whoami
My Journey
From Linguistics to Neural Networks
My journey into technology began over a decade and a half ago—a path less chosen, perhaps, but no less rich for its meandering. It started with a simple fascination: that elegant dance between human desire for ease and the bit of cleverness required to craft the tools that serve it. From the sun-drenched streets of Bari, my hometown, this curiosity would eventually carry me across Europe.
Long before I professionally entered the tech world, my intellectual curiosity led me down a fascinating parallel path: the study of Linguistics and Cognition, first in Italy, then in Germany. Here, I delved deep into the cognitive processes behind human language, both in synchronic and diachronic perspective, fascinated as I were and as I am by the challenge of modeling these complex systems. It was within this academic context that I implemented my first neural networks, directly inspired by Paul Smolensky's groundbreaking research on Gradient Symbolic Computation.
A Winding Path to Tech Leadership
For years, technology remained my secret passion, a clandestine hobby pursued in every spare moment. My career took me through many different industries—tourism, sales, manufacturing, and food service, very often in some form of leadership role. Each one was a welcome challenge that helped me develop my leadership skills. From Sweden's quiet efficiency to the energy of a fast growing country as Czech Republic, and finally to Germany since 2015, each added another layer to my evolving understanding.
It's curious, isn't it? That lingering question of why I didn't embrace this passion as my primary career sooner. Perhaps it was an excess of humility, or the feeling that the human element held greater pull. Leading teams in such varied environments—from the bustling kitchen (ah, cooking, another of my great loves!) to Wikimedia contributions—honed a distinctly adaptable and empathetic leadership style. And when people discovered I could code? Well, there was always something to do.
The Pandemic Catalyst and Cloud Expertise
The true game changer arrived with the pandemic. An unexpected offer materialized from Bikeleasing: to become their very first developer. I remain incredibly thankful for the trust they placed in me.
Almost four and a half years later, the landscape is transformed. From being the sole developer, I now lead a vibrant team of over 25 individuals in tech, building agile practices and fostering a culture of continuous improvement. We've propelled our tech stack into the modern cloud era—primarily AWS, with meaningful touchpoints across Azure, GCP, and Cloudflare.
From Code to Coaching
These days, my focus has significantly shifted towards people management. There's profound satisfaction in creating a healthy environment for developers, help them find purpose, and grow both professionally and personally. Technically, my role has evolved into that of an architect, guiding large strategic projects with Kotlin and TypeScript as my daily companions, Rust as my weekend love affair (despite its picky compiler), and Infrastructure as Code with Terraform keeping everything beautifully orchestrated.
Whether implementing neural networks inspired by cognitive science, orchestrating Kubernetes deployments, or debugging a friend's website at 2 AM—it all connects. Technology, at its core, is about understanding systems—human, computational, or otherwise—and crafting elegant solutions that bridge the gap between what is and what could be.
But perhaps the most important system I've learned to understand is the one that balances work and life, mind and body, innovation and reflection. Those quiet moments cycling through nature's wisdom, the rhythm of breath during a hiking across the central German beautiful hill landscape, the meditative focus of learning a new language — not as escapes from the technical world, but essential inputs to it.
Just as the best code emerges from understanding the problem space deeply, the best leadership comes from understanding yourself and maintaining that delicate equilibrium between pushing boundaries and finding peace in the present moment.
Philosophy & Approach
This blend of deep technical knowledge, passion for understanding complex systems, and genuine desire to foster growth in others is what truly drives me. I believe in Domain-Driven Design (love it literally), Test-Driven Development, and the profound truth that the best architectures emerge from understanding both the problem space and the people who inhabit it.
From my early Visual Basic solutions for restaurant delivery two decades ago to today's cloud-native architectures, the constant has been this: technology should amplify human potential, not complicate it. Whether I'm mentoring a junior developer, designing a distributed system, or contributing to open source, this principle guides every decision.