- 34 years old, married, 2 daughters
- Based in Berlin, Germany
- Speaks: French ✪✪✪, English ✪✪, German ✪
- Motto: Quality & performance through simplicity
Interim Frontend Engineer (June 2015 - January 2016)
- Contributed to the EyeEm website, an isomorphic React application
- Created a React based email framework: EyeMail
Backend Engineer (June 2011 - June 2015)
- First Backend and Infrastructure Engineer
- API Creator and Owner
The Story: In June 2011, I stopped working on La Distribution and started consulting again. At the same time, I met the nice founders of EyeEm who were in need for help on their backend. I started working with them as a contractor, things went really well and after some time I eventually moved as a full time employee.
Achievement: helped scale the company from ~6 people, ~5K users and ~0$ to 60+ people, 10M+ users, 50M+ photos and 24M$+ in funding.
Sample Projects:
- API v2: design and implementation of a REST API with sensible touches here and there. Used internally by iOS, Android and Web Frontend.
- Fast API: a rewrite of our API framework from Symfony1 to a custom framework. Dedicated to speed.
- Fast Model: a custom DBAL + Caching layer allowing most API queries to be answered in a few milliseconds.
- Access Logs: Monolog + Logstash + Kibana mashup allowing a detailed understanding of our API traffic and performance.
The Stack: AWS, Ubuntu, nginx, PHP, Memcache, Redis, MySQL, RabbitMQ, ElasticSearch, Cassandra. Javascript, React, node.js.
Founder (January 2009 - June 2011)
- Solo Founder of a distributed web application platform
The Story: After Netvibes, I decided to become independent and split my time between freelance work and special projects. I progressively focused on La Distribution which unfortunately didn't break through.
Key Features:
- Repositories & Packages: complete package management system for PHP applications, inspired by Linux distributions.
- Authentication & SSO: Single Sign On system across all installed applications. Distributed authentication with OpenId Connect.
Chief Architect (January 2006 - November 2008)
- Early Engineer in a successful startup
- Responsible for API and developer platform
The Story: I met Tariq Krim, Founder of Netvibes, at a conference in Paris a few months after he launched the product. We chatted about the API strategy and figured I could help. I started as a contractor, became more and more involved and finally joined full time. There I launched a successful developer platform and ended as Chief Architect, responsible for the platform vision and technical strategy.
Achievement: helped scale the company from 1 person, ~100K users and ~0$ to 40 people, 10M+ users and 15M$+ in funding. The UWA platform was a key asset when selling Netvibes to Dassault Systèmes.
Sample Projects:
- UWA: invented and launched a simple widget API, cross-platform, and based on web standards. See techcrunch post.
- Netvibes.org: released key components of the Netvibes Platform as open source. See blog announcement or the next web post.
- Mobile: prototyped and launched the first iPhone version. See techcrunch post.
Technical Director (October 2001 - October 2006)
- First Developer in an award winning web studio
The Story: In September 2001, right after the dotcom crash, looking for a first job as a developer was tough. I finally met the founder of Upian, Alexandre Brachet, and was hired to code Presidentielles.net, an improbable website covering the french 2002 presidential election. Things went really well and I then helped the company start and grow its web agency activity, providing my technical guidance and developer magics.
Achievements:
- Grew the web team from 1 to 4 people.
- Early adoption of web standards and CSS based design.
- A lot of fantastic projects which are unfortunately all now forgotten.
Creator (since June 2010)
- Originally created Bouncer to analyse the HTTP traffic on Blogmarks.
- Currently working on Access Watch, a Web Traffic Analytics Service
Founder (since January 2004)
- Co-founded this Social Bookmarking application.
- Maintaining and operating the service for the last 10 years.
- Currently polishing a modernised version for the next 10 years.
- Contributed several patches to make the Atom API more useful. See Tickets & Patches.
- Helped make the library significantly faster by benchmarking its performance and eliminating bottlenecks. See Pull Requests.
- Backend
- PHP veteran (15+ years experience)
- Node.js enthusiast
- Ruby/Python compatible
- Frontend
- HTML/CSS/Javascript veteran (15+ years experience)
- React enthusiast
- Protocols
- HTTP & RESTful web services
- AtomPub, OpenID, oAuth
- Systems
- Linux: Debian, Ubuntu
- HTTP servers: Apache, nginx
- Data Stores: SQL (MySQL), NoSQL (Memcache, Redis, Cassandra, ElasticSearch)
- Message Queues: RabbitMQ
- Cloud: Amazon Web Services and many other IAAS/PAAS services
- Web Culture
- Web Applications & Web APIs
- Open Platforms & Open Formats
- Quality & Performance
- Email: francois at hodierne dot net
- LinkedIn: francoishodierne