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Daniele Barbaro
Daniele seen from behind on a grassy ridge, red backpack, pointing at a distant peak above layers of hazy blue mountains
  1. Assessment
  2. Stabilization
  3. Handover

Daniele Barbaro, backend engineer and tech lead, with AI as my superpower

I build and repair backends, mostly in PHP and TypeScript. AI lets me move between PHP, Go and Rust without friction, and I worked with React in earlier projects. Weekends belong to the mountains.

Portrait of Daniele Barbaro against a white wall, arms crossed, smiling, gray sweatshirt

Hi, I'm Daniele

I'm a backend engineer and fractional tech lead in Turin, working mostly remotely on European hours. Most people call me Barbi. For years I was dB Development, a studio of one; today I run Plin Code, my software agency.

The backend is home: PHP with Laravel and Symfony, TypeScript with NestJS, and enough React behind me that the frontend is never a black box. I teach people how to write good code, I co-organize PUG Torino, and I write on Medium, lately about a year of hexagonal architecture in Laravel.

AI changed how I work more than any framework did. It lets me pick up Go or Rust when a project needs them, read an unfamiliar codebase and spend my time on the decisions that matter. Most of that work happens in codebases that already exist and already have users.

Backend, every day
PHP with Laravel and Symfony
Also in production
TypeScript, Node.js, NestJS
Front end, when needed
Next.js, Vue.js, Tailwind CSS, and React in earlier work
Data and infrastructure
MySQL, Redis, MongoDB, Docker, Nginx, Bash

Off the keyboard

  • A black and gray Ducati Multistrada parked on a mountain pass road, rocky peaks behind

    Motorcycles

    Vespas as a kid, real motorcycles only in the last decade. Tina, a Yamaha MT07, took me over 15,000 km across Europe. Rossella, the Multistrada V4S in the photo, had done 50,000 km by November 2026, Normandy beaches included.

    From Tina to Rossella
  • Two small tents pitched on a grassy slope at sunset, the sun setting between two hills

    Mountains

    Walking is how I clear my head: the Cammino di Oropa, the Via degli Dei, loop hikes in northwest Italy. My hikes usually last no more than three days, and I have had a tent since the summer of 2024.

    Hiking for freedom
  • A rectangular pan pizza seen from above on a wooden table, topped with mushrooms, artichokes, black olives and mozzarella

    Pizza

    I learned by helping my mother and grandmother knead dough, and I still bake every kind: Roman, Neapolitan, pan. If you are ever in Torino, drop me a line.

    The art of pizza
  • Home-made burger buns topped with sesame and black seeds on baking paper

    Burger buns

    Bread first, then buns with sesame or poppy seeds, filled with pulled pork slow cooked for eight hours.

    The perfect bun

How I work

I usually join a team that already has a product and customers. The work tends to follow the same route: a steep start while I learn the terrain, a long stretch where most of the fixing happens, and an arrival where the team carries on without me.

  1. 1Month one

    Assessment

    Where the pain points are, which areas are critical, what causes the slowdowns. Not a report and nothing else: the starting point for the actual work.

  2. 2Months two to four

    Stabilization

    Usually the most productive stretch. Fixes ordered by impact, tests where they matter, patterns that make the next feature faster.

  3. 3After that

    Handover

    Maintenance and mentorship. The team owns the codebase again, and we scale the commitment down or switch to single days.

The ways I work, and what they cost

I keep prices public, so they're written here plainly.

What I do

  • Fractional tech lead

    On a monthly collaboration

    For teams of capable developers without senior technical leadership. I join for part of the month: standups and planning, pull request reviews, coding standards, a weekly check-in.

    Fractional tech lead
  • MVP rescue

    At the daily rate or on a monthly collaboration

    When an MVP has customers and the codebase starts fighting back. I stabilize it step by step, without a rewrite, writing code alongside the team so they can carry on after I leave.

    MVP rescue
  • Open source

    Free, on Packagist

    Laravel packages that started as code I needed on a real project, released once it was clear others had the same problem.

    Open source

How it's billed

Daily rate

480 EUR / day

A day of focused work, not hourly billing. A code review, an architectural assessment, a specific feature.

How a consulting day works
Monthly collaboration

12 or 16 days a month, planned at the start of each week, with a place in the team's Slack. Fractional tech lead work runs on this.

EUR per month
Days a monthMonthlyFrom six months
12 days5,3005,000
16 days7,0006,800
Monthly collaboration

Invoiced monthly, due within 14 days. Fixed price only for well structured projects, no equity-only work. The first conversation is free.

Open source

danielebarbaro/laravel-vat-eu-validator

VAT number validation for European businesses in Laravel: validation rules against the VIES service, error handling for its quirks, formatting for messy real input.

514,195downloads on Packagist

Read on Packagist on and refreshed once a day.

26,768 downloads in the last month.

37 tagged releases since February 2019.

  1. 3.x
    1. 3.5.0
    2. 3.0.0
  2. 2.x
    1. 2.0.0
  3. 1.x
    1. 1.0.0
  4. 0.x
    1. 0.1.0

Selected releases. Full history on GitHub.

Other packages

Published under Plin Code and my own name. Downloads read on Packagist on .

All on Packagist

Talks, writing and things I've built

Talks

Products and sites

  • Sanyapp
    sanyapp.com

    Sanitization management: QR-guided tasks and compliance-ready reports.

  • TrekPass
    trekpass.app

    Platform for outdoor associations and their members.

  • plincode.ink
    plincode.ink

    Branded URL shortener with link analytics.

  • EksWai
    ekswai.plincode.tech

    Tracks job postings across more than 47 companies, notifies you of new positions and keeps your applications in one place.

  • BarbiSurfer
    vanlife.plincode.tech

    One-week camper-van trips across Italy and Europe.

  • ANBIMA
    tesseramento.anbima.it

    Membership portal for ANBIMA.

  • Notary
    notaiomirkobarbaro.it

    Website for a notary's office in Turin.

  • Studio Pagella
    studiopagella.it

    Website for a labor consulting and HR firm in Turin.

  • Plin Code
    plincode.tech

    My software agency: Laravel and Symfony consulting, refactoring, open source packages.

Writing

All articles on Medium

In the audience

Most of what I know I picked up in a room full of people who write the same code. A drawer full of badges says where.

  • phpday

    Every edition for at least eight years, in Verona.

  • Laracon EU

    Twice in Amsterdam, 2016 and 2017.

  • Laracon US

    Chicago in 2018, New York in 2019.

Conference badges hanging from their lanyards: Laracon Chicago 2018, Laracon VII 2019 and several phpday passes
Badges from Laracon and phpday
Rows of heads in a dark converted industrial hall, with large screens showing the Laracon EU Amsterdam logo
Laracon EU, Amsterdam, 2016
A stage lit in pink and purple seen from the balcony, with a large screen reading Laracon EU, 28 to 30 August 2017, Amsterdam, and two men talking at the front
Laracon EU, 2017
Two men smiling side by side at a conference venue
With Taylor Otwell, Laracon EU, 2017
An audience seen from behind in front of a stage, with a screen showing the Laracon Chicago logo between two lit lattice panels
Laracon US, 2018
A speaker with a laptop on a dark stage, beside a large screen with the retro Laracon logo and a red sun
Laracon US, 2019