About
I build, transform and rationalise technology organisations.
I am an engineering and technology executive. Fifteen years across retail and finance have taught me to create teams from nothing, turn fragmented ones around, and take cost and complexity out without losing pace.
I have shipped applied AI in production since 2016, not 2023: computer vision (including OCR), chatbots like the YODA assistant well before ChatGPT, and now production RAG and LLMs. I care about the version that survives contact with real users and a budget.
I operate at both ends. I am comfortable in the executive committee (ExCo) defending a strategy and a budget, and I am still hands-on in Terraform, the pipeline and the code. That range is the point: I can set direction and then prove it works.
The thread runs a long way back. I got my first computer at six and took every hand-me-down machine apart to see how it worked, and I still build for the love of it: this site and its publishing pipeline, tools I use every day, and open-source contributions to the software my teams run in production. The people I have led keep telling me they would work with me again, which I take as the realest signal there is.
In brief
- Based
- Near Toulouse, France
- Works
- Remotely across the EU and worldwide
- Languages
- French and English (fluent); notions of German, Spanish and Italian
- Since
- Applied AI in production since 2016
The short version
- 01
Sopra Banking: critical card-payment systems and PCI-DSS compliance, on a platform serving millions of cards.
- 02
Société Générale: Lead Developer, then Engineering Manager over an innovation lab and a developer-experience group. The YODA assistant and computer vision (including OCR) before ChatGPT, Pepper robots, the PSD2 API platform, and an investor-relations app that won two 2016 awards.
- 03
Société Générale Equipment Finance (SGEF): Chief Digital Officer, and managing director of a new Berlin subsidiary. A Digital Factory built from zero in under six months, and an AI risk engine that cut credit analysis from about two weeks to a day.
- 04
Groupe Chantelle: Director of Engineering, at the top of the engineering org. Six e-commerce stacks rationalised to two, run-rate cut from €4M to €3M, a 99.99% SLO, and production GenAI shipped.
Education
- ENSICAEN: engineering degree, computer science
- IAE Caen: Master's programme, Management & Business Administration (did not complete)
- IUT Caen: DUT GEII, electrical and industrial computing