Hey there! I'm .Dario.
I'm a CTO and software engineer who once traded whisks for keyboards. Based in Prato, Italia, I build things for the web and lead engineering teams — bringing the same obsessive attention to detail I learned plating dishes in professional kitchens.
From Kitchen to Terminal
People always ask me how I ended up in tech after years behind a stove. The honest answer? The skills are more similar than you'd think. A busy kitchen teaches you to decompose complex problems into small, parallelizable tasks. You learn that preparation is everything, that communication under pressure is non-negotiable, and that the details nobody notices are exactly the ones that separate good from great.
“ Mise en place before you start cooking, taste as you go, and never serve something you wouldn't eat yourself. ”
After leaving the kitchen, I channeled that discipline into teaching. Over 2,000+ hours of frontend instruction — HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React — helping others discover the same creative spark I'd found. Teaching forces you to truly understand something, not just know it. You can't hand-wave when a student asks "but why?"
Then came the real test: building a ticketing platform for Florence's Duomo Museum that processed over 1 million tickets per year. Real users, real scale, real consequences if the system hiccupped on a summer morning with a queue stretching around the Baptistery. That experience cemented my belief that engineering is a craft — just like cooking. You plate a dish with intention; you ship a feature the same way.
What I'm Working On
Fractional CTO @ SpeakART
Helping SpeakART shape their technical vision and engineering culture as a Fractional CTO. I bring strategic architecture decisions, hands-on development guidance, and the experience of having built and scaled platforms from the ground up.
Outside the day job, I'm drawn to the problems that sit at the intersection of complexity and usability:
The Journey
Fractional CTO @ SpeakART
Technical strategy and engineering leadership for a growing platform. Architecture decisions, team guidance, and hands-on development.
CTO @ Trame Digitali
Built and scaled a SaaS platform for art management and insurance. 500K+ managed assets, 99.9% SLA. Led a team of 3 engineers. Architected the entire stack from database schema to deployment infrastructure.
Full-Stack Developer @ Weekend a Firenze
Built the ticketing platform for Florence's Duomo Museum. Processed 1M+ tickets/year with real-time availability, multi-language support, and integrations with on-site hardware.
Frontend Instructor @ Treeopen
2,000+ hours teaching HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and React. Designed curricula and mentored career-changers through intensive bootcamps.
Chef @ Various Restaurants
Precision, creativity, and grace under pressure. Learned to run a service like a well-orchestrated system — because that's exactly what it is.
Beyond the Code
When I'm not writing code, I'm either cooking or climbing. The kitchen taught me precision and creativity; the rock wall teaches me something different — reading a route before committing, trusting the rope, and knowing that the crux move is never the one you expected. There's a reason this whole site looks like a mountain.
Climbing and engineering share the same core loop: assess the problem, plan your sequence, commit to the move, adjust when the hold isn't where you thought it'd be. I chase multi-pitch routes across the Apuan Alps and the Dolomites whenever I can — the kind where you can't see the top from the base.
Every good project needs the right route. I'm always looking for the next wall worth climbing.