Giovanni Mazza, Developer in London, United Kingdom
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Giovanni Mazza

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Bio

Gianni has over 20 years of experience developing applications with the LAMP stack and over 15 years with Ruby on Rails. Currently, he works for an edtech company based in London as a technical architect, tasked to re-architect the platform from an old monolith app to a modern stack using cutting-edge technologies. He communicates exceptionally well in Italian and English; his strengths are efficiency, competence, and organizational skills within a teamwork and on his own.

Portfolio

Thirdspacelearning LTD
Amazon API, APIs, Amazon CloudWatch, SDKs, Agile Software Development...
Thirdspacelearning LTD
Docker, PostgreSQL, Node.js, Sinatra, Ruby on Rails, Ruby, MySQL, SDKs...
Dan Halper
Ruby on Rails, Jira, Regex, MySQL, Ruby, Git, Ruby on Rails API, SCSS...

Experience

MySQL - 20 yearsRuby - 15 yearsRuby on Rails - 15 yearsRSpec - 15 yearsPostgreSQL - 13 yearsAWS Lambda - 3 yearsAmazon API - 3 yearsAWS Step Functions - 3 years

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Docker, Bitbucket, GitHub, AWS Step Functions, Amazon API Gateway, AWS Lambda, Kubernetes, AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM), SDKs, Amazon CloudWatch

The most amazing...

...app I implemented was a well-architected serverless platform orchestrating Rails services using AWS-managed services like API Gateway and Step Functions.

Work Experience

Technical Architect | Back-end Lead

2022 - PRESENT
Thirdspacelearning LTD
  • Implemented the back- and front-end pattern using the AWS API Gateway backed by AWS Step Functions to orchestrate Rails services.
  • Implemented a tool to automatically generate architecture diagrams and documentation starting from the middleware layer, extending the CDK to generate documentation during the synthesis process.
  • Fostered in the company the culture of well-architected cloud native applications following the principles of the 12 factors methodology.
Technologies: Amazon API, APIs, Amazon CloudWatch, SDKs, Agile Software Development, AWS Lambda, AWS Step Functions, AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM), Git, GitHub, Ruby on Rails, Prompt Engineering

Senior Full-stack Engineer

2019 - 2022
Thirdspacelearning LTD
  • Maintained a monolith Ruby on Rails app developed by a previous team in the last five years.
  • Designed a tool to automate the developer to start working on the platform, cloning the repository, creating the database, importing a staging dump, setting up the developer environment, and checking the platform's status locally.
  • Implemented several new features to keep the app up-to-date with the support team's requirements.
  • Designed the new version of the edtech platform app to break the monolith into several different RoR API services (user management, bookings, sessions, reports, and contracts).
  • Maintained the testing framework for the edtech platform; almost 100 new tests were added, and more than 200 tests were updated.
Technologies: Docker, PostgreSQL, Node.js, Sinatra, Ruby on Rails, Ruby, MySQL, SDKs, Amazon API, AWS Step Functions, AWS Lambda, AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM), Kubernetes, TypeScript, RSpec, Structurizr, Regex, Git, Ruby on Rails API, GitHub, React, Agile Software Development, Postman, SCSS, ECMAScript (ES6), HTML, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Test-driven Development (TDD), MacOS, Linux

RoR Developer

2020 - 2021
Dan Halper
  • Developed the back end of an app to manage real estate contracts to help people handle property buy and sell exchanges.
  • Tracked and fixed bugs in the existing platform using Jira as a tracking tool.
  • Implemented new features using the TDD methodology by implementing specs before the feature itself.
  • Implemented the auto-generation and publication of the swagger file to help communicate efficiently with the front-end team.
Technologies: Ruby on Rails, Jira, Regex, MySQL, Ruby, Git, Ruby on Rails API, SCSS, ECMAScript (ES6), HTML, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Test-driven Development (TDD), MacOS, Linux

Main Developer

2006 - 2019
Hgo Srl
  • Designed and built, from scratch, the framework for both the back end (PHP) and the front end (jQuery) of a complete ERP system currently used by thousands of customers across Italy.
  • Designed and built an ecosystem of microservices with Ruby on Rails to create a series of services related to the CMS and eCommerce.
  • Designed and built the communication API with PHP for the ERP app for the new reactive front-end app.
  • Supported the front-end team with the initial test of the new front end.
  • Introduced the TDD methodology across the company.
  • Introduced the Agile methodology across the company.
Technologies: Vue, jQuery, Prototype Framework, JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, Ruby, PHP, Web Scraping, MySQL, Regex, Git, Ruby on Rails API, CSS, Agile Software Development, ECMAScript (ES6), HTML, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), MacOS, Linux

Thirdspacelearning

https://thirdspacelearning.com
An intervention program software that helps pupils boost their KS2, SATs, and GCSE performance with the help of real tutors across the word. The platform manages tutors' contracts, students' assessments, teachers' planning sessions, and admin operations.

Mathshub

https://mathshub.thirdspacelearning.com
A math resource hub for maths to help teachers to improve their lessons. The CMS organizes and correlates resources, and the API serves millions of requests using an efficient caching mechanism to reduce the load on the database.

UnoERP

https://unoerp.it
An ERP system to help small/medium-sized company to manage their business. The software manages resources, accounting, warehouse, tasks, tickets, etc. As a sole developer, I built the framework and most of the modules for the ERP system.

DoF Calculator and CameraDB

iOS app to calculate the depth of field (DoF). The app scraps data from the web to build a database of cameras and lenses to help the user carefully calculate the DoF without knowing the spec of the camera or the lens. The app searches, for example, images taken with the same camera and the same lens via Flickr API.

Resty

http://resty.eu
A microservices ecosystem built to set up CMS, eCommerce, newsletter, and other services by activating just the services the customers need. The ecosystem was coordinated by a centralized house-made orchestrator.

Subnotify

The Subnotify app indexes the followed TV shows and gets a notification on iOS devices when a new subtitle is available. The app implemented a few smart features to match user preferences with TV shows, maintaining a database of TV shows, episodes, and actors to suggest new releases to users actively.

Thirdspacelearning (v2)

https://www.thirdspacelearning.com
As a technical architect, I've been tasked to re-architect the old platform to improve scalability, reliability, and observability.

I chose AWS serverless technology to achieve our goal, and I implemented the BfF pattern with AWS API Gateway and the SAGA pattern using AWS Step Functions. The observability goal has been reached using Amazon CloudWatch to trigger alarms and notifications when an unhandled error happens.
2000 - 2006

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science

Università degli studi di Catania - Catania, Sicily, Italy

Libraries/APIs

jQuery, Ruby on Rails API, Vue, Node.js, React

Tools

Git, RSpec, Postman, AWS Step Functions, Amazon CloudWatch, Structurizr, Bitbucket, Jira, GitHub

Languages

Ruby, JavaScript, Regex, HTML, HTML5, CSS, SCSS, ECMAScript (ES6), TypeScript, PHP, Swift

Frameworks

Ruby on Rails, Prototype Framework, Sinatra, AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM)

Paradigms

Agile Software Development, Test-driven Development (TDD)

Platforms

iOS, MacOS, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), AWS Lambda, Docker, Linux, Kubernetes

Storage

MySQL, SQLite, PostgreSQL

Other

Web Scraping, APIs, Amazon API, Text Mining, SDKs, Prompt Engineering

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