Backend Engineer, Lausanne

Luca Multazzu

I build distributed systems at SICPA and do applied research in cryptography and privacy. Before that, I studied cyber security at ETH Zürich, where my master's research on distributed transactions was awarded the ETH Medal.

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About

I'm a backend engineer at SICPA, where I've spent the last three years designing distributed, event-driven systems for payments, digital identity, and product traceability. Alongside that I do applied research into cryptography and privacy-preserving technology, prototyping ideas before they become products.

I hold an MSc in Cyber Security from ETH Zürich, jointly with EPFL, where I focused on applied cryptography, distributed systems, and formal verification. My master's thesis on distributed transaction protocols was awarded the ETH Medal, and the work continued into three papers written with my former advisors, on protocol design and formal verification of database isolation guarantees.

Day to day I write Java, Kotlin, Rust, and Python most often, though I've worked in C, C++, and Scala too. Outside of work I build small systems software for fun, most recently a terminal text editor in Rust, and I keep experimenting with data science and machine learning applied to security problems.

Experience

  1. Backend Engineer & Applied Researcher

    2023 — present

    SICPA, Switzerland

    • Design and build backend systems for payments, digital identity, and product traceability, mostly in Java and Spring Boot, on Kafka and gRPC.
    • Do applied research in cryptography and privacy-preserving technology, and help turn early prototypes into production designs.
    • Apply data science and machine learning to security and fraud-detection problems.

  2. MSc Cyber Security, minor in Data Management Systems

    2021 — 2023

    ETH Zürich, joint degree with EPFL

    GPA 5.49/6. Coursework in applied cryptography, security engineering, distributed systems, and formal verification. Master's thesis on distributed transaction protocols, awarded the ETH Medal for outstanding thesis work.

  3. BSc Computer Engineering

    2018 — 2021

    Politecnico di Torino

    Graduated 110/110 with honours.

  4. Applied Cryptography Specialisation

    2025

    University of Colorado, certification

Research

Work from my time at ETH Zürich, with David Basin's group, on the correctness and performance of distributed database transactions.

  1. VerIso: Verifiable Isolation Guarantees for Database Transactions

    S. Ghasemirad, S. Liu, C. Sprenger, L. Multazzu, D. Basin — Proc. VLDB Endowment, 18(5), 2025

    Read paper

  2. Pushing the Limit: Verified Performance-Optimal Causally-Consistent Database Transactions

    S. Ghasemirad, C. Sprenger, S. Liu, L. Multazzu, D. Basin — arXiv:2411.07049, 2024

    Read paper

  3. NOC-NOC: Towards Performance-optimal Distributed Transactions

    S. Liu, L. Multazzu, H. Wei, D. Basin — Proc. ACM Manag. Data (SIGMOD), 2(1), 2024

    Read paper

  4. NOCS-Optimal Distributed Transactions and Beyond

    Master's thesis, ETH Zürich, 2023. Advised by Prof. David Basin and Dr. Si Liu. Awarded the ETH Medal.

    Read thesis

Skills

Languages

Java, Kotlin, Rust, Python, C, C++, Scala

Backend & distributed systems

Spring Boot, Kafka, gRPC, REST, microservices, event-driven architecture

Cryptography & security

Applied cryptography, digital identity, privacy-preserving technology, Keycloak, OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect

Data & machine learning

Data science, machine learning, OSINT, fraud detection

Databases & infrastructure

PostgreSQL, Oracle, Neo4j, GraphQL, AWS, CI/CD, Jenkins

Projects

A few things I've built outside of work.

  1. Jqln

    GitHub

    A terminal text editor for long-form writing, written in Rust.

  2. Verifying compiler for Rattlesnake

    GitHub

    Added pre/post-condition checking to a small imperative language's compiler, written in Scala, for a formal verification course.

  3. Road segmentation classifier

    GitHub

    A convolutional neural network that labels satellite image patches as road or not, for a machine learning course.

More on GitHub →

Contact

I'm happy to hear from people working on distributed systems or applied cryptography, or anyone who just wants to say hello. The fastest way to reach me is email.