laura.a.rossi.r@gmail.com · lauraarossi.com · linkedin.com/in/laura-agustina-rossi · github.com/lauraarossi
Experience
Seven-plus years building pricing, reserving and data systems — from Solvency II engines and catastrophe models at Deloitte to the core calculation engine of an aircraft leasing pricing platform.
Current
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Senior Software Developer — AerPrice
A five-person startup building pricing software for aircraft leasing. Python, Flask, SQLAlchemy, SQL, JavaScript, HTML/CSS.
Reserves and calculation engine
- Lead and main maintainer of the maintenance reserves engine, the product's core and most complex calculation: monthly reserve accrual per aircraft component from utilisation (flight hours, cycles) and lease conditions, funding future maintenance, repair and inspection events.
- Refactored the engine end to end: extended it from single-lease to multi-lease scenarios, made it faster, and added limits, variability and new user-adjustable inputs.
- Designed and documented much of the database schema, including the reserves engine, multi-lease scenarios, defaults and customer configuration; review and approve all schema changes, and keep the schema in third normal form.
AI and LLM features
- Lead developer on the product's LLM features (OpenAI models, Azure AI Document Intelligence): extraction of structured data from complex, inconsistently formatted aircraft technical documents, with enforced human review; and a natural-language assistant that calls pricing-engine functions to answer questions on reserves and pricing.
- Took AI-prototyped features to production: code review, refactoring, testing and integration with the core calculation engine.
- Use AI coding agents daily to automate routine development work, reviewing all output in detail.
Engineering practice and delivery
- Built the testing framework from scratch (pytest for the backend, Playwright for frontend and integration tests); wrote most of the tests and trained the team to write them.
- Introduced CI with GitHub Actions, so tests must pass before any merge.
- Standardised PR templates in a shared format that also feeds the release notes; run deployments to all environments and write the release notes.
- Wrote and review most of the technical documentation.
Technical leadership
- Set technical direction, architecture and priorities for the pricing platform; sequence the backlog with leadership, balancing technical dependencies with client and commercial needs.
- Presented to the AerPrice board.
- Mentor the junior developer; set design, code review and documentation standards.
- Design solutions for prospective customers' proposals and turn requirements into logic, procedures and tests.
Deloitte Ireland
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Assistant Manager — Deloitte Ireland
Promoted twice in four years at Deloitte.
- Built new actuarial software on open-source tools for capital modelling, assumptions management and regulatory reporting; integrated it with existing actuarial models and databases through APIs; designed system architectures.
- Built data pipelines (cleaning, validation, ETL) for large insurance and reinsurance datasets, reconciled to prior systems within 1% or as required by materiality.
- Redesigned actuarial modelling processes as client needs and technology changed.
- Translated requirements and methods between actuarial and IT teams, so nothing was lost in translation.
- Set development standards for version control and code quality (Git, Jira, Azure DevOps); configured Azure DevOps policies, repos and organisations.
- Led technical training for developers and actuaries, in-house and for clients; mentored junior staff; ran performance reviews.
- Budget and deadline management; client solution advisory on technology stacks, system integration and budgeting builds.
- Actuarial modelling: reserving and capital models, Solvency II, internal models, liability projections.
Tools: Python (pandas, NumPy, Numba, multiprocessing, Flask, Tkinter), SQL, MG-ALFA, Tyche, Azure (DevOps, Databricks, Data Lake, Entra).
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Actuarial Consultant — Deloitte Ireland
- Designed and built actuarial models for personal lines pricing, reinsurance liability modelling, general insurance reserving, assumptions management and data system optimisation.
- Reviewed and updated pricing and reserving models for personal and commercial lines, agreeing changes with key stakeholders.
- Reserve recalculations, model replications and data analysis for actuarial audits of non-life insurers and reinsurers; technical walkthroughs and audit queries.
- Prepared memos for partners and audit submissions that go to audit review boards.
- Worked directly with clients and presented results to them; built Power BI dashboards and Excel and Plotly/R visualisations of model results.
- Implemented database tables, queries and stored procedures behind user-facing interfaces, and statistical software for liability forecasting.
- Led knowledge-transfer sessions on programming practice, actuarial modelling and data ethics, and internal sessions on software development, Agile, object-oriented design and statistical methods.
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Actuarial Analyst — Deloitte Ireland
- Built proof-of-concept UIs and calculation engines for actuarial and financial applications.
- Model replications and results validation for actuarial audits, reconciled to within 1%.
- Automated Excel and Access work for the actuarial, audit and valuations teams in VBA.
See Projects for the client work behind these roles.
Before Deloitte
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Online Instructor and Content Designer, Data Communication — Purdue University
- Taught data visualisation and storytelling (Data Communication and Research Ethics) online to classes of up to 200 students with Professor Sorin Matei.
- Built course material (syllabus, readings, explainers, video scripts) and assessment rubrics; office hours and one-to-one mentoring.
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Global Procurement Intern — JBS USA
- Banking cards: analysed historical spend by payment type and found $80m a year that could move to rebate-eligible payment methods, worth about $1.2m a year in rebates — roughly five times the $260k target — plus a further 0.31% saving on card spend by aligning payment days with the company's WACC.
- Diesel fuel: with the head of Energy Procurement, identified six plants with average savings of 20% a year from larger off-road diesel tanks and competitive OPIS pricing, and further savings of 30–80% from electric TRUs.
- Roadmap to turn accounts payable from a cost centre into a profit centre; automated department reporting in VBA.
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Graduate Assistant — Purdue Foundry
- Led the data systems transformation, including the CRM re-implementation and data flow redesign.
- Point person for three start-ups: market research, business planning and networking — including go-to-market models for NutraMaize and SpeechVive and new-market research for Predictive Wear.
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Consultant — TruQua Enterprises
- Software consultant in data warehouse management and machine learning software.
- Delivered key components of a $775m SAP FICO and HANA implementation for a consumer goods client; built tools on SAP HANA, Business Warehouse, Fiori and SuccessFactors.
- Business analysis, documentation, data modelling and testing; machine learning proofs of concept in Python for financial forecasting.
- Worked in teams, led a team, ran a solo client project, and produced sales demos and trainings.
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Research Assistant, Political Science — University of Chicago
- Built text-mining software for 15 million tweets in Python and R on Linux for Professor John Brehm's research on political opinion in social media: collection from Twitter's API over a year, cleaning to the Supreme Court nominations of Merrick Garland and Neil Gorsuch, and preparation for NLP and dictionary-based sentiment analysis.
- Panelist at the Midwest Political Science Association annual meeting, 2017. The paper is on the Projects page.
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Independent Researcher
Interview and automated text analysis research on truth commissions and transitional justice, which became my BA thesis.
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Development Intern — Chicago Literacy Alliance
Donor and partner research for an alliance of 125 literacy non-profits; recruited 100+ sponsors and led fundraising for the spring campaign; built a donation tracking system.
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Alternative Programs Intern — Cook County Department of Corrections
Worked inside Cook County Jail on education and rehabilitation services: reviewed 50+ daily service requests, audited a third-party counselling provider under a multi-million-dollar contract, ran a needs assessment and built an attendance and service-request database.
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Extern — Immigration Center for Women and Children
Client interviews, translation and review of legal and medical documents, and resource research.
Skills
- Actuarial: pricing, reserving, reinsurance, assumptions management, model validation, actuarial audit, maintenance reserves.
- AI and machine learning: LLM application development (prompt engineering, multi-step pipelines, tool use, retrieval with embeddings, document extraction), machine learning, explainability (SHAP), LoRA fine-tuning pipelines, AI coding agents.
- Programming: Python (pandas, NumPy, Numba, Flask, FastAPI, SQLAlchemy), SQL, JavaScript/TypeScript, React, Next.js, HTML/CSS, R, C++, VBA, PowerShell.
- Data and cloud: Microsoft Azure (including Azure AI Document Intelligence), Google Cloud Platform, SQL Server / T-SQL, PostgreSQL and pgvector, Cosmos DB, Firestore, SAP HANA, Docker, ETL, schema design and normalisation.
- Engineering practice: Git, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, Jira, automated testing (pytest, Playwright), code review, release management, documentation, Agile, parallel computing, object-oriented design.
- Data visualisation: Power BI, Tableau, Plotly, R, Recharts, Excel.
- Governance: GDPR, EU AI Act, responsible AI, data ethics.