Software Developer & Team Lead
Backend-focused engineer with 20+ years of experience shipping and leading production systems in Ruby, Elixir, and Go. Comfortable stepping into legacy codebases, leading microservices migrations, and mentoring teams, with a track record across startups, agencies, and government digital services in the UK and beyond.
The two projects I'm proudest of and most actively building right now.
The marketplace for Italian craft beer & artisanal spirits
Built and launched a full marketplace from scratch: producer storefronts, checkout, commissions, review system, AI-powered recommendations, and geo (km 0) search. Targeting a €800M+ underserved Italian craft beverage market.
153+ PRs merged, 185+ commits, in production. Sole developer.
Stack: Ruby on Rails 8, Hotwire, PostgreSQL, Stripe Connect, Meilisearch, Claude API
Open-source, self-hosted batch recommender engine
Spun out of Torbido's recommendation needs into a standalone, generic open-source project: trains offline, writes top-K recommendations, and optionally serves them via a read-only HTTP API with an OpenAPI-documented interface and ops dashboard.
Hybrid strategies (collaborative filtering, item KNN, content cold-start fallback, popularity, latest) with priority or RRF fusion, plus policies, AutoML backtesting, and Prometheus metrics.
Stack: Python, FastAPI, LightFM, PostgreSQL, Prometheus
Backend developer specializing in Ruby, Elixir, and Go, with active exploration of Rust. Also delivered frontend work using Elm for functional reactive programming.
Deep expertise in Ruby on Rails and Sinatra, with production experience in Padrino. Proficient in modern HTML and CSS, with a strong focus on accessibility standards and usability testing.
Broad database experience across MySQL, SQL Server, and Oracle, with PostgreSQL as primary choice. Comfortable with NoSQL, particularly Redis for caching and session management.
15+ years on macOS with deep Linux experience, including system administration when needed.
Deploying and managing infrastructure on AWS, including EC2, S3, RDS, and Kubernetes clusters.
Best fit: Unix/Linux-based teams and infrastructure.
Liceo Linguistico Redentore
- Current position
Smart working
Joined as the engineer responsible for the test suite: audited, fixed, and expanded test coverage across the codebase, raising it from 16% to 40% and helping establish a stronger testing culture within the team.
Subsequently moved onto major platform features, contributing to core product development on the Elixir / Phoenix stack.
Stack: Elixir, Phoenix
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Smart working
Led complete rebuild of legacy system architecture, migrating to microservices using Golang and Ruby (Grape framework with Karafka event streaming) deployed on Kubernetes.
Delivered significant performance improvements: reduced resource consumption by 70%, improved system stability, and enhanced data consistency across all services.
Stack: Go, Ruby, Grape, Karafka, Kubernetes, Docker
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Smart working
Backend lead for OPEN, a complex Ruby on Rails procurement management system serving IFAD's international operations.
Key contributions: built comprehensive help system (backend + frontend), implemented file upload functionality with ActiveStorage, enhanced internal journal system, and resolved critical backend bugs impacting system reliability.
Architected multi-locale support (English, French, Spanish) with multi-currency handling for international operations across different regions.
Stack: Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, ActiveStorage
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Smart working
Built Data Catalogue web application from scratch, leading a development team of junior engineers.
Designed and implemented JSON API endpoints enabling ministries to upload data catalogues, with automated background job system for HTTP endpoint synchronization. Containerized entire application and established CI/CD pipeline for Heroku deployment.
Provided technical mentorship to junior developers throughout the project lifecycle. MVP delivered successfully, securing funding for continued development.
Stack: Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Docker, Heroku
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Smart working
Backend architect for MVP launch across web, iOS, and Android platforms, bringing cryptocurrency wallet access to African markets.
Developed critical microservices including administration service (Rails with SSO authentication) and user management service. Orchestrated service-to-service communication via HTTP APIs.
Scaled infrastructure in response to rapid user growth, collaborating with the DevOps team to handle increased traffic loads.
Stack: Ruby on Rails, Grape, PostgreSQL, Docker, AWS
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Smart working
Backend developer on the Connect team, contributing to multiple microservices across Soho House's distributed architecture, including profile-service, checkin-service, and hook.
Stack: Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Docker, RabbitMQ, Kubernetes
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Smart working
Core contributor to the Early Career Framework application, supporting teacher professional development across England.
Stack: Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Docker, GitHub Actions
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Smart working
Led dependency management and security vulnerability remediation across multiple production applications.
Orchestrated cloud migration strategy: containerized legacy applications with Docker, implemented security scanning pipelines, and deployed to AWS infrastructure with CI/CD automation via CircleCI and Jenkins.
Stack: Ruby on Rails, AWS, Docker, CircleCI, Jenkins
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Smart working
Lead backend developer for complete platform rewrite, architecting microservices-based solution.
Designed and built multiple microservices, developed custom CMS administration panel, and collaborated with external teams on main portal rebuild.
Stack: Ruby on Rails, AWS, Kubernetes
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102 Petty France, London, United Kingdom
Solo backend developer for Book a Secure Move API, managing prisoner transport logistics across UK prison system.
Normalized complex data structures, implemented document upload system with ActiveStorage, and built webhook infrastructure for real-time event notifications.
Gained expertise in API documentation with Swagger and JSON API specification compliance.
Stack: Ruby on Rails, AWS, Kubernetes, Swagger, JSON API
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London, United Kingdom
Tech lead maintaining video hosting platform and architecting microservices migration following Dacast merger.
Balanced legacy application maintenance with new feature development while planning and executing service decomposition strategy.
Stack: Ruby on Rails, AWS, Serverless Framework
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London, United Kingdom
Evaluated existing application and led development relocation from Ljubljana to London.
Recruited and mentored junior developer, selected modern technology stack (Rails + Elm), and rebuilt entire platform including AWS infrastructure with guidance from The Scale Factory engineers.
Implemented functional reactive programming with Elm on the frontend, demonstrating ability to adopt emerging technologies.
Stack: Ruby on Rails, Elm, AWS
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London, United Kingdom
Payments team member developing unified administration interface for all company services, built from scratch with Phoenix Framework and PostgreSQL.
Built authentication layer for Ruby API endpoints and developed Elixir library enabling cross-service communication between Phoenix admin application and Ruby microservices.
Stack: Ruby on Rails, Elixir, Phoenix Framework, PostgreSQL
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Milan, Italy
Developed several projects spanning digital asset management, copyright protection, and personal reputation monitoring.
The most prominent, EngagementConsole, is a gateway layer that collects user-generated content from digital properties (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Disqus, Wordpress) managed by a given customer, presenting it via a customized dashboard where moderators and managers can classify, analyze, and manage all the content.
It's used by companies including Banca Mediolanum , Radio24 , and Volkswagen to manage their online assets.
Also planned, developed, maintained, and deployed several other web applications and data extraction tools and services at The Fool s.r.l.
Primarily worked in Ruby, both plain and with frameworks such as RubyOnRails
and Sinatra, with some work in Javascript.
Data stores included MySQL and MongoDB for larger projects, and smaller embedded
engines like LMDB or GDBM for others.
Many projects integrated with Elastic Search.
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Milan, Italy
Sole developer on Antonioli's new e-commerce site, coordinating with external developers on a complex, worldwide platform handling multiple tax rates and regulations, plus a thorough admin interface for non-technical staff to manage products and the sale process.
Also maintained their legacy website, a Ruby on Rails 2.0 codebase built up by many contributors over more than 6 years.
The new site was built with Ruby and RubyOnRails, using the Spree framework.
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Milan, Italy
Built Sportboom, a marketplace for sport enthusiasts, porting the site from PHP/MySQL to Ruby on Rails/PostgreSQL and driving SEO strategy for organic growth.
Hired and managed a designer and junior developer to support delivery.
Stack: Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Bootstrap
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Seattle, WA
Founded StyleJam on seed funding from H-Farm: a reinterpretation of CSS Zen Garden where designers styled a shared page with their own data and CSS, similar to Carbonmade.
Sole founder handling development, PR, marketing, sales, accounting, and system administration.
Stack: Ruby on Rails, MongoDB, S3, Goliath.io
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Treviso, Italy,
Seattle, WA
Built and owned the architecture of Zooppa from the ground up, a crowdsourcing platform connecting brands with a creative community of 350,000+ members for video and graphic design campaigns.
Managed client relationships with Google, Microsoft, Sun, AT&T, Samsung, and Fiat, and built the development team from scratch (developers, designers, sysadmins).
Stack: Ruby on Rails, MySQL
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Milan, Italy
Authored the database chapter of Ruby per applicazioni web, the first Italian-language book about Ruby, still referenced in Italian IT communities today.
Freelance / Various Clients
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Italy
Worked as an independent consultant for Italian companies including Monte dei Paschi di Siena and Telecom, building websites and client software (including Fax Server clients), while contributing to open-source projects like Zope.
Stack: Python, PHP, Java
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Mantua, Italy
First professional role: built the e-commerce site (ported from ASP3 to PHP) and CRM system, and administered the company's FreeBSD servers.
Stack: PHP, Zope, FreeBSD
Telecom Italia
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Italy
Developed a Python system integrating with Tenable to check the security posture of the company's machines, and helped deploy it to production.
Stack: Python, Tenable
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Suzzara, Italy
Built a Django dashboard for Safer to manage work orders, tracking how many pieces were produced and in what time. Now in production.
Stack: Python, Django
- Present
Italy
A lifelong love of animals, dogs especially, motivated me to build something to help stray dogs find a new home.
Developed the PetsWantPats website to help people
find the perfect dog to adopt.
PetsWantPats is a search engine that lets dog shelters list their dogs for adoption.
Self-funded and run as a nonprofit.
The website is in RubyOnRails with some Javascript.
I wanted to experiment a bit and learn in the process, that's why the whole frontend is in HAML.
The DBMS is PostgreSQL and the search engine is built around
Elastic Search.
