Giovanni Lanzani
Managing Director Data
Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolGiovanni Lanzani is a data and AI leader with 13 years of experience who currently heads Xebia Data as Managing Director, scaling data strategies and AI initiatives across industries. He combines a strong research background (MSc in Theoretical Physics and PhD-level experience modeling DNA mechanics) with hands-on engineering—contributing to prominent open-source projects like Apache Airflow by improving hooks, sensors, and Python compatibility. Previously he built and led learning programs as MD of the GoDataDriven Academy and served as Chief Science Officer, blending technical depth with talent development and client-facing advisory work. Known for turning complex data problems into production-ready solutions, he also has an unexpected creative streak (he designed custom company-branded shoes) that reflects a pragmatic, people-focused approach to building teams and products.
13 years of coding experience
1 year of employment as a software developer
Dottore Physics, Dottore Physics at Università degli Studi di PadovaMaster of Science Theoretical Physics, Master of Science Theoretical Physics at Leiden UniversityMaturato High School, Maturato High School at Liceo Scientifico Alvise Cornaro
English, Italian, Dutch, French, Spanish
Github Skills (14)
etl10
apache-airflow10
data-pipeline10
data-pipelines10
python10
data-engineering10
hive9
spark-sql9
testing8
orchestration7
sql7
work-flow7
orchestra7
workflow-engine7
Programming languages (21)
Github contributions (5)
apache/airflow
Oct 2015 - Apr 2019
Apache Airflow - A platform to programmatically author, schedule, and monitor workflows
Role in this project:
Data Engineer
Data EngineerContributions:9 PRs, 66 comments in 3 years 6 months
Contributions summary:Giovanni primarily contributed to the Apache Airflow project by fixing bugs and enhancing the functionality of existing components. They addressed issues related to the `SparkSqlHook`, resolving whitespace problems in script execution, and improved the `HiveMetastoreHook` by integrating the `hmsclient` package for better connection management. Furthermore, the user added tests to improve the reliability of the `NamedHivePartitionSensor` and made improvements to `HiveServer2Hook`, including bug fixes, the addition of tests, and switching from Impyla to PyHive, enhancing Python 2 compatibility.
monitorpythonschedulerapacheprogrammatically
godatadriven/os-training-materials
Aug 2018 - Jan 2019
Contributions:4 commits, 3 pushes, 1 branch in 5 months
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