Profile
Software engineering leader with more than 20 years of experience, including over a decade managing teams. Led distributed teams of up to 14 developers at AWS RDS and Amazon Robotics, delivering cloud and robotics platforms with measurable gains in cost, reliability, and operational efficiency. Pairs people leadership and product strategy with hands-on expertise in cloud architecture, computer vision, and high-performance software engineering.
Key skills: team management · distributed teams · project management · metering and billing · robotics platforms · cloud infrastructure · AWS · CI/CD · application lifecycle management · computer vision and ML · C#/.NET · AI-assisted development
Contact
You can find more of my work and technical writing at Tommesani.com and connect with me on LinkedIn.
Professional experience
Software Development Manager – Amazon Robotics
February 2025 – Present
Barcelona, Spain
Manager of the Edge device software engineering team, responsible for tooling and services supporting the development and operation of robotics and automation systems.
Product and technical leadership
- Expanded the team’s ownership from operational automation tooling to a broader programme comprising six software projects.
- Led initiatives involving CI/CD for robotics software, cloud-based unit and integration testing, application lifecycle management and on-device task execution through a custom software agent.
- Led the development and launch of an internal application distribution service and an asset-tracking platform.
- Guided system design, architectural decisions, project prioritization and technical trade-offs across the programme.
Engineering management
- Led a team of 14 software development engineers distributed across Europe and the United States.
- Managed hiring, onboarding, performance evaluation, coaching and career development.
- Supported the creation and growth of a new engineering team in Boston.
- Improved the process used to track contractor-related financial approvals, eliminating recurring late approvals.
Strategy and programme execution
- Redefined the initiative’s strategic planning process and developed its multi-year roadmap.
- Led financial assessments for existing and proposed projects.
- Managed sprint planning, work intake, prioritization, risk management and issue resolution.
- Delivered regular project updates and business reviews to senior leadership.
Engineering innovation
- Built a tool that automates project reporting, presented at the Amazon EU TPM Conference in London and the Amazon Robotics TPM Conference in Boston. Also developed a protocol inspection tool for Zenoh, using spec-based development with Kiro and Claude
Software Development Manager – Amazon Robotics
June 2021 – February 2025
Barcelona, Spain
Managed the European Continuous Improvement software engineering team.
Product development
- Led the development of an automation platform that brought cloud-style deployment and operational capabilities to embedded and robotics systems.
- Oversaw the complete product lifecycle, from initial prototype to General Availability.
- Grew adoption to 33 systems across four Amazon organizations.
- Managed roadmap definition and collaboration with 12 stakeholders.
Team leadership
- Managed a team of six software development engineers.
- Owned recruitment, onboarding, performance management and career development.
- Participated in more than 100 technical hiring loops.
- Drove the first promotion to Senior Software Development Engineer within the organization.
- Created a training program that enabled two systems engineers to transition successfully into software development roles.
Computer vision and machine learning
- Designed a real-time computer-vision system that identified and enabled the reprocessing of underfilled shipping containers. Supported its deployment across Amazon’s European inbound cross-dock network, generating €7.7M in annual savings.
- Designed and prototyped a deep learning vision system that detects suboptimal packaging choices by Associates.
- Developed a machine learning model that increase shipping container fill rate by 2.5 percentage points.
Planning and operations
- Owned annual and multi-year strategic planning, roadmap definition and project-intake evaluation.
- Managed financial assessments, prioritization and monthly business reporting.
- Led sprint execution, stakeholder communication and the resolution of high-priority customer issues.
Software Development Manager – AWS RDS
October 2018 – June 2021
Vancouver, Canada
Managed the Amazon RDS Commerce and Core Control Plane engineering teams.
Commerce and Control-Plane systems
- Provided design and technical leadership for projects involving Database Savings Plans, pricing, billing, backup reporting and control-plane sharding.
- Managed systems responsible for commercially sensitive metering and billing workflows.
- Led complex billing investigations for S&P 500 companies and the U.S. government. Built models from data lakes and RDS logs to compare actual and expected system behavior over time and quantify customer impact. In one case, reduced the estimated impact from $12M to $1.5M,lowering remediation costs by $10.5M while maintaining customer trust.
- Established RDS’s first systematic billing investigation process. Resolved and classified more than 1,000 tickets, traced root causes through logs and data lakes, and created runbooks that helped on-call teams replace ad hoc refunds with evidence-based resolutions
- Owned SOX compliance for metering process.
Fleet optimization
- Led initiatives to optimize database fleet capacity while balancing customer availability and infrastructure efficiency.
- Delivered work responsible for 61% of the cost savings achieved across the broader RDS fleet-optimization programme.
- Led the design and implementation of an ML system that forecasted RDS usage and pre-provisioned fleet capacity. It reduced capacity-related customer issues by 90% without increasing CapEx.
Engineering leadership
- Managed a team of 12 software development engineers, including remote team members.
- Owned recruitment, coaching, career progression, compensation discussions and performance evaluation.
- Defined and validated product roadmaps with directors, product managers and other senior stakeholders.
- Participated in technical escalations involving large-scale customer-impacting incidents in the RDS control plane.
Custom Solutions Specialist – Genetec
July 2017 – June 2018
São Paulo, Brazil
Introduced Genetec’s Custom Solutions services to the Latin American market.
- Defined, implemented and validated custom software solutions for major corporations operating in Brazil.
- Provided technical consultancy for integrations built on the Genetec security platform.
- Trained and supported third-party software developers.
- Worked across customer requirements, architecture, implementation, quality assurance and delivery.
Senior Product Engineer – Intelbras
2013 – June 2017
Florianópolis, Brazil
Worked in the security division of one of Brazil’s leading electronics and physical-security vendors.
- Defined the division’s software strategy, contributing to a major technology partnership between Intelbras and Genetec.
- Authored the specifications for a new generation of desktop and mobile security applications.
- Evaluated outsourcing partners and participated in commercial negotiations and contract definition.
- Acted as Product Owner, managing requirements, sprint validation, integration, scheduling and feature prioritization.
- Contributed to recruitment, candidate interviews, performance reviews and employee training.
- Redesigned and implemented a DDNS platform serving more than 420,000 customers.
Author
Tommesani.com
1999 – Present
A technical website sharing software-engineering knowledge through programming articles, tutorials, freeware and open-source projects.
AltaLux Plugin for IrfanView
2018 – 2026
Open-source image enhancement plugin using on-device MobileSAM segmentation. Used AI agent loops to optimize performance-critical SSSE3/AVX2 kernels, validating gains through automated CI benchmark.
Education
Master of Science in Computer Engineering
University of Parma, Italy
1994 – 1999
Grade 108/110. The dissertation “A Development Environment and Optimizer for MMX Coding” marks the start of a lifelong specialization in high-performance code.
Scientific High School Diploma
Liceo Scientifico “Ulivi”
1989 – 1994
Parma, Italy
Languages
- Italian: Native or bilingual proficiency
- English: Full professional proficiency
- Portuguese: Professional working proficiency
