user@massimogollo.cloud ~ $

Massimo Gollo

About Me

I like understanding why systems break, and building them so they don’t. That curiosity led me from a PhD in Distributed Systems at the University of Catania to production Kubernetes clusters, where I learned that elegance on a whiteboard rarely survives first contact with real traffic.

These days I split my time between backend engineering, infrastructure automation, and a growing obsession with LLMs. I’m currently interested in fine-tuning LLM for domain-specific tasks and figuring out how to deploy them without melting the hardware budget.

When I’m not debugging YAML or staring at Prometheus dashboards, I’m probably over-engineering my homelab or convincing myself that this side project will actually get finished.

Latest Posts

Skills

Languages
Python Golang Java Shell Swift C
Infrastructure
Docker Kubernetes OpenShift Proxmox Nginx
Automation
Ansible Terraform Helm GitLab CI/CD Operators
Observability
Prometheus Grafana Jaeger Istio
Data
PostgreSQL MySQL Redis Kafka

Experience

Software Engineer Jan 2026 - Now
Italy
  • Provisioning and managing bare-metal infrastructure to deliver reliable and scalable cloud services
PhD Research Consultant Oct 2022 - Nov 2025
Italy
  • Designed cloud-native architectures leveraging Kubernetes for orchestration of distributed workloads
  • Developed MLOps pipelines using Kubeflow and Apache Airflow for automated ML workflows
Software & AI Engineer Mar 2025 - Nov 2025
Italy
  • Led COAT project (EU-funded, NGI Sargasso / Horizon Europe): on-premise LLM inference with Ollama/vLLM, fine-tuned Qwen3 with Unsloth
Visiting PhD Researcher Jan 2025 - Jul 2025
Palaiseau, France
  • Built Kubernetes Event Generator to simulate workloads, node failures, and scheduler configurations
  • Research on distributed systems scheduling and resource management in cloud-native environments
Teaching Assistant Sep 2022 - Feb 2025
Catania, Italy
  • Distributed Systems & Big Data (LM-32): Tutoring on distributed computing and cluster technologies
  • Programming Techniques for Distributed Systems (LM-27): Lab sessions on distributed programming
  • Object Oriented Programming (L-8): Lab sessions on Java programming, student exercises and projects
Software Engineer May 2021 - May 2022
Catania, Italy
  • Developed microservice backends (Python, Golang) for IoT and mobile apps (WeeNet, Ruppu, YouSpeed)
  • Managed Kubernetes deployments, GitLab CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure with Prometheus monitoring

Education

PhD in Computer Engineering | University of Catania, Italy
2022 - 2025
Thesis: Decision Support System in Quality of Service Application Performance Management
Professional License | University of Catania, Italy
2022 Grade: 95/100
Ingegnere dell’Informazione Sez. A
Master's Degree in Computer Engineering | University of Catania, Italy
2018 - 2022 Grade: 110/110 cum laude
Thesis: Resource Allocation with Multiple Offloading Options in Cloud-Edge Scenarios
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering | University of Catania, Italy
2014 - 2018
Thesis: Sentiment Analysis on Web Comments Using Azure Machine Learning

Conferences & Workshops

Grifin Workshop on AI, Networks & Cybersecurity | Sorbonne University & LINCS
Apr 22-23 2025 Paris, France
AI, Science & Society Conference (AI Summit) | Institut Polytechnique de Paris
Feb 6-7 2025 Palaiseau, France
WETICE: International Conference on Enabling Technologies | IEEE
Jul 23-25 2025 Catania, Italy
WETICE: International Conference on Enabling Technologies | IEEE
Jun 26-28 2024 Reggio Emilia, Italy
RESTART Plenary Dissemination Workshop
2025 Catania, Italy
VIII Mediterranean School of Complex Networks (PhD School)
Jun 25-30 2023 Catania, Italy

Publications