Angelo Lamonaca — My story
from day one
012009
A game server, at fifteen
Metin2 private server
A friend and I ran a private Metin2 server from my home PC: C++ on the server, MySQL underneath, and no public IP, so players connected through Hamachi. I wrote the registration page in HTML, JavaScript and PHP. It lasted six days — and it was the first time other people used something I had built.
The original thread, 2009
022011 — 2016
Computer science, formally
High school diploma · computer science and telecommunications
Five years at the Istituto Luigi di Savoia in Chieti for a technical diploma: databases, data structures, networks, and the first real programming courses. The vocabulary for everything I had been doing by instinct.
032019
Economics and computer science
Bachelor’s degree as a working student
I enrolled at the Università G. d’Annunzio in Pescara for a degree that combines the two on purpose: algorithms, databases and web development on one side, econometrics and data mining on the other. I paid for my room by waiting tables at weekends.
042020 — 2021
Blockchain Italia, then eFM
My first job as a developer
When COVID closed the restaurants I went looking for a programming job and found one in my second year: Blockchain Italia, remote from Milan — Java and Spring Boot, TypeScript and Angular, AWS — where I ran my first query against a production database and understood the word responsibility. Six months later, alongside it, eFM in Rome: enterprise Java on a platform used by most of Italy’s largest companies, Scrum, code review, and consulting for a team in Germany. I passed every exam that year.
052021
Adference, and a move to Berlin
Junior full-stack engineer · Germany
With a year of production work behind me I interviewed abroad and took the most interesting offer, not the best paid: Adference, near Hamburg, which optimised Amazon advertising campaigns with machine learning years before ChatGPT. I built product features on that platform — Angular and TypeScript, Java microservices — and moved to Berlin, working remotely and visiting the office monthly, with the third year of university followed at a distance.
062022
The thesis, the degree, and Inselspital Bern
Bachelor’s thesis · neuroinformatics team, Switzerland
My thesis was a web-based DICOM viewer in React and Three.js, and while writing it I found the neuroinformatics team at Inselspital Bern building the real thing — real scans, real patients. I joined them, moved to Switzerland, and switched from Angular to React for good. I graduated that summer, 100/110. The role was on site beside a cardiology ward through COVID, eight hours a day in a mask; I asked for remote, the hospital could not allow it, and after three months I moved on.
072022 — 2024
HolidayCheck
Full-stack engineer · two and a half years, fully remote
HolidayCheck, a Swiss-German travel platform, was rebuilding its team after the downturn. I joined the Premium team and spent two and a half years on the paid side of the product: React and Node, vouchers, discounts, benefit eligibility and subscription payments, on Google Cloud. My longest engagement, and the closest to what I do today.
082022 — 2025
A master’s at HSLU, alongside the job
MSc in Engineering (Computer Science) · Lucerne
That autumn I started the MSc in Engineering at HSLU Lucerne on top of full-time work: VR, Unity, DevOps, and a capstone on browser integration in Unity VR. I reached the programme’s time limit with two exams still outstanding, before the degree could be awarded.
092024
Going freelance
Independent full-stack engineer
After two and a half years I left HolidayCheck to work for myself. Freelancing turned out to be a second job called running a business — accounting, contracts, finding the next project — on top of the engineering. I had underestimated it. I would do it again.
102024
GenVista and RunGen.ai
Founder · two startups, one still running
The first thing I did with that freedom was build companies. Neuramare, on my own, became GenVista: subscription AI image and video generation — tens of thousands of community models on serverless GPUs with a warm/cold cache — now with 280 active subscriptions across web, the App Store and Google Play. RunGen.ai, with a co-founder, set out to make AI model deployment simple; we did not raise, and it is closed. Both taught me the founder’s side of the table.
112025 — 2026
Ecoflows
Main client: DMU-Consult · fourteen months
At The Pool, a one-week prototype contest hosted at Google Munich, I met the people who became my main client. I built the Ecoflows platform for DMU-Consult — software for handling recycled material on large construction sites — end to end in Next.js, Node, Java and Python. Around it, three small sites: Osteria N.1 in Berlin, a civil engineer in Abruzzo, an Ayurveda therapist in Zürich.
12Now
Writing the next chapter
Open to the next project · full-stack, remote
From a six-day server to production systems people pay for — that is the path so far. The next chapter is not written yet. If you are building something, I want to understand it properly and build the whole thing, in Italian, English or German. Thirty minutes, free, no obligation.
