Why did you decide to become a mentor?
I became a mentor because mentors changed my own career. When I joined Amazon in Dublin, I worked next to people who were far ahead of me and who took the time to coach me. That support shaped how I write software, how I lead, and how I handle difficult conversations. Over the years I noticed the same pattern in the engineers around me. Talent was rarely the problem. What was missing was someone who could show them what the next level looks like and give them direct feedback, prioritising soft skills. Inside my companies I did this through internal mentoring programs, and about 10 engineers I worked with got promoted. MentorCruise lets me do the same for engineers outside my team, with a clear goal and a plan to reach it.
How did you get your career start?
I was born in the south of Italy and studied computer science engineering. My career started there more than 14 years ago, and from day one I was driven by two things: curiosity and learning from the best. In 2016 I received an offer from Amazon to move to Dublin. I was excited, and scared. It meant leaving my country and my comfort zone. I took the hard path, and it was the best decision of my career. At Amazon I met brilliant engineers and leaders who mentored and coached me. Listening to their advice and acting on it mattered more than any technical skill I had at the time. Amazon was my PhD in software engineering and leadership. From there I worked at Google and Meta and lived in different parts of the world, including Singapore. Today I'm an Engineering Manager at MongoDB, working remotely from Italy.
What do mentees usually come to you for?
Most mentees come to me with one of three goals: passing a Big Tech interview, getting promoted to Senior or Staff, or moving from engineer to manager. A growing group are Italian engineers who want a remote or international role, and with them we can work in Italian. Every mentorship starts with one concrete goal and a timeline, for example an offer at a Big Tech company within three months. From there we build a plan with short-, mid- and long-term milestones. Many engineers focus only on the next short-term win. Part of my job is to keep the big picture in view. For interview preparation, I run mock interviews the way a real loop works: realistic coding and system design problems, the same evaluation criteria I used as an interviewer, and written, timestamped notes after the session so you can review every decision you made. Between calls, mentees message me for CV and LinkedIn reviews, design docs, and getting unblocked at work. I reply within 24 hours on workdays.
What's been your favourite mentorship success story so far?
One story I'm proud of started with a colleague whose engineering views were very different from mine. Building a constructive relationship was hard at first. I focused on leading by example and backing my positions with data, to close the trust gap between us. The turning point came during an important design review with several senior engineers in the room. My mentee was struggling to present their proposal. I stepped in and helped them get through it, and they also saw the other senior engineers supporting my point of view. From that moment trust grew, and they became open to my feedback. About a year later, they got promoted. More recently on MentorCruise, a mentee worked with me for two months while looking for a new role, and they landed a new job within a few months. Different stories, same lesson: mentorship works when there is trust, and trust comes from honest feedback and showing up consistently.
What are you getting out of being a mentor?
Mentoring makes me a better manager. As an Engineering Manager, growing people is the core of my job, and every mentorship is practice in listening, giving direct feedback, and adapting my advice to a different person and context. It also keeps me close to the market. Mentees bring me real interview questions, real offers, and real problems from companies of every size. That keeps my advice current and makes me a better interviewer in my own team. And it's rewarding. Seeing someone get the offer or the promotion they worked months for is one of the best parts of my week. Someone did this for me early in my career. Mentoring is how I pay it forward.
