From low-noise to high-power. From mechanics to finance. From 5 engineers to 40.
Years
21
Organizations
15
Disciplines
11
Patents
3
I have never had a job where I didn't take the thing apart myself — the instrument,
the laser, the converter, the firmware, the dataset. That is the whole method. Natural
systems run on the same equations, so failures rhyme across fields, and the shape of a
problem is usually recognisable before it has a name. I would rather be wrong with a
position than useless without one.
Products don't fail in the middle of a discipline. They fail at the seams.
Six boundaries where deep-tech products come apart. I have worked both sides of every
one of them, which is the only reason I can tell you what happens there.
01
Mechanics ↔and electronics
Power electronics is a mechatronics problem in an electrical costume.
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Both sides
Mechanics and mechatronics at technical school, and a year at an
instrument-maker's bench before any of the electronics. Since 2016: magnetics
design, thermal paths, shielding and mechanical integration on automotive
high-voltage converters.
The transfer
DRAFT GAP — one or two sentences from Riccardo: the specific occasion when
mechanical reasoning (tolerance stack, thermal path, volume fill, shielding
geometry) located a fault that the electrical analysis could not see.
Why it matters
A converter that passes on the bench and fails in the product usually failed at
packaging, tolerance stack, thermal path or volume fill. None of those appear on
the schematic, so a team reading only the schematic looks in the wrong place for
weeks.
02
Hardware ↔and firmware
You cannot debug a control loop from one side of the interface.
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Both sides
Five years of freelance embedded hardware and firmware — PIC32, MSP430, Kinetis,
embedded Linux, Ethernet and USB bridging. Later, converter hardware design, then
test automation in Python, pytest, CAN tooling and LabVIEW.
The transfer
DRAFT GAP — one or two sentences from Riccardo: a fault that was reported as a
hardware problem and turned out to be a firmware assumption, or the reverse, and
what let you see it.
Why it matters
The most expensive faults in a power product live in the gap between what the
hardware does and what the firmware assumes it does. A team that owns only one
side spends its time reporting the other side's bug.
03
Component ↔and system
Device physics and system architecture are the same argument at different zoom levels.
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Both sides
Device-level work at Politecnico di Torino: GaN electro-thermal characterization
and physics-based libraries for organic-FET circuits. Later, system architecture,
requirements traceability and V-model verification for high-power platforms.
The transfer
DRAFT GAP — one or two sentences from Riccardo: a system-level specification that
device physics showed to be unbuildable, or a device limit that changed an
architecture decision.
Why it matters
System requirements written without device limits produce specifications no
component can meet. Device choices made without the system produce parts nobody
can integrate. Both failures are discovered late and cost a platform cycle.
04
Bench ↔and homologation
A measurement nobody will accept is not evidence.
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Both sides
Laboratories and test benches stood up from nothing — fixturing, instrumentation,
safety procedures, calibration, automated execution and nightly regressions. And
the acceptance side: EMC campaigns with external labs, CE and UL, ISO 26262,
ASPICE, ISO 9001.
The transfer
DRAFT GAP — one or two sentences from Riccardo: a campaign where knowing the
certification requirement changed how the bench measurement was designed, and what
that saved.
Why it matters
Teams routinely measure the right thing in a form no auditor, customer or
certification body will accept — and then re-run the campaign at the worst
possible point in the schedule.
05
Engineering ↔and customer
Field complaints are not requirements — and they are not noise either.
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Both sides
Fifteen years inside development. Then an Application Engineering function
established from the ground up — new to the business at the time — defining its
mandate, processes and customer-facing delivery model. Since 2026, technical
business development reporting to a CEO on datacenter and storage markets.
The transfer
DRAFT GAP — one or two sentences from Riccardo: a field issue that arrived as a
vague complaint and became a reproducible test with an acceptance criterion, and
what the engineering side had been getting wrong about it.
Why it matters
A field issue arrives as a story. It has to leave as a reproducible test with an
acceptance criterion, or nothing gets fixed twice and the customer relationship
pays the bill.
06
Judgment ↔and AI and data
The same reasoning that stabilises a control loop prices an option.
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Both sides
Two decades of power-electronics control, signals and stability. And options
analytics — gamma, term structure, skew — built in Python on cloud compute, plus
test-data lakes, engineering dashboards and AI-assisted workflows.
The transfer
DRAFT GAP — one or two sentences from Riccardo: the concrete piece of
power-electronics reasoning that carried over into options modelling, or the
quantitative habit that changed how you read engineering test data.
Why it matters
A model goes deep on one thing and is blind one centimetre to the side. The
judgment about which deep answer matters comes from having stood on both
sides of the boundary where the thing breaks. That part is not in the model.
Power-electronics validation, Technopark Zürich.
2005 – 2026
I never planned this. I followed the problems.
2005
The bench
Instrument-maker's apprenticeship, after technical school in mechanics, mechatronics
and energy. I started by taking things apart.
2008
Politecnico di Torino
Organic-electronics RFID, GaN electro-thermal characterization, ultra-low-noise analog
for optics, FPGA predistortion for power-amplifier linearization — and freelance
embedded work in parallel from the first year.
2010
Electro-optics
Laser rangefinding systems: low-noise analog sitting a few centimetres from high-power
laser drivers, with FPGA and microcontroller control. Three patents.
2013
Critical power
Single- and three-phase UPS from 500 VA to 1 MVA. New-product-introduction
lead, CE and UL certification, AC/DC, DC/DC and DC/AC across the whole range.
2016
Automotive high voltage
Powertrain electronics — DC/DC at 400, 48 and 12 V — topology evaluation,
magnetics, EMC concepts and filter design, functional safety under ISO 26262 with
FMEA and FMEDA.
2021
The organization
Head of System, Test and Application Engineering: the system-engineering organization
grew from 5 engineers to 40, laboratories were built in-house, and Application
Engineering was established from zero. Quantitative-finance work started in parallel
the same year.
2023
Two tracks
Senior quantitative finance at MenthorQ — options analytics, pipelines, automation —
while advising a semiconductor supplier's application-engineering team. Control-loop
thinking meets options analytics.
2026
Today
Technical Business Development Manager at BRUSA HyPower, reporting to the CEO on
datacenter and storage markets. Guest lecturer in power electronics and systems at
HTWG Konstanz. Independent advisory alongside both.
Writing
Notes from the engineering bench.
What I get wrong, what transfers between fields, and where software, data and AI earn
their place in physical-product engineering.
I have limited hours, and I would rather say that than waste yours. What fits:
a technical scale-up assessment, advisory, workshops, a second opinion on architecture
or a verification strategy. What does not fit: embedded delivery.
If the project is worth discussing I will say so, and if I cannot help I will tell you
that instead.
Ask me. The writing, the tools and the answers are free. You will be running this
industry in twenty years, and honestly I learn as much from these conversations as
you do.
Start with the notes, or write to me on LinkedIn and tell me what you are stuck on.
