Skip to main content
Welcome. This site supports keyboard navigation and screen readers. Press ? at any time for keyboard shortcuts. Press [ to focus the sidebar, ] to focus the content. High-contrast themes are available via the toolbar.
serard@dev00:~/cv

Qwant

Senior Software Developer — 2015 – mid 2017 — Full-Time On-Site

French meta search engine with a focus on privacy. Extreme Programming environment.

I automated the development infrastructure and its CI and delivery. My work was audited for the entry of Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations into the capital of the company, valorizing the company at 75M€.

Key Achievements

  • Built a Scalable Software Factory: Infrastructure & Software conception and development, automating developer workstation setup and working instance provisioning for different products, with KISS & DRY in mind, using Jenkins, GitLab and Git Flow. Onboarding & setting up new projects made easy (CI/QA/UAT/Screen/DevOnboarding), all captured in a suite of tools named Qwapp.
  • Development & Integration of SDLC, ALM & PLM patterns into the Software Factory, CI and Projects — unified under the name Qwapp ("Qwant App")
  • Built a virtual software development stack (qwapp-vagrant) using Packer, Vagrant, Bash, x11, ssh, cross-platform, implementing SDLC, ALM & PLM patterns

qwapp-vagrant on M6 broadcast
qwapp-vagrant on M6 broadcast

  • Set up QA/CI/UAT environments and the npm/TypeScript + CucumberJS test stack. Coordinated the Corcode team in Poland: onboarding, feature specifications, test instructions and expected outcomes
  • Developer tooling to help set up developer PCs and working instances
  • Developed a Screen controller using Raspberry Pi, Jenkins CI Monitor View, an SD card installer module (per-raspi config: wifi password, controller endpoint) and an HTTPS orchestration service

Added Value

What I brought to Qwant went beyond writing code — it was about turning a fast-growing startup into an industrial software shop:

  • Direct contribution to a 75M€ valuation. When the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations entered Qwant's capital, my work on the development infrastructure was part of what was audited. Industrialised tooling, reproducible environments, and a measurable CI/CD pipeline are exactly the kind of assets that move the needle in a due diligence review.
  • Time-to-onboarding reduced from days to hours. Before Qwapp, setting up a new developer workstation or spinning up a new project meant a long, error-prone manual process. After Qwapp, a fresh laptop could become a fully-provisioned dev environment with one command. Multiplied across a growing team, that's hundreds of engineer-days saved per year.
  • A reusable SDLC/ALM/PLM toolkit. Instead of treating each project as a snowflake, I captured the recurring patterns (CI, QA, UAT, screen monitoring, dev onboarding) into a single coherent suite. New projects inherited the entire factory for free — KISS and DRY applied to the meta level of how software is built, not just to the software itself.
  • International team coordination. I worked directly with the Corcode team in Poland: writing feature specifications, test instructions and expected outcomes in a way that crossed the language and time-zone gap. This was about translating intent into unambiguous, executable specs — the same discipline I now apply to my DSL work.
  • Public-facing visibility. Qwapp-vagrant was featured on M6 national broadcast as part of a Qwant segment. That kind of exposure only happens when the tooling is solid enough to demo live without flinching.
  • Cross-cutting ownership. From bare-metal Raspberry Pi screen controllers to TypeScript test stacks to Packer/Vagrant images, I owned the full vertical of the developer experience. No silo, no "that's the ops team's problem" — everything was one continuous system.

Tech Stack

Bash GitLab Jenkins Packer Vagrant Docker Selenium NodeJS TypeScript CucumberJS

⬇ Download