Raffaele
Pizzari
I build teams, ship products, and write about what makes engineering actually work.
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About
Building products
& growing teams
I'm Raffaele, a Senior Engineering Manager at Quantilope in Munich, Germany. With over two decades of experience, I've built, maintained, and improved digital products with a particular emphasis on front-end development, team leadership, and delivering innovative products to market.
Ensuring inclusivity is a top priority for me. I firmly believe that cultivating a diverse, safe, and respectful workplace and releasing products accessible to all is a collective responsibility. Outside work, I spend time with my fantastic family, explore photography, stay active through sport, play chess, build passion projects under pixari.dev, and coach fellow developers.
What I value
Principles I
lead by
Inclusivity is non-negotiable
Diverse teams build better products. I actively work to create environments where everyone feels safe, heard, and empowered to contribute their best ideas.
Learn in the open
I share what I know and what I don't. Writing, teaching, and making mistakes publicly builds trust and accelerates growth for the whole team.
Ship, then iterate
Perfection is the enemy of progress. I believe in getting meaningful work into users' hands early and improving based on real feedback, not assumptions.
Amplify, don't gatekeep
My job is to make the people around me better. I coach, pair, and share context so the team grows stronger with every sprint, not more dependent on me.
Simplicity is a feature
The best architecture is the one the whole team can understand. I push for straightforward solutions over clever abstractions, because maintainability outlasts brilliance.
Own the outcome, not the ego
I care about impact, not credit. Whether a great idea comes from a junior developer or a stakeholder, the goal is always the same: build something that matters.
Experience
Where I've made
an impact
Senior Engineering Manager
Leading engineering team, building and improving a consumer insights platform.
Product Engineering Manager
Led projects and teams of developers, analyzing, designing, building, and implementing system components for clients. Developed system specifications, testing plans, and solutions requiring in-depth evaluation across JavaScript frameworks, Node.js, AWS, and Docker.
Course Creator
Designed and recorded a JavaScript programming course for the e-learning platform.
Senior Front-End Developer
Developed a web platform connecting insurance companies and customers through dynamic forms and document management. Built and maintained a Design Styleguide and Component Library, migrated an existing React MVP, and implemented CI/CD pipelines.
Full-Stack Developer
Built web-based geo-marketing products displaying large amounts of geo-data on interactive maps, including market data and demographics. Worked with Geoserver handling massive datasets on both server and client side.
Software Developer
Developed software in C# for configuring and managing smart carts and devices used in warehouse logistics. Designed interfaces for stand-alone software on smart carts and executed tests directly in warehouses.
Founder & CEO
Founded and led a company designing, creating, and maintaining web applications and advertising campaigns. Managed a team of professionals, executing communication strategies and driving business growth through digital marketing.
Teacher & Academic Tutor
Taught Multimedia and Online Journalism for the "Production cultures, journalism and multimedia" master's degree. Academic tutor for web and new technologies applied to journalism. Assistant Professor for Multimedia Publishing.
Junior Web Developer
Built web solutions for the Ministry of Education using C#, HTML, and CSS. Developed an internal search engine for Hewlett Packard as part of a third-party team.
Writing
From the blog
I built the tool my public-speaking anxiety needed
A zero-friction teleprompter for talks and Zoom: no signup, no backend, with a compact mode that keeps you looking at the camera instead of the script.
Read post →How I Built My Perfect Family Budget App in Just 3 Days
Frustrated by budget apps that couldn't tell me where my money went, I built my own with Next.js and automation—and got real visibility in days.
The Year I Stopped Apologizing for the Chaos
Parenting young kids while leading a team: on guilt, the myth of balance, and finally refusing to apologize for being human.
The Abundance Trap: Why We Are Renting the Future
AI doesn't abolish scarcity—it reorganizes it. Why cheap output hides who controls the real choke points: compute, energy, and capacity.
Fun Projects
Things I build
for the love of it
BlaBla Teleprompter
A web-based teleprompter with voice-paced scrolling, smart tags for speech markers, and a refined reading experience. Built from scratch through 10 iterative design cycles.
blabla.pixari.dev →MarkMySlide
Constraint-based grid layout system for dynamic presentations. Sophisticated React/TypeScript architecture with flexible slot-based composition.
markmyslide.pixari.dev →pixari.dev
My personal blog where I write about engineering, AI, development practices, and lessons learned building products and leading teams.
pixari.dev/blog →Bonus Level
Career Climber
A tiny platformer through my career — jump from Rome to Munich, collecting skills along the way.
Arrow keys or WASD to move · Space to jump · On mobile, use the on-screen controls
Publications
Academic work
Subjectivity and activism of the Purple Movement in Italy
Research publicationLa giostra multimediale 2.0
Research publicationEducation & Credentials
Background &
certifications
Production Cultures, Journalism & Multimedia
Communication & Media Studies
AWS Certified Developer, Associate
Amazon Web ServicesItalian
Native or BilingualEnglish
Full ProfessionalGerman
Professional WorkingTestimonials
What people say
I had the privilege of working alongside Raffaele at Accenture Song. He consistently demonstrates a genuine willingness to assist, support, and mentor less experienced colleagues. Through numerous pair coding sessions, I learned extensively. His patience and eagerness to explain concepts have significantly contributed to my professional growth. Raffaele stands out as a remarkably positive, supportive, and kind colleague.
Working with Raffaele is a certainty of success. Creative, competent and reliable. Able to transform complex things in simple actions. Raffaele is a detail-oriented manager who watches the goal target like a hawk without losing the strategic objective.
Raffaele has a very positive predisposition to teamwork and he uses a well defined perspective, being exceptionally creative at the same time. His innate curiosity allows him to be always well-informed and highly knowledgeable about all the innovations in his field.
Raffaele is very detail oriented. Great quick thinker. His frameworks for crisis management on social networks are awesome. A great professional to work with.
Raffaele è uno sviluppatore e CEO molto attivo, ben organizzato e competente. I lavori svolti sotto la sua supervisione sono sempre risultati veloci e ben strutturati.
I have had the pleasure of working with Raffaele. I think that he is one of the most professional people I know: having a great ability to work hard, he is a very efficient person.
Raffaele was precious in our team introducing some effective web developing tools and contributing effortfully to the content creation and publishing.
Invidio la visione che Raffaele ha del web. È un "enthusiast" nel senso stretto del termine: affronta ogni progetto con una carica invidiabile.
Un ottimo professionista, Raffaele, e con una spiccata vocazione per il lavoro di squadra. Mi ha colpito per la passione, la disponibilità e la capacità di integrare con successo le idee altrui.
Raffaele è un manager scrupoloso, pieno di idee e di creatività, segue il progetto nei minimi dettagli ed è sempre attento a raggiungere gli obiettivi fissati.
Raffaele è stato il mio superiore durante un'esperienza di stage presso EgoRego. Determinato nel suo lavoro, disponibile e attento alle richieste di clienti e dipendenti, è un professionista giovane, ma estremamente capace.
Ho conosciuto Raffaele alla LUMSA, quando entrambi eravamo collaboratori di cattedra di editoria multimediale. Raffaele è una persona precisa e concreta.
Professionale, puntuale, preciso. Persona dinamica seria ed affidabile.
Contact
Let's build
something together
Open to collaborations, consulting, and conversations about AI-driven development.