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Justin Italiano

Software Engineer

Hi, I'm Justin — a software engineer based in Amherst, MA. Most recently I spent two and a half years at FTL Labs Corporation, building full-stack software across multiple SBIR research projects: web applications with Python, Django, TypeScript, and React, desktop applications with WPF (.NET), and services containerized and deployed with Docker.

At FTL Labs I led the company's first Department of Transportation project — authoring the winning Phase I proposal and serving as Principal Investigator, coordinating with the government's technical point of contact and delivering reports and presentations.

Before software, I worked for several years as a transportation engineer at the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, then earned a master's in computer and information technology from the University of Pennsylvania. That blend of engineering and programming shapes how I approach problems today.

When I'm not coding you can find me hiking, biking, or playing classical music on the piano.

Thanks for visiting my website and have a wonderful day!

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Education

M.S. Computer & Information Technology

University of Pennsylvania — Philadelphia, PA

August 2023GPA: 3.84

M.S. Civil Engineering

University of Massachusetts — Amherst, MA

May 2019GPA: 4.0

B.S. Civil & Environmental Engineering

University of Massachusetts — Amherst, MA

December 2014GPA: 3.53

Graduate Coursework

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Big Data Analytics
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Networked Systems
  • Computer Systems Programming
  • Algorithms and Computation
  • Data Structures and Software Design

Skills

Languages

  • Python
  • Java
  • C
  • C++
  • JavaScript
  • TypeScript
  • HTML
  • CSS
  • R
  • SQL

Frameworks & Libraries

  • Django
  • React
  • PyTorch
  • WPF (.NET)
  • Pygame

Tools

  • Git
  • Docker
  • Excel
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Experience

Software Engineer ↗

February 2024 – June 2026

FTL Labs Corporation — Amherst, MA

  • Developed full-stack software across multiple SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) projects, building web applications with Python, Django, JavaScript/TypeScript, and React and desktop applications with WPF (.NET), and containerizing and deploying services with Docker.
  • Led the company's first Department of Transportation (DOT) project, authoring the winning Phase I proposal and expanding the firm's work beyond its longstanding focus on Department of Defense (DoD) contracts.
  • Served as the project's Principal Investigator, executing the Phase I effort, coordinating meetings with the government Technical Point of Contact (TPOC), writing reports, and delivering presentations.
  • Python
  • Django
  • React
  • TypeScript
  • WPF (.NET)
  • Docker

Transportation Engineer ↗

May 2019 – June 2022

Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) — Philadelphia, PA

  • Applied a complex regional travel demand model to obtain forecasts for future traffic volumes and transit ridership in the Delaware Valley region.
  • Developed a new, more efficient post-processing Python script that processed model run results and tabulated them into Excel files for later use in other analyses.
  • Diagnosed and fixed model crashes and other computer bugs.
  • Utilized MOVES, an emission modeling system, in conjunction with the regional travel demand model to determine the effect of transportation projects on regional air quality.
  • Python
  • SQL
  • Excel

Research Assistant ↗

January 2018 – May 2019

University of Massachusetts — Amherst, MA

  • Analyzed comprehensive operational data including mileage, GPS, on-time-performance, and fueling data from the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority Paratransit Van Service using R, SQL, and Excel.
  • Developed a model to predict delay experienced by passengers using the paratransit service.
  • Studied data from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and used a clustering analysis to predict how a passenger's choice of transportation was affected by an experimental pilot program.
  • R
  • SQL
  • Excel

Earlier — Transit Operations

Driver Supervisor ↗

May 2011 – June 2018

UMass Transit — Amherst, MA

Supervised daily bus operations and incident response, trained new drivers for their CDL road tests, and operated PVTA buses on fixed routes.

Bus Driver ↗

Summers 2012 & 2014

Transit Connection Inc. — Edgartown, MA

Operated buses on Martha's Vineyard during the peak tourist season.

Motorcoach Operator ↗

April 2013 – September 2013

Peter Pan Bus Lines — Springfield, MA

Operated coach buses throughout the Northeast, including NYC, Hartford, and Boston.

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Projects

Scrabble game screenshot

Scrabble ↗

  • Created a scrabble game in Python using Pygame that enables users to compete against the computer.
  • Implemented a trie data structure to store the dictionary and facilitate fast lookup of words and prefixes.
  • Developed an algorithm that allows the computer to generate high scoring moves extremely quickly.
  • Python
  • Pygame
  • Algorithms
  • Data Structures
  • Git

PennSearch

  • Parsed network topology data and constructed a routing table for each node using link state and distance vector routing protocols in the NS-3 network simulator.
  • Implemented chord, a distributed hash table, as an overlay network on top of the underlying routing protocol.
  • Built a keyword-based search engine on top of it that published document metadata to the network and performed distributed searches.
  • C++
  • Networking
  • Git
  • Docker

Sudoku Solver

  • Designed a program that read a partially filled sudoku board and used inference, the Arc Consistency (AC-3) algorithm, and backtracking to efficiently find a solution.
  • Python
  • Algorithms
  • Data Structures

Covid-19 Data Analyzer

  • Developed a Java program that parsed Covid-19 vaccination rates, property values, and population demographics for Philadelphia and performed various computations based on user input.
  • Java
  • Data Structures
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Contact Me

Have a question, an opportunity, or just want to say hi? Send me a message and I'll get back to you soon.

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