Gianmario Spacagna
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
Rome, Metropolitan City of Rome, Italy
Toptal member since February 11, 2013
Gianmario is a hands-on AI leader with 13 years of professional experience and deep expertise in machine learning, data science, and AI product development. He has led teams and built scalable AI systems for startups and global companies alike. With a strong mix of technical depth and strategic vision, Gianmario helps organizations turn complex AI challenges into real, measurable business impact.
Portfolio
Experience
- Java - 4 years
- Bash - 3 years
- C - 2 years
- C++ - 2 years
- Scala - 2 years
- PHP - 1 year
- Erlang - 1 year
- C# - 1 year
Preferred Environment
Git, Unix, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Python
The most amazing...
...product I've built is a shared memory infrastructure that enables coding agents to learn from each other, which led to spinning off The Memory Company.
Work Experience
Principal AI Engineer
Moonsong Labs
- Led the research and development of Spark, an agentic shared memory system enabling coding agents to share experiential knowledge and foster active learning.
- Architected Spark’s core components, spanning knowledge extraction and curation pipelines, agentic search (vector and graph-based), feedback loops, automated data seeding, and LLM-driven reasoning and coding capabilities.
- Drove experiments, optimizations, and cloud deployment that brought Spark’s technical vision to life and led to the spin-out of MemCo.ai (The Memory Company).
- Partnered with MemCo’s founding team (CEO and CTO) to define the product roadmap, technical infrastructure, and go-to-market and distribution strategy—supporting technical demos, fundraising, and partnerships.
Director of Artificial Intelligence
Brainly
- Partnered with the CTO to define and execute the company’s AI strategy, identifying technology opportunities that shaped product direction and business priorities.
- Built and led the AI Services Department, scaling 40+ professionals across multiple teams, defining processes, culture, and career paths, and mentoring around 10 team leads to drive agility and high performance.
- Delivered 25+ AI models to production, enhancing personalized learning experiences for over 350 million users worldwide.
- Spearheaded Brainly’s MLOps platform and infrastructure, automating the machine learning lifecycle to improve efficiency, reliability, and scalability.
- Unified research, engineering, and product efforts, providing technical leadership on POCs and production systems to ensure state-of-the-art AI integration across Brainly’s ecosystem.
Chief Scientist, Head of AI
Helixa
- Defined and executed the AI roadmap, aligned with company vision, customer needs, and financial goals, leading to a successful company acquisition.
- Built and led a high-performing cross-functional AI team sourced from top 1% talents, coaching their career and mentoring them to excel in technical quality.
- Developed proprietary AI algorithms that analyzed billions of social media interactions, uncovering statistically significant insights while preserving consumers privacy.
- Reduced infrastructure costs by 90% by migrating Helixa’s legacy architecture to a serverless distributed system, delivering real-time insights in under 10 seconds and achieving previously unattainable performance levels.
- Delivered compelling presentations on proprietary AI solutions, such as the Audience Projection algorithm, strengthening Helixa's reputation in the scientific and tech communities.
Senior Data Scientist
Pirelli
- Developed five ML models for connected vehicle products (Pirelli Connesso and Cyber™Fleet), enabling predictive insights into tyre wear and pressure, improving customer safety and efficiency.
- Enhanced business decision-making by delivering granular monthly sales forecasts sliced to product segments and global markets.
- Coordinated two innovative research projects with the Polytechnic of Milan, advancing AI-driven automotive solutions.
Data Scientist, AVP
Barclays
- Designed predictive models for mortgage sales teams, boosting lead conversion rates through targeted recommendations.
- Created algorithms for SmartBusiness Insights, transforming raw data into actionable dashboards for thousands of retail clients.
- Developed a merchant entity resolution and record linkage system to normalize transactional data with local shops and branches.
Data Scientist
Cisco
- Pioneered data feed quality evaluations, ensuring the integrity and reliability of data used in analytics.
- Developed advanced pattern recognition techniques for identifying and blocking malicious web domains.
- Enhanced cybersecurity measures by integrating data-driven insights to proactively detect and prevent harmful web threats.
Big Data Software Engineer Intern
AgilOne
- Developed an R&D project relating to parallel genetic auto-tuning systems for big data machine learning algorithms ("TunUp").
- Studied state-of-the-art techniques for model fitting and machine learning.
- Tested and evaluated performance of algorithms over many datasets and compared said performance with other non-heuristic techniques.
- Designed all solutions to exploit parallelism using the Amazon cloud infrastructure.
gTech Engineer Intern
- Implemented end-to-end features aimed at improving internal reporting and data analysis platform.
- Translated customer requirements into technical specifications.
- Integrated code and re-factored architecture of existing complex systems.
- Submitted 14,000 lines of reviewed Java code into production, including 35% back-end services and 65% UI based.
- Designed and developed a web user interface for the aforementioned features.
- Designed data model and implemented physical representation using BigTable.
Experience
Spark
https://www.memco.ai/Works with all major IDEs as an MCP
Seamlessly integrate with your favorite development tools.
Education
Master of Business Administration - MBA in Business Administration and Management, General
Quantic School of Business and Technology - Washington DC
Master's Degree in Software Engineering of Distributed Systems
KTH Royal Institute of Technology - Stockholm, Sweden
Master's Degree in Computer and Communication Networks Engineering
Polytechnic of Turin - Turin, Italy
Bachelor's Degree in Telecommunications Engineering
University of Cassino - Cassino, Italy
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Scalding, EasyMock, X (formerly Twitter) API, Facebook API, jQuery, Claude API, PyTorch, Scikit-learn
Tools
MapR Tables, Tableau, Adobe Fireworks, Git, Adobe Photoshop, MATLAB
Languages
Scala, Java, C, C++, CSS, PHP, Python, Erlang, Bash, C#, Ruby
Frameworks
GWT, Swing, Guice, Ruby on Rails (RoR), JUnit, Hadoop, Google Protocol Buffer, JavaServer Faces, JPA, LangGraph, Apache Spark
Storage
Apache Hive, HBase, BigTable, NoSQL, MySQL, MongoDB
Paradigms
Functional Programming, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Agile Software Development, Constraint Programming, Imperative Programming, Serverless Architecture
Platforms
Linux, MapR, Apache Pig, Unix, Eclipse, Drupal, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS), X (formerly Twitter)
Industry Expertise
Telecommunications
Other
Protocol Buffers, Machine Learning, Watchmaking Industry, Ajax, Strategic Planning, Data-driven decisions, Leadership, Software Engineering, Distributed Systems, Computer Networking, Large Language Models (LLMs), OpenAI, OpenAI GPT-4 API, Cursor AI, Tavily, Agentic AI, Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Strategy, Big Data, Information Retrieval, Forecasting, Regression, Internet of Things (IoT), Advanced Analytics
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