PLAYER 1 READY · ODEMIRA, PT

RICCARDO
DE LEO

SOFTWARE ENGINEER · CTO-LEVEL

Fourteen years, four countries, one keyboard. I architect software that ships, stays up, and keeps production boring — so users never are.

▶ PRESS START

Ciao! Bem-vindo — scroll down, my world awaits. ↓

■ CHARACTER SELECT

WHO IS THIS GUY?

Riccardo De Leo
actual player photo

LV.14 ENGINEER

CLASS:
Software Architect / CTO-level
ORIGIN:
Messina, Italy
BASE CAMP:
Odemira, Portugal
PARTY:
1 wife · 2 kids · 2 dogs
LANGUAGES:
IT · EN · ES fluent · PT loading…
MOTHER TONGUE:
PHP (strong DDD accent)

More than a decade behind the keyboard, a good stretch of it in leadership seats — up to CTO. I follow a product through its whole life: architecture, code, payments, deploys, and the unglamorous parts that keep it all standing.

Six years in the UK made my English — business accent included — fluent, working for top-tier companies from fintech to national utilities. Then six years under the Torrevieja sun did the same for my Spanish. The search for peace, nature and a field to work brought me to the Alentejo coast. Gardener at heart. The dogs review my code — strict but fair.

  • ARCHITECTURE +96
  • LEADERSHIP +93
  • GREEN THUMB +99

■ SKILL TREE

XP EARNED SINCE 2012

TDD evangelist since before Composer was a standard. No skill points wasted.

  • PHP · LARAVEL · SYMFONYLV 96
  • DDD & TDDLV 94
  • PAYMENTS & E-COMMERCELV 92
  • NODE.JS & VUE.JSLV 88
  • DOCKER · K8S · TERRAFORMLV 86
  • AI & MLLV 84

■ QUEST LOG

NOTABLE QUESTS

A selection from the log book. Full walkthroughs on request.

LEGENDARY ■■■■■

RODODEMIRA

Every bus, taxi and driver of the concelho de Odemira on one map — timetables in 12 languages, live routes, free forever. Built solo, for my neighbours.

  • Community
  • 12 languages
  • Live maps
✓ FREE FOREVER+9999 XP
ORIGIN STORY ■■■■■

ALIENGINE

First company, founded in Messina: earned a 5-star rating on Freelancer.com, engineered QuadrigaCX's crypto cold vault, and built Valente Design’s e-commerce platform alongside award-winning founder Stephan Pierantoni.

  • Founder
  • ★★★★★ Freelancer.com
  • Crypto vault
✓ COMPLETED+5000 XP
EPIC · 8 YEARS ■■■■■

FINTECH BOSS FIGHT

Principal Developer → CTO at CoVi Analytics, London. Doubled the team, re-architected the codebase with DDD, kept production OWASP & PCI-DSS compliant.

  • DDD
  • Fintech
  • Leadership
✓ COMPLETED+8000 XP
EPIC ■■■■■

PAYMENTS EVERYWHERE

Payment integrations for WooCommerce, Magento & BigCommerce at WeGetFinancing (US) — then onward into SRE with Terraform, Kubernetes and Ansible.

  • E-commerce
  • Payments
  • SRE
✓ COMPLETED+6400 XP
SIDE QUEST ■■■■■

OPEN SOURCE DROP

Architected the GDPR plugin for SuiteCRM at Unipart — a multi-billion global logistics group — then open-sourced it. Still alive on GitHub. Loot for everyone.

  • Open source
  • GDPR
✓ SHARED+3200 XP

■ WORLD MAP

THE ROUTE SO FAR

Fourteen years, four countries, one line. Every stop taught me something.

  1. 2012

    FOUNDER — ALIENGINE · MESSINA, IT

    First company. Five stars on Freelancer.com, with clients worldwide — including engineering QuadrigaCX's crypto cold vault and building the e-commerce platform for France's Valente Design alongside award-winning founder Stephan Pierantoni.

  2. 2015

    IT OPS & DEVELOPER — FIRST UTILITY · WARWICK, UK

    Keeping a national energy provider's systems alive — servers, billing, monitoring, and PHP.

  3. 2016

    PRINCIPAL DEV → CTO — COVI ANALYTICS · LONDON, UK

    Eight years with a fintech: doubled the team, re-architected with DDD, stayed OWASP & PCI-DSS compliant.

  4. 2017

    LEAD DEVELOPER — KLOOD DIGITAL · MILTON KEYNES, UK

    Led the team shipping for Nestlé Professional, Volkswagen and the WorldChefs Academy platform.

  5. 2019

    SOFTWARE ENGINEER — UNIPART DIGITAL · CAMBRIDGE, UK

    Engineering inside one of the UK's largest logistics & manufacturing groups — billions in yearly turnover. Architected their open-source GDPR plugin for SuiteCRM, still on GitHub.

  6. 2020

    SENIOR ENGINEER — JAGAAD · REMOTE FROM TORREVIEJA, ES

    Event-driven microservices for TUI / Musement; led a five-person team for Zucchetti's Keesy smart-lock platform. New chapter: life in Torrevieja, Spain begins.

  7. 2022

    SENIOR ENGINEER — WEGETFINANCING · US, REMOTE FROM TORREVIEJA, ES

    Payments for WooCommerce, Magento & BigCommerce — then onward into SRE with Terraform, K8s and Ansible. Six years in Torrevieja in total: Spanish now fluent.

  8. 2025

    SENIOR ENGINEER — DONTOUCH SA · TICINO, CH

    Current contract — senior engineering, fully remote from the Alentejo coast.

  9. ?

    NEXT STOP: YOUR PROJECT?

    This level unlocks when we start working together. Insert coin →

■ ARCADE FLOOR · NIGHT ZONE

ACHIEVEMENTS

Four are mine. Four are yours to unlock — right here, right now.

  • CTO ARC

    Principal → CTO at a London fintech. Doubled the team.

  • OPEN SOURCER

    GDPR plugin for SuiteCRM — free loot, still on GitHub.

  • POLYGLOT

    Native Italian, fluent English & Spanish — Portuguese loading.

  • BORING PROD

    Docker, K8s, Terraform. Zero-drama deploys since 2015.

  • LOCKED

    Flip the SFX switch up top.

  • LOCKED

    Score 12+ in Debug Dungeon below.

  • LOCKED

    A certain famous code… on your keyboard.

  • LOCKED

    Scroll to the very end of the map.

■ MINI-GAME

DEBUG DUNGEON

Bugs escaped the issue tracker. Steer the code snake with ← ↑ → ↓ or WASD and eat them — 12+ earns you an achievement. Don't bite your own tech debt.

BUGS 0 BEST 0

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