Massimo Cairo
Verified Expert in Engineering
Full-stack Web Developer
Vilnius, Vilnius County, Lithuania
Toptal member since November 22, 2021
Massimo wrote the first line of code at seven and won the first medal in an international programming competition at 16. He is currently a full-stack and web developer most fluent in React, although he has worked with a wide range of technologies in the past. He loves solving complex problems and, at the age of 30, he already has 20+ publications in algorithms and theoretical computer science. Massimo is also the founder and sole developer of DoYouNotes.com, a study tool for students.
Portfolio
Experience
- JavaScript - 7 years
- CSS - 5 years
- React - 5 years
- TypeScript - 5 years
- Back-end - 4 years
- Competitive Programming - 4 years
- HTML5 - 3 years
- Web - 3 years
Preferred Environment
Linux, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), React, TypeScript, Git, GitHub, JavaScript
The most amazing...
...project I've developed is DoYouNotes.com, a web-based app that lets students learn faster by adding and practicing questions directly on PDF notes.
Work Experience
Full-stack Developer
Humata (Tilda Technologies, Inc.)
- Optimized the latency of the main API endpoint (2-3x speedup), improving the user experience of all users interacting with the company AI assistant.
- Implemented a new LLM back end for the company's AI assistant based on Gemini, supporting multimedial input and reasoning.
- Took ownership of several projects involving the implementation of new major features, performance optimizations, maintenance, monitoring, etc.
Founder
Polipo, MB
- Implemented an automated Figma-to-React conversion tool, including a Figma plugin and a TypeScript library.
- Published the Figma plugin and the related package. Maintained the systems in production.
- Managed collaborators, including one software developer and one designer.
Front-end Developer
Non-Trivial Ventures
- Implemented a web-based application that provides interactive lessons, including the front end, back end, and database.
- Created and maintained a system to accept applications, screen candidates, and manage the selection process.
- Owned the maintenance for all the systems in production.
AI Researcher
Self-employed
- Created a generative AI for fonts from scratch, based on the Transformers architecture, using PyTorch.
- Developed the data transformation pipeline required to train the model efficiently on existing font files.
- Set up the infrastructure to train the model in the cloud, using GCP's Vertex AI custom training jobs.
Contractor
A Multinational Telco Group
- Designed and developed an AI-assisted editor, based on GPT-4 with vision capabilities, to be used internally to prepare requirement documents related to tagging website pages and app screens (MarTech).
- Integrated the OpenAI API with the back end, with support for streaming generated responses to the client and converting them into a structured format on the fly.
- Created a data pipeline to generate effective prompts using semi-structured internal company documents, free text prompts, and fully structured editor data.
- Implemented a front end using React, Chakra UI, and Firebase SDK.
Founder and Full-stack Web Developer
DoYouNotes
- Designed, developed, and published a web-based app that allows students to add and practice questions on PDF files. The app is production-ready, scalable, mobile-ready, cloud-synchronized, and offline-ready.
- Implemented a pixel-perfect web-based UI with mobile-native look-and-feel, responsive layouts, custom-tailored components and animations, drag-and-drop integration, high performance, and PWA support.
- Mastered advanced HTML5, CSS3, and modern web APIs such as Service Workers, IndexedDB, Canvas elements, Web Workers, Cache API, multi-touch events, drag-and-drop events, DOM manipulation, programmatic animations, History API, and more.
- Improved the app over time by collecting and analyzing usage data, both as analytics and session recordings. Tracked and optimized acquisition, onboarding conversion rate, activations, and retention rates.
- Prepared marketing material and marketed the app via video ads and other channels. Set up payments in the app and user-to-user referrals.
Web Developer
TaHo
- Developed the main company website from scratch using React and CSS-in-JS, with responsive and custom layouts, starting from the designs provided in Figma.
- Contributed to the development of the core product of the company, an open-source cryptocurrency wallet living in a web extension, integrating with the team and its processes.
- Analyzed and fixed bugs in a web (multi-browser) extension. Identified and mitigated performance issues, implemented new screens, refactored and improved the source code quality, and participated in code reviews.
Front-end Developer | Contractor
Geckosoft
- Developed a web-based PDF viewer with custom functionality using Angular and PDF.js and integrated it into a complex web application.
- Contributed to designing a custom blockchain implementation similar in functionality to Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (QLDB).
- Optimized the web-based PDF viewer's performance on large PDFs by using browser profiling tools and reducing the Angular-related overhead.
- Collaborated with a team of around ten people, following their best practices regarding agile development, code quality, and code reviews.
Machine Learning Engineer | Data Scientist | Software Engineer
BioBeats (Merged into Huma Therapeutics)
- Developed machine learning-based algorithms to process physiological signals in public datasets, such as ECG signal shape analysis and correlation with other physiological factors.
- Designed algorithms to process real-time data from smartphone and wearable sensors—for instance, to detect heart and respiration rate from motion sensors—and implemented them as part of mobile apps.
- Contributed to designing and developing an internal framework for the cross-platform implementation of data-processing algorithms in native Android and iOS apps.
Chief Back-end Engineer | Co-founder
Kiwi S.r.l. (defunct)
- Designed and developed REST APIs for our mobile apps, which tracked user location and allowed users to share content with other users nearby.
- Implemented an efficient spatial index for querying user locations on top of a non-spatial cloud database.
- Managed up to three back-end developers and oversaw the mobile front-end development regarding their integration with the back-end APIs.
Experience
Polipo - Figma Compiler
https://polipo.ioFigma layouts are automatically converted to an intermediate (JSON-based) representation with the addition of CSS. The intermediate representation is then rendered from React, allowing the use of custom tags and components, replacing content, and attaching event listeners to individual elements.
DoYouNotes
https://doyounotes.comI designed, developed, and published the app unassisted, including UI/UX design, copywriting, responsive front-end UI implementation, and offline-ready cloud synchronization.
International Olympiad in Informatics | Awards and Current National Committee Membership
https://ioinformatics.org/In 2007, I was the youngest participant and the youngest first-place winner ever of the Italian national olympiad. I won national first place two more times and made it to the national team four times, winning three international silver and one bronze medal.
I am currently a member of the Italian technical and scientific committee, contributing to designing and implementing problems for the national edition and selecting the national team.
Education
PhD in Mathematics
University of Trento - Trento, Italy
Master's Degree in Computer Science
University of Pisa - Pisa, Italy
Complementary Masters' Diploma in Mathematics and Computer Science (Full Scholarship)
Scuola Normale Superiore - Pisa, Italy
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
University of Pisa - Pisa, Italy
Skills
Libraries/APIs
React, Node.js, REST APIs, Vue, AG Grid, Stripe, Stripe API, OpenAI API, TensorFlow, Pandas, React Redux, PyTorch
Tools
Git, Algorithm Design, React Apollo, Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM), ChatGPT, Terraform, Sequelize, Stripe Checkout, GitHub, Prisma, MetaMask, Figma
Languages
TypeScript, CSS, JavaScript, GraphQL, HTML, ECMAScript (ES6), Python, HTML5, SQL, Java, Python 3, MDX, Rust, C++, C
Frameworks
Next.js, Android SDK, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), React Native, Angular, iOS SDK, Jest, AngularJS, Tailwind CSS, Express.js, Cypress, Redux
Paradigms
Responsive Web Design (RWD), Dynamic Programming, Database Design, B2C, REST, Automated Testing, Microservices, Test-driven Development (TDD), Linear Programming, Mobile Development, DevOps, B2B, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), UX Design, UI Design
Platforms
Web, Firebase, Docker, Android, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Linux, Mobile, iOS, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Vercel, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Google App Engine, Blockchain, Vertex AI
Storage
Google Cloud, Cloud Firestore, Databases, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB
Industry Expertise
Project Management, Healthcare
Other
Algorithms, Back-end, Competitive Programming, APIs, Architecture, Web Development, Full-stack, Performance, Front-end, Technical Leadership, CTO, Machine Learning, Optimization, Early-stage Startups, Software Architecture, Full-stack Development, AI Programming, PDF, Front-end Development, Back-end Development, SaaS, UI Components, Technical Architecture, Solution Architecture, Cloud, API Integration, SDKs, SDK Development, Startups, Chatbots, UI Development, Figma to React, Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG), AI Tools, Integration, Software Design, AI Integration, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), CSV File Processing, Apollo Server, Programming Language Design, User Experience (UX), CI/CD Pipelines, User Interface (UI), SVG Animation, Data Engineering, Leadership, Programming Languages, SVG, Data Architecture, Search Algorithm Design, Data Analytics, Cloud Infrastructure, Design Systems, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Authentication, Technical Writing, WebAssembly (Wasm), Mobile Apps, Large Language Models (LLMs), OAuth, Single Sign-on (SSO), Supabase, Vite, Security, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Vector Search, AI Agents, AI-generated Code, Consulting, AI Chatbots, Agentic AI, Vector Databases, Semantic Search, Tailwind UI, Dashboards, Data Processing Automation, Complexity Theory, Location Tracking, Mathematics, Data Structures, PWA, Progressive Web Applications (PWAs), WebSockets, Web Accessibility, Chrome Extensions, Gatsby, Web Extensions, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), OpenAI, OpenAI GPT-3 API, OpenAI GPT-4 API, Web3, Monorepos, Poker, Cryptocurrency, Gemini API, Storybook
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