues from the first class of data scientists to join Petrobras. It is an honor to share this moment with all of you today.

And who would have thought, huh? Have you ever stopped to think, data scientists? Can you remember this same day a year ago? What was your routine like, what were your dreams, your perspectives, your fears? Many of us didn’t even work with data science at that time. For some, it was just a hobby or an additional tool in their job, master’s, or Ph.D. Many also did not grasp the magnitude and importance of Petrobras. We were thirty-four nerds scattered across Brazil with one common trait: a passion for data.

And on December 15, 2021, those thirty-four lives begin to change. It’s a slow change. You didn’t even think this could happen because… It had never happened before! It’s the very first time Petrobras has opened this public tender. It might take a while to realize the existence of the opportunity and then the scale of the opportunity. How do you gauge your level of confidence? You read the announcement and think, “this position was made exactly for me,” but then you remember that it’s open to any graduate in Brazil. There’s so much that doesn’t let us feel completely secure: eight thousand competitors, imposter syndrome, or just the humility to know that it’s not always possible to succeed. But this time you will succeed.

Trust. Study and go confidently on February 20. The exam may come with errors or the building may threaten to crack and fall on your head, but you will get approved. Why so much anxiety with this “Olho na Vaga” app? Put down that phone! When the exame answer key is released, don’t take it too seriously because 11 questions will be invalidated. On the day of the scores, no anxiety because they only come out at 6:46 PM. And when they come out, and you do that extra-official ranking, it will finally be clear that your chance of getting in is indeed very high.

But chance is still just a chance, and you have to go through tense months of multiprofessional evaluation, hetero-identification, final result, call, document approval, medical examination, and contract signing. And even after entering, more questions arise: what about this training course? What are we going to learn? Does it include linear algebra? Are the exams going to be difficult? Where are we going to work? What will the positions be like? The managers? The interviews? And these results of the positions, will they be released or not?

In summary: if there’s one word that represents what this process was for many of us, that word is unpredictability. An irony for us who are accustomed to wanting to predict everything!

And of course, this unpredictability couldn’t leave us now, right?

In this moment of celebration of endings and beginnings, even our identity becomes something unpredictable. Who are you? Who is the data scientist at Petrobras?

It’s hard to define ourselves when each management and each of us harbors different expectations in the face of such a rich universe of possibilities. We are engineers, computer scientists, doctors, architects, economists, mathematicians, chemists, physicists, geographers, oceanographers, nanotechnologists, statisticians, and internationalists who will work with oil exploration, flow assurance, contracts, logistics, asset management, digital engineering, compliance, corporate governance, privacy, marketing, and project management. Have you ever stopped to think about how beautiful this is? As the first class, we will have the opportunity to shape our professional identities while shaping the identity of data science in the company as a whole. We have written thirty-four beautiful stories to get here, and their continuations will contribute to transforming the largest company in Brazil into the digital technologies and corporate intelligence reference it aspires to and deserves to be.

Thank you.