Running a global payroll fintech is notoriously difficult. Many platforms promise speed and global reach, only to slow down under manual processes, bloated teams, and operational complexity.
However, at Ontop, an all-in-one platform for global teams, that pattern changed.
Under the leadership of COO Maria Camila Ramirez, speed was prioritized while the financial impact of operations was carefully managed. Ramirez reshaped how new products were built and launched at Ontop. This now allowed the software to make contracts, process payrolls, and onboarding in one click: “It’s a matter of speed. We’ve been able to release financial products with AI in weeks, without long development cycles or oversized technical teams,” she explains.
Ramirez, a recognized leader in AI-enabled fintech operations, did not treat AI as a side experiment or isolated innovation. Instead, she led an intentional shift toward AI-native execution. She embedded artificial intelligence directly into Ontop’s daily workflows across compliance, payroll, and customer support: “Forget the idea that you need huge, highly technical teams. What really matters is moving fast and adding value through short, continuous iterations,” she explains.
She also made sure that technological innovation is accessible to everyone, not just a few team members: “Technology is now in everyone’s hands. The key is to develop curiosity while giving teams the right tools so they can create things they never thought possible,” she shares.
The results followed quickly. After the formal rollout of Ontop’s AI-first operating model, the company reached both cashflow- and EBITDA-positive status—compressing what would normally take years into months.
Her operating approach has since become a reference point for fintech founders and operators navigating regulated, cross-border financial systems—particularly those seeking to deploy AI without compromising compliance, trust, or costs.
While many fintech companies struggle to balance fast growth with healthy margins, Ontop managed to do both. By combining AI with disciplined execution, the company showed that automation doesn’t have to come at the expense of financial control.
Today, Ontop supports workers in over 190 countries and counts Tiger Global and General Catalyst among its investors. With this expansion, Ramirez made sure that AI is a central part of the business, embedding it into the company’s operations and everyday decisions: “AI was the engine that made our business viable. Since early 2025, I’ve pushed for AI to be part of everyday operations—not just something we talk about, but something we rely on.”
Outside of Ontop, Ramirez is gaining recognition for her expertise. Her work bridges global payments, multi-country regulation, AI-driven operations, and profitability, which is an area very few fintech leaders have successfully mastered.
Cultivating an AI-Driven Workforce
Ontop shifted from thinking of AI as a centralized initiative to a shared company responsibility. One of the steps undertaken to achieve this shift is by making AI accessible. Ramirez also reinforced this mindset by encouraging teams to see AI not as a specialist tool, but as something they could actively build with: “It’s about making people feel they can do whatever they imagine with technology,” she explains.
That philosophy quickly translated into action. The shift went far beyond simply adopting new tools. Under her leadership, Ontop launched internal AI bootcamps, built a global network of AI users, and introduced automated workflows that embedded AI directly into the team’s daily work. AI now underpins nearly every major workflow and financial product Ontop has launched in recent years, from Early Wage Access to investment features and internal platforms: “Pretty much everything we build today is powered by AI at some level. It’s not something I oversee from afar. I’m deeply involved in turning ideas into live products,” Ramirez explains.
What distinguishes Ramirez’s approach is that these outcomes were achieved without overreliance on massive engineering teams. Instead of adding layers of engineering complexity, she built repeatable systems where AI strengthens decision-making across compliance, risk, payments, and customer experience. This approach has drawn attention from founders navigating strict regulations while trying to scale.
The mix of hands-on AI execution, global payments infrastructure, regulatory accountability across many markets, and consistent profitability is rare in fintech. Ramirez belongs to a small group of leaders who have successfully delivered all four.
These initiatives build on her skills from earlier work implementing company-wide OKRs and leading global restructures across more than 15 countries. That foundation ensured AI adoption was woven into every operational layer rather than siloed within technical teams: “We built a team capable of executing with it,” she shares.
Ramirez’s thinking around talent and technology extends well beyond Ontop. She regularly mentors and serves as a judge in startup, leadership, and AI programs, including Endeavor’s Pitch Day, the Bezi Fellowship, and AI hackathons. By working closely with founders, Ramirez gains a clear view of the real challenges of scaling and hiring. This insight guides how she applies AI in growing companies.
Over time, Ramirez has become a trusted voice for founders tackling global expansion, AI adoption, and team design. Her influence helped fintechs treat AI as a core operating tool.
Her thinking was also shaped by close exposure to emerging AI ecosystems. After spending time immersed in San Francisco’s tech scene, Ramirez returned with a clearer view of how AI could be operationalized inside Ontop: “Being close to what’s happening opened my mind. I learned a lot in a very short time, and then brought that learning back to the company,” she shared. These insights ultimately came together under Ontop’s formal AI transformation strategy, which she designed and launched end-to-end.
That blend of execution, expertise, and human-centered leadership is something Federica Vegas has witnessed firsthand. A performance coach and facilitator for Women in Management (WIM) at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Federica has worked closely with Ramirez since 2021 through Ontop’s executive team.
Over more than four years, she has seen Ramirez evolve from Ontop’s first hire into a defining force behind its leadership culture: “From the beginning, Maria showed a true owner’s mindset. She blends creativity, resilience, and deep responsibility with an unwavering commitment to the company’s vision,” Vegas recalls.
She describes Ramirez’s mix of self-awareness and decisiveness as rare: “What impressed me most was how reflective she is. She doesn’t run from tough conversations; she steps into them to learn and improve,” Vegas shares.
As Ontop grew, Ramirez’s emotional intelligence and ability to execute became essential pillars. They influenced how decisions were made and how change was rolled out across the company. This was most visible during Ontop’s move toward AI. Knowing that large-scale change can cause uncertainty, Ramirez addressed concerns head-on: “There’s a lot of fear around job loss, but AI isn’t here to replace people. AI is here to help us work more efficiently so that we’ll have more time to focus on what matters,” she explains.
Streamlining Operations with AI-Native Solutions
The tangible effect of Ramirez’s AI strategy is most visible in how Ontop runs its day-to-day operations. As COO, this AI expert embedded AI directly into core functions such as compliance and payroll, replacing slow, manual processes with automated workflows that shortened delivery cycles while materially reducing costs: “Being able to launch very fast without needing highly technical or expensive teams—that’s something I’m passionate about,” she says.
This efficiency was built on years of groundwork. Earlier in her tenure as Head of Customer Success and Operations, Ramirez designed scalable onboarding, billing, and payment systems from scratch. These systems kept payment failure rates below 1 percent and allowed Ontop to expand globally without proportional headcount growth.
Once AI was layered into these foundations, the gains became exponential. Automated workflows compressed what had previously taken months into days. This created the capacity to launch new financial products without adding operational complexity: “By automating key workflows, we turned months of manual effort into days of optimized output,” she shares.
That execution capability translated directly into product expansion. Under her leadership, Ontop launched AI-native offerings, including Early Wage Access and USD investment features, enabling international workers to access and grow their earnings directly from their Ontop accounts. Early Wage Access surpassed $700,000 in cumulative disbursements, while the investment feature unlocked new financial pathways for a globally distributed workforce.
From the start, Ramirez knew that these products were designed to scale. Drawing from her experience in launching financial products in under a month and leading high-performing teams, she ensured operations could keep up as demand grew. This led to wallet balances reaching $36 million and payment volumes exceeding $450 million in run rate.
These results supported Ontop’s broader financial turnaround. The same discipline that enabled growth also helped the company become cashflow-positive and EBITDA-positive: “From day one, I’ve focused on making sure our products are real businesses. That means knowing where to cut costs and how to generate revenue,” Ramirez shares.
This has led to a lean, AI-enabled organization capable of processing over $1 billion in cross-border payments, showing how strong execution and AI work together to achieve both efficiency and profits.
Only a handful of operators worldwide have pulled off AI transformation without sacrificing payment reliability, compliance standards, or financial results—particularly across markets with very different regulatory demands.
As many fintech companies move away from complex systems, Ramirez took the opposite approach: she used AI and strong operational discipline to turn complexity into an advantage. Ramirez’s approach proves that innovation doesn’t have to come at the expense of profitability or compliance.
Strategic Execution and Global Impact
As COO, Ramirez works closely with the CEO to align the executive team around clear, measurable OKRs. Her fluency in Spanish and English allows her to work across regions and coordinate seamlessly with global stakeholders: “My role is really about connecting people and making sure things don’t get stuck. I believe that collaboration and influence are what turn ideas into action,” she explains.
Ramirez also plays an active role in shaping conversations around technology and leadership, even outside of Ontop. She has shared her insights at Colombia Tech Week, the Magma Partners Summit, and other industry events. She has also spoken on national radio about the realities facing young people in Latin America. Her public work consistently emphasizes the importance of pairing AI with inclusive and responsible leadership.
She extends this commitment beyond discussion through her involvement with SheBuilds on Lovable, a community that empowers women to build and ship technology. This community also expands access to technical and leadership pathways for underrepresented groups.
That growing presence reflects sustained influence rather than momentary visibility. Ramirez is now a go-to voice on global talent infrastructure and AI governance.
That blend of execution strength and collaboration skills has been evident since Ontop’s earliest days, according to Julian Torres Gomez, Ontop's Co-Founder and CEO. Having worked side by side with her through fundraising, hypergrowth, and multiple restructurings, Gomez credits Ramirez as one of the most decisive forces behind Ontop’s ability to scale: “She evolved from running core operations to operating at the highest strategic level.
Very few people can move so seamlessly between executing the details and shaping the big picture—but Maria does both exceptionally well,” shares. He also commends Ramirez’s role in Ontop’s $35 million fundraising journey, her close involvement during Y Combinator, and her ability to translate complexity into action as defining strengths.
Gomez also praises Ramirez’s rare combination of composure, judgment, and hands-on leadership under pressure: “She consistently outperformed executives with decades more experience,” he notes, emphasizing her willingness to roll up her sleeves—whether executing worker payouts in Ontop’s early days or leading customer response during difficult product launches. Her leadership proved especially critical during a major global restructuring, when Ontop scaled from 600 to 200 employees across 20 countries: “She led with empathy and precision. She stabilized the company when it mattered most,” Torres adds.
A Blueprint for Future Growth
Ramirez’s influence at Ontop is not defined by a single moment of change, but by a repeatable blueprint for how fintech companies can scale with discipline. Drawing on a career that spans management consulting, zero-to-one startup building, product development, and operational leadership, she led Ontop’s shift from manual payroll workflows to a fully AI-native financial infrastructure.
Her end-to-end command of compliance, payroll, payments, customer experience, and financial services ensures that AI is deployed not as an experiment, but as a tool for speed, focus, and execution: “We’re building financial services with AI that people in emerging markets typically don’t have access to—US dollar accounts, early wage access, and investment features—at a speed that simply wasn’t possible before,” she says.
Under Ramirez’s leadership, AI-native financial products, including Early Wage Access and new investment features, were launched and scaled at speed, directly linking operational efficiency to revenue and profitability: “Everything, from the risk matrix to approvals to disbursement, was built on AI. In just weeks, we were advancing paychecks and improving liquidity for real people,” she shares.
That execution-first mindset is deeply rooted in her early career at Accenture, where she led digital strategy initiatives and advised C-suite leaders at multinational organizations. There, she developed a practical approach to innovation—one grounded in understanding users, solving real problems, and delivering outcomes that scale: “I loved solving problems, understanding users, and bringing solutions to those problems,” she shares.
Very few operators globally combine hands-on AI execution with deep exposure to regulated financial systems and a proven path to profitability. Over time, this sustained execution has positioned Ramirez not only as a company builder but as a long-term contributor to how AI-enabled financial infrastructure is designed, governed, and scaled globally.
This sought-after AI expert is looking into expanding AI-driven financial services for contingent workers—freelancers, consultants, and creators—who need truly global, borderless financial infrastructure: “This is just the beginning. AI will keep us ahead in a global market,” she shares.
Ramirez lays out a simple but powerful blueprint for fintech leaders: “Make AI part of everyday work, get teams working toward the same goals, and manage products like businesses,” she says.
She believes the companies that succeed will be those that stop chasing AI buzz and focus on real results. AI is no longer a competitive advantage reserved for the few; it is the new operational baseline. The question for leaders now is not whether to adopt it, but whether they are bold enough to build organizations that can truly execute with it.
