Salvatore Zaza
Software Developer & Tech Enthusiast
"Of course it works, I did it myself!"
— Salvatore Zaza
Software Developer & Tech Enthusiast
"Of course it works, I did it myself!"
— Salvatore Zaza
I wrote my first lines of code on a Commodore 64 — and never stopped. What started as a kid's fascination with making machines obey turned into a Computer Science degree and a career built on that same instinct: figure out how things work, then make them work better.
But I've always been drawn to understanding how the universe works. After working in software, I went back to university to study Physics and Advanced Technologies, diving into astrophysics research and eventually working at CERN on particle physics experiments.
Today, I bring together both worlds: the analytical rigor of scientific research and the practical skills of software engineering. Whether it's building distributed search engines, real-time monitoring systems, or cloud infrastructure, I approach every challenge with curiosity and precision.
Currently, I work as an independent researcher and developer, focusing on AI research and software/app development. This allows me to explore cutting-edge technologies while building practical solutions that solve real problems.
📄 Download CVA journey from enterprise software to particle physics and back
Led major architectural improvements for institutional repositories and digital libraries serving thousands of users worldwide. Key achievement: Complete replacement of legacy search infrastructure with modern Elasticsearch-based architecture. Worked remotely with international team using Scrum, building highly customized Invenio-based systems.
Developed a comprehensive monitoring system for the High Level Trigger of the CMS experiment. Built a custom Java plugin for Elasticsearch to decouple user queries from monitoring workload, and created an Angular.js dashboard actively used in the CMS Control Room.
Administered and customized Labware LIMS, an Oracle-based system managing Quality Assurance data for vaccine production and environmental monitoring. Developed SQL procedures, plugins, and Crystal Reports for pharmaceutical compliance.
Bachelor thesis on sampling electronics for the SST telescope camera of the Cherenkov Telescope Array. Developed a PyQT GUI for hardware configuration and data acquisition from silicon photo-multipliers using the TARGETv5 chip.
Personal cloud infrastructure built with Terraform on AWS. Automated deployment pipeline for multiple websites with CloudFront CDN, S3 storage, and Infrastructure as Code principles.
Starting from BASIC on a Commodore 64 to building enterprise-scale systems, my journey has been guided by constant curiosity. Computer science studies gave me fundamentals, physics research taught me rigor, and years of professional experience refined my craft.