Employee Spotlight: Marco Stenico

Name: Marco Stenico

Location: Trento, Italy

Position: Senior Software Engineer

“Why don’t you get yourself a real job?” is the most common question Robocorp’s Senior Software Engineer, Marco Stenico, gets when he starts talking about his profession. In Northern Italy, where he lives, software development isn’t the most sought-after career, but it was the obvious one for Marco. After all, he has been into complex problem-solving his whole life.

“I actually got into computers around the age of six when I built a carton box computer and probably never grew out of it,” he laughs and continues, “During my high school years, I studied Latin and Greek because I wanted to become an archaeologist, but in the uni, I ended up studying Computer Science. During my work life, I have realized that meetings and politics are really not for me as I’ve always preferred fast-moving environments where getting things done beats deliberation.”

Luckily for Robocorp, having a bias for action where decisions are reversible was part of the company's DNA, so when Marco started interviewing for this early-stage tech startup with high ambition levels, it was clear there was a match. However, before accepting the job offer, he wanted a hands-on feel for the products but had to ask for private access to Robocorp Control Room since nothing was publicly available.

– Marco joined the team in our early days and has played a significant role in solving several tough engineering problems. His superpower is combining theoretical foundations all the way from scientific research with a solid implementation into a tangible, shippable product. (Sampo Ahokas, VP of Engineering & Co-founder, Robocorp)

Today, Marco has worked at Robocorp for nearly 3 years. He started off by developing features for the Control Room but eventually got interested in a unique project for speeding up the migration of existing Gen1 RPA bots to Robocorp.

“It was in one of our weekly engineering demos that I first heard the discussion around the Conversion Accelerator, and I was immediately drawn to it. I felt my background would fit the project perfectly,” Marco says and continues, ”The work had already begun, but the first iteration focused on building separate converters for each Gen 1 vendor while the vision was to build a sort of universal converter. So I ended up changing the architecture, unifying the different converters, and building an intermediate representation that could describe any imperative language – at least in theory.”

– Marco's a very valuable member of the team. His work around this Conversion Accelerator is instrumental in helping customers successfully move off of legacy RPA tools and onto Robocorp's platform. (Chris Etheredge, VP of Sales & Customer Operations, Robocorp)

Through his employment at Robocorp, Marco has worked fully remotely from his hometown, Trento, near the Dolomites. Remote work perfectly fits Marco's life as it gives him complete freedom to organize his days. On weekdays, Marco takes care of his well-being by following the same daily routine, and outside of working hours, he prefers to stay away from computers.

“I don't even own a smartphone; it’s healthier that way!” he laughs and adds, “So when I am out, I am out. I spend my free time cycling up and down the mountains, and on the weekends, I might take a trip for almost 300 km. It feels a bit like yoga to me and is the only thing that truly allows me to zone out and recharge.”

But now, it’s back to work as Marco needs to complete a task that harmonizes the APIs for the Converter. "It's just housekeeping and, honestly, a pretty boring task, so I prefer to do it as soon as possible to get to move on to the more interesting stuff… but please, don't tell my manager I said that!” he jokes and continues*, "It's actually really important that we keep up with our homework every once in a while.”

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