# Francesco Staccone

**Co-founder & CEO at [TravelTribe](https://traveltribe.com) (founding CTO). Backend Software Engineer at TWINT. Based in Zürich.**

Software Engineer by trade. Entrepreneur by heart.

Italian software engineer and entrepreneur. I co-founded TravelTribe in 2024, started as founding CTO and built the platform end-to-end, then took over as CEO to lead expansion and scaling while keeping the technical roadmap. Today TravelTribe is powered by **TribOS**, AI agents that help creators sell trips and experiences, with **2,500+ experiences booked, CHF 300K+ in revenue and 2× year-over-year growth**. In parallel, I'm Backend Software Engineer and Release Manager at TWINT (Value Stream Payment team) on the payment system. Previously software engineer at UBS (E-banking, Digital Mailroom) and CERN (CERNphone, ETL pipelines). MSc Computer Science 110/110 with honors at Politecnico di Milano, MSc Data Science at KTH Stockholm (final grade A). Awarded the Ermenegildo Zegna Founder's Scholarship in 2020.

**Email:** francesco.staccone@traveltribe.ch
**Web:** https://francescostaccone.com
**LinkedIn:** https://www.linkedin.com/in/fstaccone/
**TravelTribe:** https://traveltribe.com

## Selected work

### TravelTribe Platform — Co-founder & CEO (founding CTO) · 2024 → now
Started as founding CTO and sole technical founder; designed and built the full-stack platform end-to-end. Transitioned to CEO to lead expansion and scaling. Now powered by **TribOS** — AI agents that help creators sell trips and experiences. **2,500+ experiences booked · CHF 300K+ revenue · 2× YoY growth**.
**Stack:** Java 21, Spring 6.6, PostgreSQL, React, AWS, Supabase, Sentry, Fly.io.

### TWINT Payment System — Backend SWE & Release Manager · 2024 → now
Switzerland's #1 mobile payment app. Backend Software Engineer and Release Manager in the Value Stream Payment team on the payment system and business-critical services (including SDPA-compliant reporting), overseeing releases across the ecosystem.
**Stack:** Java, Spring, Wildfly, Oracle DB, ElasticSearch, Kafka, Kubernetes, AppDynamics.

### UBS E-banking & Digital Mailroom — Software Engineer · 2021 → 2024
Microservices for secure account opening, money transfers, e-signature and archiving. High-traffic REST/SOAP APIs.
**Stack:** Spring, Java, REST, SOAP, PostgreSQL, Tomcat, Kafka, Docker, Kubernetes, Splunk.

### CERNphone — Full-stack SWE Intern, CERN · 2020 → 2021
Back-end for the Skype-for-Business replacement deployed across CERN. Real-time Kibana dashboards over ETL into Oracle and Elasticsearch.
**Stack:** Java, Spring, REST APIs, Microservices, Oracle, Elasticsearch, Kubernetes, Angular.

### Deep Learning for SAR Iceberg Detection — MSc thesis, KTH × Extreme Earth · 2019 → 2020
GANs + CNNs over SAR satellite imagery to detect drifting icebergs and signal positions to ships. Final grade A.
**Stack:** TensorFlow, Keras, Python, Pandas, NumPy, Jupyter, Google Colab.

## Journey

- **Milano · 2015 → 2019** — BSc + MSc Computer Science, Politecnico di Milano. 110/110 with honors.
- **Stockholm · 2019 → 2020** — MSc Data Science (Double Degree), KTH Royal Institute. Final grade A. Zegna Scholarship.
- **Geneva · 2020 → 2021** — CERN. CERNphone back-end and ETL pipelines.
- **Zürich · 2021 → now** — UBS → TWINT → TravelTribe.

## Stack

- **AI / ML:** TensorFlow, Keras, PyTorch, scikit-learn, NumPy, SciPy, Pandas, Jupyter, Google Colab, OpenAI Gym, Spark ML, MatLab. GANs, CNNs, RNNs, RL.
- **Backend:** Java 21, Spring Boot, Spring AI, Wildfly, Tomcat, REST, SOAP, JPA, Hibernate, Node.js, PHP.
- **Frontend:** React, Next.js, TypeScript, JavaScript, Angular, jQuery, Tailwind CSS.
- **Data:** PostgreSQL, Oracle, Elasticsearch, Kibana, Apache Kafka, Apache Spark Streaming.
- **Cloud:** AWS, Azure, Docker, Kubernetes, Fly.io, Supabase, Sentry, AppDynamics, Splunk, Red Hat Ansible, VMware, Jenkins.
- **Engineering:** Git, GitLab, Gradle, JUnit, SonarQube, Jira, Confluence, Scrum / Agile, CI/CD, Release Management.

## Languages

Italian (native) · English (TOEFL, Cambridge First) · French (DELF B2) · German (A2 → B1).

## Education & awards

- MSc Computer Science 110/110 with honors, Politecnico di Milano (2019).
- MSc Data Science Final grade A, KTH Stockholm (2020).
- BSc Engineering of Computing Systems 110/110, Politecnico di Milano (2018).
- Ermenegildo Zegna Founder's Scholarship (2020).
- High school 100/100 with honors, "Francesco Severi", Frosinone (2015).

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*Last updated: 2026-05-04. Content on this site may be quoted with attribution.*