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Alessandro Bahgat

Software Engineer & Manager

I work on Travel features at Google, where I lead a team of engineers working on a brand new product. I get to tackle business and technical challenges while also growing a great team.

Previously, I worked as a consultant in Europe, where I helped a number of companies across several different domains and technologies. I also learned a great deal about the human factors involved in delivering software projects. 😉

You can find out about my professional activity in the Experience section below.

Before starting my career in the industry, I spent some time at the Artificial Intelligence laboratory of the University of Milano–Bicocca and published articles on Genetic Algorithms, Neural Networks, Cellular Automata and Natural Language Processing.

On this site you will also find information about things I created (alone or with friends) and some things I wrote. Any opinions stated here are my own, not necessarily those of my company.

If you would like to get in touch, the best way to do so is to email me .

Recent Posts

Receiving Feedback Is A Skill

Delivering feedback is a critical part of my day job as a manager at Google. However, it took me a while to realize that receiving feedback is one of the skills that helped me grow the most in my career. Here a few things I learned in the process.

Programming Machine Learning

A book written with developers in mind, covering Machine Learning with a hands-on approach. Each new topic is introduced by laying out a real world problem, guiding readers through implementing a working solution based on ML algorithms and then explaining the theoretical foundations in a very accessible way.

The programming puzzle that landed me my job

And how solving it required a truly full-stack solution, covering web development, data structures and memory optimization

What to look for when hiring

A while ago, I found myself in the enviable position of having to rapidly grow my team. Here a list of the most important characteristics I learned to value in anyone I work with, regardless of job function.

Visual and HTML Testing for Static Sites

I set up a CI/CD pipeline to test my website for markup and rendering issues. It proved to be so useful that I can not imagine going back.

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Projects

Things I built on my spare time

I love building software so much that I spent some of my spare time writing code, from algorithms and data structures to small products and web applications. Below some examples: some of them grew to become quite successful.

In addition to those items you see here, I participate to hackathons and conferences and work on other smaller projects. You can find some more of the code I wrote on GitHub .

Safish

An App for Android to get advice on which types of seafood are safe to eat while pregnant or breastfeeding, based on mercury levels.

Did You Mean? for Redmine

Fewer duplicate issues with this Redmine plugin.

Java Generalized Suffix Tree

A Java implementation of a Generalized Suffix Tree using Ukkonen’s algorithm supporting fast (<0.1 ms) lookups over a large set of strings.

BitLet - Bittorrent applet

100% web-based bittorrent streaming and download. No client needed.

Novlet

Platform for collaborative non-linear story writing.

Experience

More on LinkedIn

 
 
 
 
 

Staff Software Engineer

Google

February 2014 – Present Cambridge, MA

Part of the Google Travel team, led several successful user-facing features from inception to launch and contributed to many more. Notable examples:

Currently managing a team of engineers working on a brand new product in Travel.

 
 
 
 
 

Technical Solutions Engineer

Google

June 2012 – January 2014 Amsterdam, Netherlands

Worked with airlines and travel agents to integrate their products with technology built by ITA Software by Google.

Built the first version of a set of tool that enabled partners and customers to fulfill common tasks by themselves.

 
 
 
 
 

Senior Consultant

NTT Data Italia

November 2007 – May 2012 Milan, Italy

Technical lead responsible for the design and development of several enterprise applications based on a diverse set of technologies, ranging from pure backend to full stack.

Routinely worked with clients across several industries (finance, retail, media and others) both during the sales process and later on as analyst and advisor.

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