Professional profile
For more than two decades, I have built software that solves technically demanding problems, from high-performance image and video processing systems to large-scale cloud platforms. Over the last twelve years, I have led software engineering teams, combining technical leadership with product strategy, architecture and execution. My experience spans research and development, strategic planning, partnerships, pre-sales, hardware and software integration, quality assurance and the complete product development lifecycle.
What has remained constant throughout my career is a passion for building software that matters. I am motivated by products that solve real customer problems, where technical excellence and business success reinforce each other. Whether designing distributed systems, evaluating architectural trade-offs, mentoring engineers or building proof-of-concepts, my focus is on creating solutions that are elegant, practical and valuable.
I believe the best engineering leaders remain technically credible. They understand the details well enough to guide architectural decisions, challenge assumptions, mentor teams and evaluate new ideas, while creating an environment in which engineers can do their best work. AI-assisted development is accelerating software engineering, making architectural judgment, systems thinking and product understanding even more valuable.
Professional experience
Software Development Manager
Amazon Mechatronics and Sustainable Packaging
February 2025 – Present
Barcelona, Spain
Manager of the Sprocket 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
- Designed and developed a software tool that automates project status reporting.
- Presented the solution at Amazon engineering and technical programme management conferences in London and Boston.
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 major stakeholder groups.
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.
- Supported the first promotion to Senior Software Development Engineer within the organization.
- Created a training programme that enabled two systems engineers to transition successfully into software development roles.
Computer vision and machine learning
- Designed and implemented 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 approximately €7.7 million in annual savings.
- Designed and prototyped a deep-learning vision system for detecting defects in packaging.
- Developed a machine-learning model to improve shipping-container fill rates for integration with a new generation of automated packing equipment.
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 / Senior Software Development Engineer
Amazon Web Services — Relational Database Service
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.
- Owned SOX compliance for billing and metering processes.
- Supported high-profile customers with complex billing issues and led investigations into platform incidents with large-scale impact.
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.
- Designed and led the implementation of a machine-learning system that forecast RDS usage two weeks in advance and pre-provisioned the required capacity.
- Reduced capacity-related customer issues by approximately 90% without increasing capital expenditure.
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
1999 – 2016
Parma, Italy
Created and maintained Tommesani.com, a technical website containing freeware software projects and more than 100 programming articles.
Topics included:
- C++ and C# development
- Object-oriented design and software-engineering practices
- Multithreaded programming
- SIMD instruction sets
- High-performance image and video processing
Education
Master of Science in Computer Engineering
University of Parma, Italy
1994 – 1999
Final grade: 108/110
Thesis:
A Development Environment and Optimizer for MMX Coding
The thesis explored development tooling and optimization techniques for high-performance software using Intel MMX instructions.
Scientific High School Diploma
Liceo Scientifico “Ulivi”
1989 – 1994
Parma, Italy
Publications and conference presentations
During my university studies, I presented research on high-performance image processing and real-time vehicle guidance at international conferences:
- The Long and Winding Road to High-Performance Image Processing with MMX/SSE
CAMP 2000 - Addressing Real-Time Requirements of Automatic Vehicle Guidance with MMX Technology
IPPS/SPDP Workshops 1999
Areas of expertise
Engineering leadership
- Engineering organization management
- Hiring, coaching and career development
- Technical mentoring
- Distributed and international teams
- Product and programme strategy
- Roadmap and financial planning
- Stakeholder management
Software architecture
- Distributed systems
- Cloud services
- Control-plane architecture
- High-availability systems
- Embedded and robotics platforms
- Hardware and software integration
- Application lifecycle management
- CI/CD systems
Artificial intelligence and computer vision
- Computer vision
- Image and video processing
- Deep learning
- Machine learning
- Capacity forecasting
- Defect detection
- Logistics optimization
- Vision-language models
- Generative AI
Performance engineering
- High-performance computing
- Real-time software
- SIMD optimization
- Multithreading
- Video compression
Languages and platforms
- C++
- C#
- .NET
- Visual Studio
- Cloud and AWS architecture
- Embedded software
Certifications
- Diffusion Models and Image Generation
- Vision Language Models Bootcamp
- Advanced Prompt Engineering for LLMs
- Genetec Security Center SDK Workshop
- Genetec Security Center — Omnicast Technical Certification
Languages
- Italian: Native or bilingual proficiency
- English: Full professional proficiency
- Portuguese: Professional working proficiency
Contact
You can find more of my work and technical writing at Tommesani.com or connect with me on LinkedIn.
