---
title: "CV"
description: "Team Lead Payments at RaiseNow | Payment Processing & Acquiring | Cloud-Native Engineering | Compliance & PCI-DSS"
---

PDF: [michele-durante-cv.en.pdf](michele-durante-cv.en.pdf) · [michele-durante-cv.it.pdf](michele-durante-cv.it.pdf)

# Michele Durante

## Team Lead Payments at RaiseNow | Payment Processing & Acquiring | Cloud-Native Engineering | Compliance & PCI-DSS

### Personal Details

<div class="two-col-grid equal-cols" role="table" aria-label="Personal details and social profiles">
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	<div><strong>Full Name:</strong> Michele Durante<br/><strong>Location:</strong> München, Deutschland</div>
	<div><strong>Nationality:</strong> Italian</div>
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	<div>&nbsp;</div>
	<div>&nbsp;</div>
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	<div><strong>Email:</strong> <a href="mailto:me@micheledurante.com">me@micheledurante.com</a></div>
	<div><a href="https://github.com/micheledurante" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">GitHub</a></div>
  </div>
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	<div></div>
	<div><a href="https://www.xing.com/profile/Michele_Durante" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Xing</a></div>
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	<div></div>
	<div><a href="https://uk.linkedin.com/in/michele-durante-b743992a/en" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">LinkedIn</a></div>
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### About

Payments engineering leader with 10+ years of experience, including nearly 10
years in the payment industry and 8 years in leadership roles. I have
a proven track record of building, scaling, and leading engineering teams to
improve delivery quality and operational efficiency.

I design adaptable solutions for fast-changing requirements across cloud and
on-prem environments, with strong focus on reliability, documentation, and
business interoperability. I also integrate AI-assisted development practices,
agentic workflows, and AI-powered developer tooling to accelerate delivery,
improve engineering productivity, and support high-quality outcomes.

Currently, I work at <a href="https://raisenow.com" target="_blank">Raisenow</a>, where I lead
payment frontend and backend teams building and maintaining a FinTech SaaS
platform for fundraising and donation.

I am extending my payments expertise from engineering to the business and
regulatory side, currently through CFTE's <a href="https://courses.cfte.education/payments-in-digital-finance-specialisation-2/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Payments in Digital Finance</em></a>
course (money creation, card schemes and payment infrastructure, PSD2, CBDCs).
With hands-on experience across the payment chain, from ATM transaction
processing to acquiring, I bridge engineering with product, compliance and
partner teams.

<div class="grid-table two-col-grid equal-cols" role="table" aria-label="Frontend, backend and DevOps technologies">
  <div class="grid-row grid-header">
	  <div><h3>Frontend/Backend Technologies</h3></div>
	  <div><h3>DevOps Technologies</h3></div>
	</div>
  <div class="grid-row">
	  <p>PHP, .NET, TypeScript and JavaScript, Java, several e2e and unit testing frameworks, REST, GraphQL, SPA, Git, MySQL, MS SQL, and Oracle.</p>
	  <p>Linux administration, on-prem and cloud (AWS, Azure), several CI/CD systems, distributed & event-driven systems, Docker, Ansible, OpenShift, microservices, observability principles, AI-assisted software development, AI agents & agentic workflows, AI-powered developer tooling.</p>
	</div>
</div>

<h3>Career History</h3>

<div class="grid-table two-col-grid large-right-col" role="table" aria-label="Frontend, backend and DevOps technologies">
  <div class="grid-row">
    <div>
      <strong>Team Lead Payments</strong><br/>
      <a target="_blank" href="https://www.raisenow.com/en/">RaiseNow</a><br/>
      Nov. 2024 - present
    </div>
    <div>
      <strong>Digital Payments SaaS, 100% remote, Germany</strong><br/>
      RaiseNow is a payment processor and acquirer for fundraising and donation. I lead a frontend
      and a backend payment team, consult on technical aspects and work on designing and delivering
      payment solutions.<br/>
      <br/>
      <ul>
        <li>
          I helped design, specify, and implement acquiring and payment processing capabilities.
        </li>
        <li>
          I contributed to compliance efforts and PCI-DSS certification work, helping the organisation
          meet the standards of the payments industry.
        </li>
        <li>
          I led frontend and backend teams in building and maintaining an event-driven, cloud-native
          SaaS platform.
        </li>
        <li>
          I improved the platform's scalability, reliability, and security by introducing the best
          development and management practices.
        </li>
        <li>
          As hiring manager, I interviewed candidates for engineering roles and onboarded new team
          members.
        </li>
        <li>
          I collaborated with product, design, and GTM teams to deliver high-quality software that
          meets customer needs and business goals.
        </li>
      </ul>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

<div class="grid-table two-col-grid large-right-col" role="table" aria-label="Career history">
  <div class="grid-row">
    <div><strong>Team Lead</strong><br/>
      <a target="_blank" href="https://www.euronet.com/">Euronet</a><br/>
      Nov. 2018 - Oct. 2024</div>
    <div><strong>Electronic Payments and Financial Services, Munich, Germany</strong><br/>
      ATM transaction processing. Team size of 6-8 members, part of a team 24-large.
      I spent most of my time on designing software and/or systems, coaching developers and
      testers, discussing specifications. The rest was dedicated to hands-on coding, tasks reviews and,
      when needed, to hiring.
      I coordinated communication with distributed teams across timezones and released software globally.<br/>
      <br/>
      <ul>
        <li>
          I developed and maintained mission-critical production code and internal applications.
        </li>
        <li>
          I defined long-term goals for the development team, sharing responsibility for hiring,
          onboarding, best practices, and Sprint planning.
        </li>
        <li>
          I was responsible for internal and external security audits and compliance with PCI-DSS and
          PA-DSS standards.
        </li>
        <li>
          I designed, implemented, and maintained automated test suites covering unit, integration, and
          end-to-end scenarios, optimising them for cloud and on-premise deployments.
        </li>
      </ul></div>
  </div>
</div>

<div class="grid-table two-col-grid large-right-col" role="table" aria-label="Career history">
  <div class="grid-row">
    <div><strong>Full-stack Developer</strong><br/>
      <a target="_blank" href="https://www.euronet.com/">Euronet</a><br/>
      Nov. 2017 - Oct. 2018</div>
    <div><strong>Electronic Payments and Financial Services, Munich, Germany</strong><br/>
      ATM transaction processing. I replaced much of the legacy codebases and set up modern
      processes for testing and for the release of software<br/>
      <br/>
      <ul>
        <li>
          I modernised outdated monolith APIs and web applications (.NET, PHP) into modular
          solutions.
        </li>
        <li>
          I designed and implemented CI/CD systems and test suites for unit and integration testing
          (Java).
        </li>
        <li>
          I optimised requirements gathering and product/development processes.
        </li>
      </ul></div>
  </div>
</div>

<div class="grid-table two-col-grid large-right-col" role="table" aria-label="Career history">
  <div class="grid-row">
    <div><strong>Full-stack Developer & PM</strong><br/>
      <a target="_blank" href="https://nowtel.com/">Nowtel</a><br/>
      Nov. 2015 - Oct. 2017</div>
    <div><strong>Mobile Virtual Network Operator (telecommunication), London, UK</strong><br/>
      Development of customer-facing websites and APIs for a telecommunication company. 
      I was responsible for the eCommerce websites and related payment services.
      Finally, I also managed a project with an external design agency to redesign and launch the
      new websites.<br/>
      <br/>
      <ul>
        <li>
          I refactored and maintained legacy systems (Java, PHP), worked on
          data modelling and new web applications in .NET, and implemented
          several payment providers and payment methods.
        </li>
        <li>
          I analyzed and integrated payment gateways, third-party APIs,
          website internationalisation, UI/UX design, and customer experience,
          ensuring consistency across devices and media while working closely
          with marketing.
        </li>
      </ul></div>
  </div>
</div>

<div class="grid-table two-col-grid large-right-col" role="table" aria-label="Career history">
  <div class="grid-row">
    <div><strong>Web Developer & PM</strong><br/>
      <strong>Freelancer</strong><br/>
      Jan. 2013 - Sept. 2015</div>
    <div><strong>Business partnership, London, UK</strong><br/>
      I worked on several projects for startups and small business in London, working
      together a graphic designer as a business partner under the name <a target="_blank" href="https://thisisdurante.com">Studio Durante</a>.<br/>
      <br/></div>
  </div>
</div>

<div class="grid-table two-col-grid large-right-col" role="table" aria-label="Career history">
  <div class="grid-row">
    <div><strong>Junior Web Developer</strong><br/>
      <a target="_blank" href="https://www.arts.ac.uk/">University of the Arts, London</a><br/>
      Sept. 2012 - Jul. 2013</div>
    <div><strong>Student/Intern, London, UK</strong><br/>
      I gained professional experience whilst studying by working on a contract-basis for the
      University. I joined the in-house development team and shadowed a senior developer
      working on online and distance teaching/learning platforms.</div>
  </div>
</div>

<h3>Education & Courses</h3>

<div class="grid-table two-col-grid large-right-col" role="table" aria-label="Education and courses">
  <div class="grid-row">
    <div>
      Sept. 2010 - Jul. 2013
    </div>
    <div>
      <strong>UAL, London, UK<br>
        Digital Media, Computer Science, BA<br/>
        </strong>
      Digital media & Design, Multimedia installations, C/C++ programming, PHP programming,
      Web design, Web development
    </div>
  </div>
  <div class="grid-row">
    <div>
      Dec. 2016
    </div>
    <div>
      <strong>C# Online course (Udemy)<br>
      </strong>
      CSharp programming language, Inheritance, Object-Oriented programming, Access modifiers,
      Interfaces, MVC5, .NET Framework.
    </div>
  </div>
  <div class="grid-row">
    <div>
      Sept. 2026 - present
    </div>
    <div>
      <strong><a href="https://courses.cfte.education/payments-in-digital-finance-specialisation-2/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Payments in Digital Finance</a>, CFTE (online course, in progress)<br>
      </strong>
      Money creation and money supply, public and private money, payment networks and infrastructure,
      card schemes, PSD2, digital currencies and CBDCs, payment instruments and processing.
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

<h3>Awards</h3>

<div class="grid-table single-col-grid" role="table" aria-label="Awards">
  <div class="grid-row">
    <div>
      <strong>Jun. 2013</strong> Art Temps, Employee of the year Award Nominee
    </div>
  </div>
  <div class="grid-row">
    <div>
      <strong>Nov. 2011</strong> JISC, University of the Arts London. ALTO digital Competition. Winner of the 1st Commended Prize
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

<h3>Languages</h3>

<div class="grid-table single-col-grid" role="table" aria-label="Languages">
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    <div>
      <strong>Italian</strong> Native proficiency
    </div>
  </div>
  <div class="grid-row">
    <div>
      <strong>English</strong> Native or bilingual proficiency (IELTS 8.5 British Council)
    </div>
  </div>
  <div class="grid-row">
    <div>
      <strong>German</strong> Basic proficiency (B1.1 Goethe Institute)
    </div>
  </div>
</div>