Raphaël Oester

Gameloft is a video game production company founded in 1999. In 2017, 2.5 million Gameloft games were downloaded every day. The company has nearly 187 smartphone games developed in its 20 creative studios. I joined the Paris studio to develop the online game “Project Fireball”, scheduled for release in 2025. As an online developer, I was in charge of creating the game's backend, almost from scratch. My scope encompassed two main aspects: - The metagame (authentication, player progression, rewards) - Matchmaking (creating balanced games between players, minimizing waiting times). These relatively complex business requirements naturally led me to adopt a strict craftmanship approach. Domain Driven Design and TDD were the order of the day, leading to scalable solutions that gave game designers a great deal of control in adjusting the game's parameters. Technologies used : - GO/Golang - Microsoft Azure PlayFab - Openmatch - Docker - Perforce Helix Core - Kubernetes

Assurmax is a start-up created in 2017. It is an insurtech behind SaaS POWER, a platform for marketing insurance contracts. Over the past 3 years, it has tripled its sales to €10 million. When I arrived at Assurmax, the context was the redesign of a SaaS. This SaaS was designed to put insurance brokers and wholesalers in touch with each other. A v1 of the SaaS already existed (written in JS), but it had several problems: - Lots of bugs - No configuration flexibility - Very difficult to maintain - Business needs not met - Poor performance So it was decided to write a new version, in GO, that wouldn't have all these problems. These were long development cycles and a cascading methodology. In this context, it seemed appropriate to point out the technical debt as soon as I arrived. So my first tasks were to - Implement SRP in repositories - Invert all dependencies - Separate services from controllers - Isolate the domain properly - Create anti-corruption layers for the business code - Spread contexts where they were uniformly ignored - Create a test framework (no tests were present when I arrived). I succeeded in having clean architecture adopted as a standard. The code base gained a lot in terms of cleanliness, stability, clarity and flexibility. Once that was done, I went back to developing functionalities. - Multi-stage customer onboarding, with recovery and caching - Authentication with SSO (Keycloak) - Full RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) to authorize access to business resources Technologies used : - GO/Golang - PostgreSQL - GORM - Zap - Gin/Gonic - Fizz Notable integrations : - Universign - Keycloak

CopyAds is a start-up founded in Dubai in 2023. Its mission: to make AI accessible and usable by copywriters/marketers. In 2023, the project raised €400k from private investors. Its story began in April 2023. I was contacted and offered a one-week project. The objective: to code a simple CLI. This CLI would become the PoC for SaaS. When the company was founded, I kept my position as a freelance developer. And as future CTO, I acquired 20% of the shares. In this context, I had to : - Develop the backend from scratch (Clean Architecture, DDD, GO/Golang) - Design the infrastructure on a public cloud (with IAC) - Manage the front-end development team - Sourcing and recruiting new profiles for the team. The beta version was ready after 4 months' work. The initial target was 3 months. But a radical change in management led to delays. Technologies used : - GO/Golang - gRPC - PostgreSQL - Native SQL - Testify - Zap - Google Cloud Run - Terraform/Terragrunt - Github Actions - Docker Ce fut une mission extrêmement stimulante car j'étais seul maître à bord. On me donnait la vision métier et je gérais toute la technique.

Gosh was a mobile social networking start-up based on immersive video commentary. The company raised 2 million euros in 2022 and had 10 full-time employees. I joined the project to help develop the application's backend. At that stage, the application was not yet on the stores. The aim of my assignment was to develop a first publishable version of the app. The app had great potential for rapid growth. Indeed, the number of DAUs could increase very quickly. Scaling was therefore a major challenge. I began by carrying out the following tasks: - Development of business functionalities - Creation of automated tests (non-existent before my arrival) - Integration of external APIs - Monolith -> microservices transition, and vice-versa The major task during my time at Gosh was to make the backend scalable. But there was an additional difficulty. Updates were transmitted in real time to mobiles via gRPC streams. So I came up with a nice solution for scaling the streams horizontally. This solution was based on distributed listeners and microservices. Technologies : - GO/Golang - PostgreSQL - gRPC - GORM - Zap - Firebase - Twilio - Apple Push Notification service (APNs)

My first freelance assignments were training courses. I gave courses on site or remotely. Types of clients : - French schools of higher education - Professional training centers - Training organizations for retraining I've worked for companies such as ENI, Konexio, Webforce3, EFREI, Dawan. I've covered a wide spectrum of different subjects: - Linux systems administration - Windows Server administration - GO/Golang development - PHP development - Application security - SQL design - Object-oriented programming - Docker and Kubernetes - Public cloud providers: GCP, AWS

I worked with Neo in 2021, back when the company was called “Pegasy”. I worked on the first version of Neo SaaS. The objective of my mission was to develop the backend of this SaaS. After a few months' work, I was joined by a front-end team. My responsibilities included - Develop business functionalities on the backend in GO (Golang) - Supervise other developers on the frontend application - Deploy the application on a cloud (ProxMox) - Project management - Provide product vision. Technologies used : - GO (Golang) - MongoDB - Gitlab - AWS EC2/VPC/Lambda/ECR/EFS

Ragequit after 3 weeks. Permanent contract + user support = not for me.

Towards the end of my second year at school, I was offered the chance to onbard a SaaS project and help code the backend for 20% of the shares. The project was an archiving solution for French higher education establishments. It was to enable them to : - Easily manage administrative documents - Be RGPD compliant I coded most of the backend. My partner took care of the front end. A friend of mine, a lawyer, took care of the RGPD aspect.

The school asked me to do a work experience placement. I said "no" on principle and did an "internship" where I actually coded for Glio and gave courses as a contractor.

Dropshipping had fallen out of my hands through lack of interest. I looked for a skill closer to my lifelong passion, IT. I didn't have enough expertise or self-confidence to start freelance dev. So I decided to offer computer assistance services. My target: elderly people who had difficulty using their computers. With €50 from Google Ads, I had my first customers. The first was my neighbor, who wanted to know how to download attachments. The second: someone who needed me to install a stereo on his TV. The third: 2-3 WordPress tweaks. I started charging more and more for more and more technical services. At the most, I remember charging €1,500 to make a Wix from scratch with a few customizations. But that was far from stimulating, given the level. I gradually gave up.

It was great. You had to go fast, you had to sweat, you had to run red lights. I was racing the scooters on a bike that wasn't even electric. It was in Paris, and I nearly ended my life at every crossroads. All for half a minimum wage. If I had to do it all over again, I'd do it 100 times over, rather than go back to a permanent job processing support tickets.

The moment I realized I wasn't cut out for social work.