Vanessa Formicola

Vanessa Formicola is Principal Architect at Prima, ~15 years of industry experience (Microsoft/ThoughtWorks) and 5+ years in leadership roles. Experienced with high scale backend systems, legacy modernisation and infrastructure as code across multiple domains and tech stacks.

Primarily Vanessa Formicola focused on transformation of software systems and enablement of teams with varied backgrounds.

Experienced working with distributed global teams (multi-tz).

Creator of knowledge sharing/D&I communities, public speaker and social change advocate; cofounder of ShareIT and Intertwined Arts.

(Currently leaving the principal engineer role at Flo and transitioning into the Principal architect role)

SPEAKER CREDENTIALS

2025

• Holistic Engineering at QCon London (https://qconlondon.com/presentation/apr2025/holistic-engineering-organic-problem-solving-complex-evolving-systems)
• Holistic Engineering at JOntheBeach https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQyd4rVfl4w
• Holistic Engineering at FastFlowConf NL www.youtube.com/watch

2024

• Technical reviewer of O'Reilly's Facilitating Software Architecture book (https://facilitatingsoftwarearchitecture.com/)
• Social Decision Record technique included Facilitating Software Architecture book (blog: https://medium.com/@vanessamformicola/social-decision-records-adrs-for-human-interactions-e6bb3ffe30ef)
• Part of committee selecting the talks for the Architecture Track of Devoxx UK 2025

2023

• [2023 - March] Speaker LJC - remote: TechLeading 101: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
• [2023 - May] DevoxxUK23- London: TechLeading 101: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
• [2023 - May] JOTB(Java on the beach)- Malaga: TechLeading 101: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

2022

• [2022] Speaker DevoxxUK22: TDD and other drugs
• [2022] Speaker Devoxx Belgium 22: www.youtube.com/watch and other drugs
• [2022] Speaker W-JAX Munich: TDD and other drugs
• [2022] Speaker LJC(London Java Community): TDD and other drugs

Before 2022

• Cofounder, admin and facilitator at ShareIT, international knowledge sharing community: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDovIbuna41VAUNxL5xTezw/featured
• Presented Intertwined Arts in Intersectionality event for ThoughtWorks Spain (https://www.meetup.com/ThoughtWorks-Barcelona/events/276889737/)
• Presented the tech radar Vol 21 (https://www.thoughtworks.com/techradar-london)

Panellist at ITs is not just for the boys (https://targetjobs.co.uk/events/its-not-just-for-the-boys)