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Cosimo Alfarano

@cosimoalfarano

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Principal backend engineer and system architect delivering scalable distributed platforms.

United Kingdom

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What I'm looking for

I’m looking for a hands-on backend and systems role where I can own architecture and delivery, lead teams, and build reliable distributed platforms with strong DevOps, security, and observability—while partnering with executives on product roadmaps.

I’m a Principal/Lead Backend Engineer and System Architect with 25+ years designing and delivering distributed systems, automation platforms, and developer tooling. I specialize in Python backend development, scalable system design, and modern DevOps/Platform practices across cloud and on-prem environments.

I’ve founded and scaled engineering products and organisations, leading teams of up to 50 people and taking systems from greenfield architecture to production at scale. I’m product-oriented and comfortable collaborating with executives and stakeholders to shape roadmaps—while staying deeply hands-on in architecture, coding, code reviews, testing, and continuous delivery.

In recent roles, I’ve built event-based service-oriented architectures with FastAPI and GraphQL endpoints, developed agentic systems for data analysis and KPI generation, and delivered automated verification pipelines as a system architect. My approach is security-conscious and reliability-first, grounded in SOLID, TDD/BDD, DDD/bounded contexts, and CI/CD with strong observability using Prometheus/Grafana and OpenTelemetry.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Principal Product Engineer

Current

Buttermilk

Apr 2026 - Present (3 months)

Founding engineer in the product department, building and deploying event-based service-oriented architecture on Google Cloud. Developed agentic systems for data analysis and KPI generation, exposing REST/FastAPI and GraphQL endpoints for agent workflows.

Docker Compose OpenTelemetry Next.js Python fastAPI GraphQL REST APIs Ariadne SQLModel Pydantic AsyncIO PostgreSQL Pub Sub Cloud Storage Podman

Senior Consultant, Backend Platform

Imagination Technologies

Jan 2025 - Dec 2025 (11 months)

Acted as system architect and end-to-end consultant to bootstrap a platform engineering capability supporting GPU verification automation. Designed automated verification pipeline platform components and established CI/CD and infrastructure-as-code practices using cloud and container tooling.

System Architecture Platform Engineering Kubernetes Bazel Prefect Terraform Helm Ansible Puppet fastAPI gRPC CI CD Infrastructure as Code

Misc Contracts

Various Companies

Jan 2025 - Mar 2025 (2 months)

Completed smaller Python and backend development contracts while waiting for a larger role.

Python Backend Development

Technical Director & System Architect

Agile Analog

Nov 2017 - Nov 2024 (7 years)

Led end-to-end software architecture from greenfield to production using service-oriented and domain-driven approaches, primarily in Python. Built a platform stack using Protocol Buffers/gRPC, FastAPI, and RabbitMQ, and grew the engineering organization with CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, and modern testing and design practices.

Python Service Oriented Architecture Domain Driven Design DDD Bounded Contexts Protobuf gRPC fastAPI RabbitMQ CI CD Containers Docker SOLID BDD Clean Architecture Infrastructure as Code

Principal Software & DevOps Engineer

Nokia

Nov 2013 - Nov 2017 (4 years)

Led DevOps transformation initiatives including OpenStack adoption, Docker, and CI/CD pipeline improvements to increase development and release efficiency. Developed backend components for a Python/C-based CDN and improved observability and reliability by integrating metrics and monitoring into test and deployment workflows.

DevOps OpenStack Docker CI CD Continuous Delivery Python C CDN Observability Metrics Monitoring

Software & Network Engineer

Pitbull Technology (Bologna)

Jan 2000 - Jan 2009 (9 years)

Built scalable web applications and networked systems and delivered consulting projects across software and network engineering. Often served as a bridge between business and technical stakeholders.

Web Application Development Consulting

Software & Network Engineer

Publicis Dialog (London)

Jan 2000 - Jan 2009 (9 years)

Built scalable web applications and networked systems, including transitions from legacy platforms to more modern architectures. Delivered consulting engagements across software and network engineering, bridging business and technical stakeholders.

Web Application Development Legacy Modernization Consulting

Researcher - Digital Watermarking

Italian National Research Council (CNR)

Jan 2006 - Jan 2008 (2 years)

Developed digital watermarking systems to secure documents, including research, prototyping, and presentation work for national conferences.

Digital Watermarking Research Prototyping

Software Engineer (Security & PKI)

Altafuente / Kelyan SMC

Jan 2000 - Jan 2004 (4 years)

Designed and implemented secure PKI systems, including TLS and LDAP protocol libraries and related infrastructure. Worked on secure communication and identity management components.

PKI TLS LDAP Security Communications Identity Management

Senior Software Engineer (OSS)

Collabora Ltd.

Contributed to significant Linux ecosystem open source projects and system-level automation and integration work, primarily in C and Python on Linux. Worked on areas including Debian packaging, GNOME, D-Bus, Linux Security Modules, and ChromiumOS.

C Python Debian Packaging GNOME D Bus Automation