How we met
When I opened my freelance VAT number in 2021 I wondered how to find clients, and my search led me to the Cosmico Italia website. It was a young company, I didn't know them yet. I signed up as a freelance developer and over those years they backed me so I could work on their clients' projects: a collaboration that in April 2024 turned into something more...
The call
One day Cristina, who I was in touch with, calls me and asks if I'd be available to work on an internal Cosmico project. Surprised and honoured, I say yes straight away. So she sets up a call with Rinaldo (Festa): we do the interview and click immediately. Over the next days he introduces me to the project and the rest of the team: that's where I meet Viktor (Bonino) and the others, and they walk me through the project.
Almost everything had to be rebuilt
They were trying to give their company a new technological face: they wanted to automate most of the processes around screening, selecting and matching talent to their clients' job offers. Almost everything had to be rebuilt.
So I start building the backend, backed by another developer, together with my in-house team. I design the database, define the stack and build a real framework for the whole REST API side, because in that context using NestJS or Django would have been overengineering, while Express or FastAPI would have been too «bare». I built a light, reusable framework, ready for all the AI integrations the data team would later hand us.
Online in 3 months
In 3 months the new onboarding and the talent profiling are ready and go online. From there we handle all the support and start working on the whole new backoffice for the Cosmico team: two-way integrations and syncing with their CRM, flow automation, match tracking and so on.
One challenge after another, in a company in full scaleup, including integrating the database of the newly acquired Flatmates.
In short, a really lively place.
How it ended
The collaboration ends in July 2025: the product had reached maturity and Cosmico was ready to grow, moving its budget to the branches focused on expanding the company.
From this experience I take away a lot of road travelled in the scaleup world and, above all, two great friendships: with Rinaldo and with Viktor.
