About
Hello! I'm Dario, a Junior Cloud-Native Engineer passionate about how great software actually runs in production. I hold a Master's degree in Computer Science with honors (110/110) from the University of Salerno, specializing in Software Engineering & IT Management.
I recently completed an Erasmus+ Traineeship as a Research Assistant at the Jheronimus Academy of Data Science in the Netherlands. There, I engineered frameworks to bridge proprietary configurations with open standards and contributed to the go-puccini open-source compiler by implementing TOSCA 2.0 support.
I believe the best way to learn is by building. That is why I actively maintain a production-grade bare-metal Kubernetes Homelab. I treat this cluster as a living environment where I experiment daily with strict GitOps principles using Flux, Cilium (eBPF), and Ansible to tackle complex infrastructure challenges.
Here are a few technologies I've been working with recently:
- Kubernetes
- Terraform
- AWS / Azure
- Ansible
- Python / Go
- Flux CD (GitOps)
- Docker
- Linux
Experience
's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands
Research Assistant Intern (Erasmus+ Traineeship) Jheronimus Academy of Data Science
Engineered ReTOSCA, a Proof-of-Concept framework to reverse-engineer AWS Terraform configurations into TOSCA 2.0 standards, resolving mapping ambiguities via a deterministic pipeline and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG).
- Implemented full TOSCA 2.0 standard support for the go-puccini open-source compiler using Go; the contribution was validated and merged into the official repository used by the global community.
Education
Master's Degree in Computer Science Università degli Studi di Salerno
Final Grade: 110/110 with honors
Major in Software Engineering & IT Management
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science Università degli Studi di Salerno
Final Grade: 110/110 with honors
Apple Foundation Program: Secured admission (ranked Top 10 among 65+ applicants) to develop an AR iOS game using Swift and ARKit within a 4-week intensive framework.
Projects
Bare Metal Kubernetes Homelab
A production-grade hybrid infrastructure designed for resilience and security, bridging local bare-metal nodes with Microsoft Azure resources.
- Hybrid Infrastructure: Engineered a platform combining bare-metal nodes and Azure resources via Terraform and Ansible, with a GitOps workflow using Flux CD.
- Disaster Recovery: Automated business continuity through Azure Blob Storage for off-site backups and persistent storage management with Longhorn.
- Zero Trust Security: Enforced security by integrating Microsoft Entra ID (OIDC) and Azure Key Vault (via External Secrets) for centralized RBAC and secret management.
AWS Enterprise & Serverless Architectures
A comprehensive portfolio of AWS Cloud Engineering & DevOps projects, moving from core infrastructure to complex serverless and AI integrations using industry-standard tools.
- GenAI Customer Support Agent: Built a ticket management system using Amazon Bedrock for sentiment analysis and intent classification on EC2/RDS.
- Serverless FinOps Dashboard: Developed a 100% serverless tool with Lambda and Cost Explorer API to monitor spending and track AI/ML costs.
- Website Uptime & Reliability Monitor: Engineered an event-driven system with Lambda and DynamoDB to validate service availability beyond basic ping checks.
- Automated S3 Backup System: Implemented off-site backup automation with S3 Lifecycle Policies and MD5 checksums for incremental transfers and tiering to Glacier.
Puccini TOSCA Compiler
Major contribution to the Go-based open-source TOSCA compiler to support the new 2.0 grammar specification.
- TOSCA 2.0 Support: Implemented the full grammar specification for the updated standard, mapping new definitions into the existing compiler architecture.
- Maintainer Status: Promoted to core repository maintainer by the project creator following successful integration and validation of contributions.
ReTOSCA Repo private for paper publication
A Proof-of-Concept (PoC) framework to reverse-engineer AWS Terraform configurations into TOSCA 2.0 standards.
- Deterministic Pipeline: Developed a mapping engine to translate cloud infrastructure intent into standardized TOSCA topology templates.
- AI-Driven RAG: Researched and explored a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) approach to resolve complex semantic mapping ambiguities.
CodeSmile
Contributed to the official PhD research repository by implementing local fine-tuning of Qwen2.5-Coder to detect ML-specific code smells, integrated within a Dockerized FastAPI microservices architecture. Orchestrated a robust CI pipeline integrating Unit, Integration, and System testing, which skyrocketed test coverage from 0% to 82%, ensuring reliable deployments for the ML-driven features.
Certifications
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Automation with Ansible
RH294 - RHA (Ver. 9.0)
Getting Started with Linux Fundamentals
RH104 - RHA (Ver. 9.1)