# L. Rocco Varela

> Software Engineer (Platform/BE/ML) @ Instrumental Inc. | PhD

Location: San Francisco, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/l

Specialties: Data Modeling, Distributed Systems, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, Algorithm Development, Object-Oriented Design/Programming, Scientific Computing, Automation

## Work Experience
### Sr. Staff Software Engineer (Machine Learning/BE) @ Instrumental Inc.
Jan 2025 – Present | United States

### Technical Lead (Platform) @ Instrumental Inc.
Jan 2023 – Jan 2025 | Palo Alto, California, United States
- Led teams that designed and built flexible cloud infrastructure on AWS
- Spearheaded new Business Intelligence workflows for Finance, Product, and Sales teams
- Developed data pipelines and a data warehouse solution to support ongoing R&D efforts

### Staff Software Engineer (Platform) @ Instrumental Inc.
Jan 2021 – Jan 2025 | Palo Alto, California, United States
- Designed and implemented new CDC pipeline 
- Re-engineered and simplified backend services for aggregating metrics
- Developed image feature caching for ML anomaly detection
- Integrated a cloud-based database migration workflow for Change-Data-Capture

### Sr. Software Engineer (Platform) @ Instrumental Inc.
Jan 2021 – Jan 2021 | Palo Alto, California, United States

### Senior Software Engineer (Core Team) @ DataStax
Jan 2020 – Jan 2021
- Contributor to the new Storage Attached Indexing feature (released in DSE 6.8)

### Senior Software Engineer (DSE Graph) @ DataStax
Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 | San Francisco Bay Area
- Contributor to the new DataStax Core Graph product (released in DSE 6.8)

### Lead Software Test Engineer (DSE Analytics) @ DataStax
Jan 2016 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area
- Lead efforts in performance and end-to-end testing of new analytics products, features, and use cases (DSE Filesystem (DSEFS), DSEFS + Apache Spark + Apache Kafka)

- Frequently served as a technical liaison between different product teams and management

- Coached new team members on various aspects of our technical stack and release process

- Presented new product features at the 2016 Cassandra Summit

### Software Test Engineer (DSE Analytics) @ DataStax
Jan 2014 – Jan 2016 | Santa Clara, CA
- Designed and developed tests for DataStax Enterprise Analytics (Apache Spark, Apache Hadoop, Apache Cassandra). 

- Collaborated with several cross-functional teams in designing and executing performance tests and benchmarks.

### R&D Scientist @ Certara
Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 | St. Louis, MO
- Designed and implemented a predictive modeling tool for ligand affinity prediction.

- Lead research for new product development [1].

- Served as scientific liaison between clients and R&D.

- Presented research and validation studies of new method development.

### Researcher PHD Student @ UCSF
Jan 2008 – Jan 2013 | San Francisco, CA
Jain Laboratory: My research was focused on developing a computational method for modeling protein binding pockets for small molecule binding affinity prediction [1, 2, 3]. 

My previous research projects involved topics such as:

- Analyzing evolutionary relationships between protein families by implementing computational methods for scoring sequence and structural similarities of enzymes in protein similarity networks.

- Modeling the assembly configuration of the 26S proteasome complex using MODELLER homology modeling techniques.

- Investigating HIV-1 protease structural flexibility and point mutation prediction using Rosetta protein design and backbone exploration techniques [4].

### Modeling e-R&D Intern @ Vertex Pharmaceuticals
Jan 2011 – Jan 2011 | Cambridge, MA
- Developed an automated method for modeling protein binding pockets for ligand binding affinity prediction.

- Implemented a simulated medicinal chemistry project for compound activity prediction and selection [3].

### Quality Assurance Engineer @ AOL
Jan 2005 – Jan 2006 | Mountain View, CA
- Implemented and maintained testing software for server-side web applications.

- Developed test case protocols and documentation for the Sponsored Link Management System.

- Coordinated testing projects between QA teams in Bangalore, India and Mountain View, CA.


## Education
### PhD in Biological and Medical Informatics
University of California, San Francisco

### Master of Science in Computer Science (Life Sciences emphasis)
San Francisco State University

### Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
San José State University


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/roccovarela

---
Source: https://flows.cv/l
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/l/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-01