Cosimo Cecchi
Software Engineering Manager at GNOME Foundation
San Francisco, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolCosimo Cecchi is a seasoned software engineering manager and technical architect with 28 years of experience, currently leading engineering at Apple from San Francisco. He pairs deep managerial experience with hands-on contributions across the GNOME ecosystem—working on GTK, GNOME Shell, GLib, Caja and high-impact projects like Flatpak and xdg-desktop-portal. His work spans full-stack UI polishing (HiDPI thumbnail rendering, GtkCssGadget migrations) to backend robustness (memory-leak fixes, permission handling and document portals), demonstrating rare fluency across user-facing UX and low-level platform plumbing. A long-time GNOME Foundation member and former director, he brings community-first open source leadership and an expertise in collaborative, upstream development models. He has also held senior engineering and executive roles in startups and product companies, including VP and CTO responsibilities, translating open-source craft into product-ready systems. Colleagues rely on him not just for architecture and delivery but for mentoring teams that sustain healthy open-source communities.
28 years of coding experience
11 years of employment as a software developer
Liceo Scientifico "N. Copernico", PratoComputer Engineering, Computer Engineering at Università degli Studi di Firenze
English, Italian
Github Skills (35)
styles10
javascript10
system-programming10
api-design10
gnome-shell10
css10
memory-management10
userstyle10
linux10
user-interface10
flatpak10
c1110
ui-design10
cairo10
dbus10
Programming languages (17)
Github contributions (5)
GNOME/gtk
Nov 2010 - Nov 2016
Read-only mirror of https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:762 commits in 6 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Cosimo contributed to the GTK library, focusing on improving the visual appearance and functionality of UI elements. They refactored and modernized styling aspects, deprecated outdated style properties, and converted several UI elements to utilize GtkCssGadget. This included transitioning menu items, check menu items, and scrollbar elements to use the GtkBuiltinIcon, or GtkCssGadget APIs. This work aimed to improve the consistency and theme-ability of the GTK UI components.
pygobjectgnome-shell-extensiongtk-rsgnomegitlab
GNOME/gnome-shell
Jan 2011 - Mar 2020
Read-only mirror of https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:245 commits in 9 years 3 months
Contributions summary:Cosimo contributed to the GNOME Shell project, primarily focusing on UI and user experience enhancements. Their commits demonstrate a deep understanding of the GNOME Shell's architecture, including the message tray, system notifications, and the autorun/automount functionalities for removable devices. The user implemented new features, addressed bugs, and refactored existing code, consistently ensuring compatibility and improving overall user experience.
gnome-shell-extensiongnomegitlabgnome-shellshell
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