I am passionate about engineering, engineers, developer experience, and problem solving. I started my career in backend engineering, pushed forward with R&D, helped a number of companies transition to DevOps, and now take pride in forming communities of engineers centered around problem solving, tech stacks, and improving efficiency in this post-COVID world in which physical spaces are harder to navigate. I'm obsessive about defining the problem space well and love delivering the right solution at the right time. I also love programming and constructing beautiful software designs.

Skills

Navigating challenges

advanced
  • Developer Experience
  • Open Source
  • Distributed architecture

Acting on critical engineering domains

advanced
  • Large databases
  • Platform Abstraction
  • Cross-domain communication
  • Time-constrained processing

Acting on critical people challenges in Engineering

advanced
  • Forming communities
  • scaling up engineering into communities

Engineering Processes

advanced
  • Kanban
  • Scrum

Software Architecture

master
  • Distributed systems
  • Scalable systems

Developer Experience

master
  • Forming communities
  • Backstage
  • Developer-centric infrastructure
  • Bridging knowledge gaps

Free/OSS and Engineering culture

master
  • Communities of Practice
  • Inner Source
  • Meetups
  • Talks

Software engineering and development

master
  • Python
  • Golang
  • NodeJS
  • PHP
  • Bash and POSIX shell
  • problem solving

Relational database systems

advanced
  • PostgreSQL
  • MariaDB
  • MySQL

Enterprise server environments

master
  • GNU/Linux
  • Debian
  • Alpine

AWS Cloud architecture

advanced

Cloud environments

advanced
  • AWS
  • Scaleway

DevOps tooling and processes

master
  • Git
  • GitLab
  • GitHub
  • Ansible
  • Terraform
  • Infrastructure as Code
  • Engineering Assets Management

Virtualization

advanced
  • VMWare ESXi and vSphere
  • Hyper-V
  • Proxmox
  • KVM
  • bhyve

Containers and Orchestration

master
  • Kubernetes operations
  • Docker
  • Packer
  • security scanners

Work Experience (7)

May 2021 - Current
Staff Software Engineer, Platform
sennder GmbH (road freight logistics automation, 250+ engineers)
https://sennder.com
  • devops
  • architecture
  • technical leadership
  • developer experience
  • open source

As a Staff Software Engineer in the Platform BA, I take part in building sennder's internal platform that helps developers deploy numerous services as the company switches from a monolithic app model to a distributed asynchronous architecture. I also initiate the Developer Experience initiative and set the company on a path towards friction-less knowledge sharing across an Engineering community of 200+ people. When I am not doing this, I interview a large number of engineers so that more talented people join forces with us.

  • built tooling to migrate infrastructure to and from AWS ECS to EKS and for cross-account RDS migrations

  • co-built and led the DevOps and Infrastructure Community of Practice

  • spearheaded the Developer Experience initiative for 200 engineers, inspiring other lead engineers to do the same with QA and frontend tools

Apr 2019 - May 2021
Senior DevOps Engineer
bluenove (collective intelligence consulting and engineering, 10 engineers)
https://bluenove.com
  • devops
  • architecture
  • technical leadership
  • system administration
  • network administration
  • relational databases
  • development
  • security
  • containers

DevOps-wise, I build the tools that deploy stacks of open source collective intelligence solutions and as co-Tech Lead I help developers study technical problems and produce elegant and efficient algorithmic and architectural solutions to these.

  • cut down deployment time for the solutions from 1 week with large inefficient infrastructure to 2 hours (on dedicated servers)

  • cut down hosting costs massively

  • accelerated development through code base cleanups

  • led and inspired developers

  • tackled performance problems through live troubleshooting and optimizations, addressing crisis situations

Jan 2017 - Apr 2019
Senior DevOps Engineer and System Administrator
Believe Digital (music streaming and revenue management, 50+ engineers)
https://www.believe.com/
  • devops
  • security
  • storage
  • system administration
  • linux
  • network administration
  • containers

As an experienced DevOps/sysadmin leading (tech-wise) a team of 4, we build together a better, more modern infrastructure for petabyte-scale data management and processing. We face numerous technical and security challenges to deliver the best, most reliable service to our team of 50 developers and their ever-growing number of customers.

  • successfully tackled complex database migrations touching realtime workflows

  • cleaned up build processes

  • successfully migrated server environments from custom Gentoo distributions to standard Debian systems

Jan 2015 - Jan 2017
R&D Engineer
NBS System (secure hosting, 20+ engineers)
https://www.nbs-system.com/
  • devops
  • system administration
  • linux
  • relational databases
  • development

I work in the 3-person R&D team as a backend python developer, solving problems pertaining to scaling an Information System, general performance, reliability. I also perform consulting missions for clients who need special expertise on relational databases.

  • unblocked massively slow information system accesses by building a smart middleware

  • integrated new deployment platforms in addition to Xen and KVM (VMware vSphere)

  • fixed performance issues on large Magento deployments during the seasonal sales

Jan 2012 - Jan 2015
Software Engineer
Atasta SAS (IT consulting, 5 engineers)
  • devops
  • sysadmin
  • development
  • linux
  • relational databases
  • auditing

I am in charge of the infrastructure aspects of this small company, and also team with the other employees in tasks of software development and deployment. I also assess skills and interview candidates. I do a number of technical meetings, audit sessions, consulting with clients, and help the company shape its general technical direction

Jan 2010 - Jan 2019
Technical Consultant
Freelancer
  • devops
  • system administration
  • ecommerce
  • relational databases
  • development
  • security
  • containers

I provide small and medium businesses with consulting on their database and web stacks, help them with online shop migrations and general IT operations, system architecture reviews and more services. Very diverse client portfolio.

Jan 2009 - Jul 2009
System Administrator
Nerim SAS (web hosting and ISP, 10+ engineers)
  • customer management
  • system administration
  • linux

I work as a system administrator in web hosting and network support, handling tickets and managing relations with customers.

Projects (1)

Speaker at CodePub Berlin meets Sennder
29 Nov 2021
  • feminism
  • women-in-tech
  • devops
  • education
  • stem

1 hour conference prepared peering with a junior I introduced the concepts of DevOps and Agile development to a feminine and non-binary audience typically under-represented and showed how it actually is about empowering developers and people in general by focusing on achievable delivery, quicker value cycles, and on building ecosystems.

Education (5)

STEM training
Self-training
2016
AWS Solutions Architect – Associate
2014
Advanced PostgreSQL DBA
Dalibo
2008
DUT Informatique
IUT de Lens, France
  • Software development
  • System administration
  • Project management
2006
Baccalauréat scientifique
Lycée Édouard Branly, Boulogne sur Mer, France
  • maths
  • physics
  • mechanics
  • electronics
  • philosophy

Languages

French

Native speaker

English

Master

German

Intermediate

Dutch

Beginner

Hebrew

Beginner

Interests

Queer rights

I am an activist for the rights and autonomy of queer and disabled people.

Making music

I create electronic music and maintain old (analog) synthesizers. I also play guitar and piano.

Live music

I am fond of attending electronic music events of all sorts.

Literature

I am a sci-fi buff, also a dedicated reader of Pratchett, Gaiman, Iain M. Banks and other prominent authors.

Cinema

I love movies in general and art movies in particular.

Open Source

I contribute to a number of open source projects both as part of my professional activities and outside of work.

Science

I am passionate about maths (especially statistics), physics, chemistry, electronics, and spend a hefty amount of time reading or educating myself about these topics.

Social sciences

I am fond of philosophy and sociology and also have a decent education level in these.

Analog photography

I shoot and process photos made using mechanical cameras and film (rolls and plates).

Wikipedia

I'm a Wikipedia contributor since 2005.

Internet civil rights activism

I have been a member or participant in various actions for civil rights on the Internet since 2008.

References

“ I was working with Matcha as a peer and then as a manager for about 2 years. I would highly recommend Matcha as a proven expert in software development. She is smart, precise, and attentive to details. She is able to take a task, make the entire research, and finally implement it. On the other side, it is easy to communicate with Matcha. She is able to explain difficult concepts with easy language. ”
Manu Ustenko, Manager at sennder GmbH