I hold a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rome Tor Vergata.

Since September 2016, I have worked on the design and verification of RISC-V processor architectures for Stream Data Processing, and related compiler technology, such as LLVM and MLIR.

My PhD Thesis was the culmination of 6 years of research on RISC-based architecture for 100+ Gbps Network Packet Processing.

Starting in November 2021, I fully transitioned to industry, where I led multiple design and verification projects in the RISC-V space, particularly in AI Accelerators and IP Cores.

Here is my latest resume.

⚠️ Statements in this section are deliberately strong and polarizing. I’ve been in the B2B consulting business long enough to know that it’s best to separate who’s a fit from who isn’t right off the bat.

Defining a clear list of who’s a fit to work with me would be way too reductive than defining a list of who isn’t.

In the past, I’ve had a hard time working with the following:

• W-2/Employee relationship. I only work on a contractor basis through my LLC, assigning all the IP to my customers. All the revenue from consulting goes into cash-flowing real estate, that’s my 401(k) + health insurance.

• Hybrid/On-Site customers. I live on a Villa on an sun-kissed island. There’s not enough money in this World to make me consider a relocation and/or travelling for an all-hands meeting. I’m remote.

• Project-based customers. I don’t do project quotes, no matter how well written your specs are. My compensation is based on a negotiable hourly rate for a minimum commitment of 40h/week for at least 9 months. If you need a temporary solution to cover for somebody who left while you search for a permanent hire, I’m definitely not a fit.

• Stock-based compensation. For me to consider this, be ready to go through a two-pronged test: “Can I sell the stocks NOW?” and “Can I borrow against it NOW?” If the answer is no to both, it means there’s no third party willing to accept the stock certificate as currency or collateral, so why should I?

• Customers with less than 12 months of runway on approach. No matter how hard I tried, I’ve never been able to dig a customer out of a hole.

• Technical interviews. I invest at most a couple hours with a prospective customer to figure out if we’re a match or not. Be sure to check my open source projects before asking for a technical interview. 100% of the codebases are written and maintaned by me. That should give you a pretty good idea of my range.

• Communication. I’m an async-first kind of guy. If your organization relies exclusively on meetings to get stuff done, I’m not a fit. Ink on paper (or the digital version of it) is still king when it comes to bandwidth. I rarely do slides, I do memos. On the other hand, I expect to have at least a 30min 1:1 with the person I report to per week.

On the other hand, I’m EXTREMELY flexible on the following:

• Statement of Work. You pay for my entire skill set, not a subset of it. C/C++, Linux Kernel Drivers, SystemVerilog, Assembly, VHDL, UVM, PCB Design, you name it. Projects have various phases, I cover most (if not all) of them.

• Hours. My workday starts at 9AM UTC through 11PM UTC, Monday through Saturday, with occasional breaks when the swell is good. I’m fortunate enough to live on a beautiful island where I can surf almost every day, I don’t need time off.

• IP Assignment. I don’t plan to do any product soon, and all the libraries I use are mine and already free and open source. Whatever I build in the context of our collaboration, is yours to keep.

If you made it this far and didn’t bounce, feel free to drop me an email. I’ll get back to you usually within 48h.