Gauthier Deroo

Joined Maki shortly after their pre-seed funding as a Senior Engineer in a high-performing team of six senior developers. In this environment, I played a critical role in collective technical decision-making (due to the absence of a CTO), focusing on velocity, architectural resilience, and product innovation. This role transitioned into a Product Engineer focus, blending technical development with strategic product vision. AI Feature Innovation: Developed and proof-of-concepted (POC) the company's first AI Voice Agent, establishing the technical foundation for autonomous interviewing and selection using ChatGPT/LLM technologies. Mission-Critical Integrations: Led the development and maintenance of complex API integrations with major HR platforms (e.g., SmartRecruiters, CEGID, Teamtailor), enabling seamless data exchange and expanding Maki's market reach. High-Autonomy Decision Making: Served as a key participant in the core engineering group, collaboratively making critical architectural and technical decisions to ensure platform scalability, security, and performance. Product-Driven Development (Product Engineer): Worked closely with product teams to refine user stories, gather feedback, and iterate rapidly, effectively fulfilling the role of a Product Engineer to ensure the development of the most impactful tools for HR users. DevOps and Platform Resilience: Worked closely with the Operations (Ops) team to maintain high system availability and manage deployments using Docker, Kubernetes, and GCP, optimizing CI/CD pipelines for maximum team velocity. Modern Data Architecture: Utilized a modern, efficient data stack including PostgreSQL, NestJS, and Hasura (for GraphQL access) to build highly performant and secure application features. Core Technologies * AI/Backend: ChatGPT / LLM, Node.js, NestJS, TypeScript * Frontend/API: React, GraphQL, Hasura * Infrastructure: Docker, Kubernetes, GCP, CI/CD * Database: PostgreSQL

Recruited as the first engineer at Dotfile (a startup incubated within the elite eFounders/Hexa studio), where I played a foundational role in building a scalable KYB (Know Your Business) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) compliance automation solution. This experience required full-stack ownership and deep involvement in architecture, security, and infrastructure for global compliance. Platform Architecture & Development: Acted as the Founding Engineer and primary full-stack developer, designing and implementing the end-to-end platform that automates complex AML procedures and reduces financial fraud for businesses. Scalability and Performance: Responsible for optimizing platform performance, security, and scalability from day one, ensuring the architecture could support diverse global compliance requirements. Full-Stack Implementation: Leveraged a modern stack across all layers: * Backend: Developed robust, maintainable services using NestJS, TypeScript, TypeORM, and PostgreSQL. * Frontend: Created intuitive, user-friendly interfaces using React, GraphQL, and Chakra UI. Infrastructure & DevOps Ownership: Owned and managed the complete infrastructure, defining the deployment strategy using Terraform, Docker, and Kubernetes on AWS, guaranteeing reliability and seamless scaling. Collaboration & Product Alignment: Collaborated closely with the product and design teams (and eFounders management) to translate complex compliance requirements into intuitive, user-centric features and workflows. CI/CD Implementation: Established and maintained the Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines using GitLab CI to ensure rapid, secure, and automated deployment cycles.

Joined a rapidly scaling PropTech SaaS company as an IC (Individual Contributor) and was promoted to Lead Software Engineer after one year. Played a central role in managing application stability, driving feature development, and scaling the engineering team from 8 to 20 employees across two international HQs (Paris and Tunisia). Gained crucial experience supporting major enterprise accounts and managing complex, custom-priced contracts. Engineering Leadership & Team Management: Promoted to Lead Software Engineer, responsible for a team of three developers. Oversaw project execution, code quality, and professional development. Technical Strategy & Decision Making: Acted as a key voice in architectural and technical decisions, ensuring solutions aligned with the company's hyper-growth and scalability requirements. Feature Development & Maintenance: Led the full-stack development of critical new features using React, Node.js, and TypeScript, while ensuring the stability and maintainability of the core SaaS application. GraphQL Implementation: Successfully introduced and implemented GraphQL using Apollo Server, significantly optimizing data fetching efficiency and application performance across the stack. High-Scale Cloud Infrastructure: Maintained and optimized CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure using Docker, Kubernetes, and AWS, supporting the company's growth and ensuring high availability for enterprise clients. Remote Work Pioneer: Operated successfully in a full-remote environment, establishing best practices for distributed team collaboration and technical communication.

Kobus is an intelligent assistant (SaaS) transforming how healthcare professionals (Physiotherapists) analyze, monitor, and interact with patients across France, Belgium, and Switzerland. As the first dedicated engineer, I collaborated directly with the CTO and an intern to build and scale the core application, introducing modern development practices and focusing on code quality and architectural improvements. Mobile Development & Architecture: Served as the lead implementer, building the cross-platform application (Web/Mobile) from the ground up using React Native and TypeScript. Architectural Refactoring: Successfully migrated the application to a monorepo structure, drastically improving build times, code sharing, and overall maintainability. Engineering Process Improvement: Established a framework for unit testing and introduced quality assurance pipelines to minimize bugs and improve code reliability. Project and Team Leadership: Provided project management oversight for external projects and mentored junior colleagues on technical implementation and Agile methodologies (Scrum). Core Technologies Used: TypeScript, React/React Native, Node.js, NoSQL/MongoDB, SQLite.

As a core member of a two-person development team, I was crucial in developing and scaling Reelevant's Email Intelligence platform. This technology adapts email content in real-time (at the moment of opening) based on over a million weekly events, leveraging contextual data (location, weather, device) and customer knowledge (CRM, web behavior). Drove the technical scaling of a high-volume Email Intelligence platform, responsible for processing 1M+ events per week and adapting email content in real-time. Engineered a scalable Big Data pipeline on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), utilizing Pub/Sub, Dataflow, BigQuery, and MongoDB to ingest, process, and analyze real-time contextual and customer data. Led the migration and setup of the core infrastructure to Kubernetes on GCP, dramatically increasing system scalability, stability, and resource management. Functioned as a Full Stack Engineer (Node.js/React) and the primary DevOps specialist, managing CI, deployment, and infrastructure across multi-cloud (AWS/GCP) environments using Docker and Kubernetes. Developed and optimized core Email Intelligence functions and real-time features that enabled personalized content delivery based on context (weather, location, device) at the moment of email opening.

Led the operations and maintenance of the core Node.js multiplayer server, ensuring robust functionality and peak performance for the "Beloola" video game. Drove feature development on the client side by implementing new 3D functionalities using the Three.js library. Managed the full lifecycle of 3D environment integration, ensuring high-quality asset deployment into the game application. Streamlined the 3D team's workflow by creating and deploying custom CI/DevOps tools dedicated to the automated integration of 3D meshes, dramatically increasing production efficiency.

Engineered and implemented a dedicated multiplayer server benchmark tool for the "Beloola" video game project, providing critical data on server performance and scalability. Modernized and refactored the application codebase to ensure compatibility and stability with Node.js 0.8.1. Configured and deployed server-side email services to facilitate key user communications. Managed routine Linux server maintenance, contributing to system reliability and uptime for the development environment.

Internship: Enabling the Exploitation of Data Collected by the GPStats Program GPStats: A tool for collecting partition data. Used on partitions of MySongBook (http://www.mysongbook.com/) - Improved the program (C++) - Defined relevant data for statistics - SQL queries - Represented results using the Google Chart API During this internship, I worked on improving the GPStats program, which is used to collect data from partitions of MySongBook. I defined the relevant data for statistics, wrote SQL queries to extract the data, and represented the results using the Google Chart API. This experience allowed me to improve my skills in programming, data analysis, and visualization.

First Internship Internship with the Territorial Unit for Information Technology in High Schools (UTIL: Unité Territorial pour l'Informatique dans les lycées) - Implemented VLANs for the network infrastructure of a high school using D-Link 3526 switches - Collaborated with the UTIL team on interventions, including work on the patch panel and hard drive cloning - Tested and installed a new system for cloning and restoring client workstations for the UTIL team using DRBL/CloneZilla - Wrote scripts for quick configuration of three different switches (D-Link 3100, 3526, and 3528) - Created manual pages for documentation - Created a ".deb" package containing scripts and manual pages Second Internship Internship with the Regional Information Systems Department (DSI) of the Conseil Régional, UTIL Service Conducted a study for the implementation of a laptop solution for high school students across the Nord-Pas de Calais region, taking into account budget constraints and the experiences of several departments Overall, I gained valuable experience in network administration, system configuration, and documentation during my first internship. In my second internship, I developed my skills in project management and analysis by conducting a study for a regional laptop solution.