Fabio Lonegro

What did you do before you joined Deltatre?

I studied theoretical physics, but my journey was a bit complicated as I decided to switch to a technical career. I still read scientific papers, but I had a passion for the web in general as I've always been fascinated by the way it can link people around the world.

Why did you join Deltatre?

When I heard about Deltatre, it was one of the few places in Turin where the technology was cutting edge. I joined the company for the London Olympic Games to work on the video player.

Can you tell us about some of your projects?

I worked with many large clients and international broadcasters like FOX. From there, I’ve been a part of some of the bigger projects in the media, as well as within the build team working on some of the first OTT projects like NFL Game Pass, FOX Soccer Match Pass and FINAtv.

Then, after the first OTT experiences at Deltatre, I was selected to join the platform team where I led the development of the Amplify OTT platform, a common asset that can be adopted in different projects. This is what I did until recently, and now I’ve joined a different team to work on a new OTT project.

What does a ‘standard’ day in your job involve?

Right now I’m basically leading the technological developments on Amplify and OTT projects in general. We have meetings where we decide the approach, and I also like to have informal sessions – it’s good because we are a team of experts in many domains so we’re able to merge different points of views and ways of doing things.

There are also many different calls with clients and colleagues because OTT is a complex ecosystem that has many development components. For example, when we talk about OTT, we also talk about videos and content, so we have to interface different modules from different parts of the business.

What's different about the technology?

Deltatre historically has in some way written new technologies because it has always anticipated trends.

We are trying to adopt and standardise recent approaches in terms of containerisation, clusters, and cloud infrastructures for high scalability. These kinds of technologies have been around for the last five years or so, but when you use these technologies at a larger scale, you need to do things differently.

How does that work?

We are essentially adopting the devOps approach, so our teams are writing the lines of code that are mainly based on .NET Core, which is an open source framework released by Microsoft. But at the same time, we are using our pipelines to directly control where this code is delivered in a cloud environment, so we are using continuous integration and delivery pipelines to obtain results.

The kind of technology we are using is quite young, but at the same time there’s a lot of people working on it, so best practices are already a reality. We are following them while defining our own – sometimes we need a different approach to meet our internal requirements of security, performance, and overall quality.

What is it about the technology that you enjoy?

Something that I really appreciate is the fact that we are continuously learning and experimenting with new technologies. The beauty of working here is that when things change, Deltatre is really open to embracing new technology and using it. It’s exciting because new things usually take a long time to become standard, but that’s not the case here. We’re always innovating.

How has the company changed since you joined?

We are adopting technologies on a large scale right now and in my team, we are driving this change. There's also been a transition from in-house infrastructure to the cloud.

How do you think the technology will change?

It’s hard to say what will happen in the future, but one of the things I imagine could be quite interesting is serverless technologies. We’re trying to understand the capabilities of this and how they can be used at a large scale in an enterprise environment.

Do you enjoy working in a role where you must adapt?

Of course.

Why?

Because I’m driven by passion, and if you do the same stuff over and over again, your passion can wear out. For me, it’s fundamental and I’m lucky because I’ve worked on many different OTT projects so I’m now recognised as one of the experts in the field.

How important is teamwork to your role?

To deliver successful projects, single people are not the solution. You have to start from ground zero where you build your team and try to define a common language and approach. Of course, roles should be clear, but at the same time, a team should find its own shape and then success comes naturally.

What do you like to do outside of work?

Well, I’m a Capoeira teacher, I started around 20 years ago. It’s a way to have fun by gathering together to sing, dance, and move.

Has your hobby influenced your professional life?

Well, not directly because I can’t exactly jump on my desk! But, yes, in terms of teamwork.