Context Scout: Meet the Team — Guido Amoruso
This week we’re talking to the engineering team again, withContext Scout’s reigning Ping Pong champion, Guido Amoruso.

So Guido, What’s your role on the team?
I’m Head of Engineering. I’m in charge of ensuring the stability of our product, in relation both to the experience for our users and our internal software development practices.
Context Scout has recently put on the market the output of its research-focused activities, in the form of a browser extension for Chrome. That’s a big step for a company and there are big challenges in balancing ongoing research with a marketable product, for example how to ensure that innovative research prototypes can transition smoothly into production at the right time — that is as soon as possible but not until they’re proven to be stable enough.
I consider myself the tortoise of the team, which walks slowly to ultimately arrives first.
Where are you from? What made you come to London, UK?
I’m from Italy, I was born in Padua — a town close to Venice in the north of Italy — but my family roots are even more southern, from Bari and Matera near the tip of Italy.
I moved to London because I was fascinated by its world-class openness towards culture and innovation. Moreover, London it the biggest market for IT jobs in Europe.
Why did you join?
I wanted to be part of an exciting startup where I could make an impact, by putting my professional experience at the service of a project which is ambitious in terms of innovation and scale.
What’s your favorite part of working at Context Scout?
I love the relaxed yet focused environment, the openness of the team to technical discussions and, of course, playing table tennis every day.
If you could go back to University and take one class over again, what would it be?
I’d like to take again the Algorithms course and have the chance to implement all the algorithms in Python. The course that I attended at University was quite theoretical, so I missed a lot the practical part.

What’s the most interesting fact about yourself?
I used to be a professional violinist and then I turned into a professional software engineer. I guess that’s not a very common shift, even if I’ve discovered that quite some software engineers are fond of music too.
What future technology excites you the most?
Quantum computing, because it’s a technology that has the potential to revolutionize the industry by making easy to tackle computing problems that at present are practically untreatable.
Favorite coffee shop, restaurant or bar around Old Street?
I’m proudly fond of Italian food — I’m obviously biased — so I enjoy a lot the good pizzerias in the area, like Homeslice Pizza, Pizza East, and Laboratorio.
What’s your “we’ll have made it when…” vision for Context Scout?
We’ll have made it when Context Scout’s functionality is built directly into the browsers themselves.
What future technology excites you the most?
I’m excited by Quantum Computing because it has the potential to completely change the way we currently treat a whole range of problems, which might unleash unprecedented progress in AI and machine-learning techniques with direct impact — for example — on human health for diseases diagnosis and treatment.
What’s the most interesting thing you’ve read lately?
I’ve recently read “The Pearl” by John Steinbeck, which is a story about man’s greed and the damages of “exporting” Western values to different cultures. That should make us think about the dangers of considering our civilization as the most advanced one in every aspect, and reflect whether we may have something to learn from other ones instead.
What do you like to do in your free time?
I like to balance my free time activities between artistic ones (I’m into acting and music — drums and singing) and sports ones (I practice regularly boxing, and badly football).
Also, I enjoy spending time with friends, both going out to drink and dance and dining at home where I often cook Italian dishes (mainly pasta and risotto with typical fresh handmade sauces, like pesto, carbonara, cacio e pepe).
Lastly, have you got a favorite Context Scout memory?
Learning Scottish words at launch time is one of the funniest ones. Also, choosing a different restaurant every Friday for our team lunch to match the tastes of our intercontinental folk (England, Wales, Scotland, USA, Iran, Poland and, of course, Italy).

