Adrien Poupa

Leading a team of developers and devops responsible for Star Citizen’s website infrastructure, e-commerce backend and developer tools.

• Leading the infrastructure migration from Salt to Kubernetes using Kustomize and ArgoCD
• Creating on-demand test environments with ArgoCD
• Maintaining the e-commerce backend and developing new features (PHP 8, MySQL, GraphQL)

I am working on Star Citizen’s e-commerce website. Backend technologies are PHP, Node.js + TypeScript; frontend is based on React + TypeScript.

I improved the cart flow performance resulting in stability during major sale events, and reduced pipeline duration by half leading to increased developer productivity. I migrated the codebase from PHP 7.2 to PHP 8.1 and implemented static analysis tools (PHPStan, PHPCS, Rector).

Worked on PHP applications based on Laravel and Vue.js, also sometimes on WordPress, Zend Framework, jQuery and other related technologies and languages.

I am also very interested in the DevOps side of those applications as I created an complete architecture on AWS to host them. The details are present on my blog.

I mostly worked on two projects:

• A financial application built on Laravel and Vue.js used by financial advisors. I wrote the export engine that is responsible for generating PDF files that are handed out to the client. I also wrote a generic integration engine that allows fetching financial data from various external providers. I am the principal maintainer of the application so I am responsible for bug fixing and developing new features as well.
• A multi tenant legacy PHP application for which I created the AWS infrastructure mentioned above. There were discrepancies between the tenants’ databases that I fixed. I created a new Laravel application that runs next to the legacy application that is used to create new features using a modern technology stack, using the strangler pattern.

KDS is a global provider of a corporate travel management software solution. During my internship, I worked on their software written in C# and Ember.js.

I refactored the internal API to comply with REST architecture.

I migrated the mocking framework from RhinoMocks to Moq.

I prepared the repository for a migration from SVN to Git by removing unnecessary files from the Git history.

During my time at Efrei, I worked as a freelancer for Efrei’s junior enterprise, SepEfrei.

I developed a few projects, including BlockPharma, a Laravel application that uses the blockchain to fight against drug counterfeiting by associating the datamatrix present on each drug’s package to a unique blockchain transaction by using additional data. That way, the drug’s history cannot be altered.

Diagamter’s main activity is to screen housing properties. That includes checking for issues such as the presence of asbestos or termites, but also getting information about the property such as the surface or the isolation. Such checks are mandatory when selling or renting a property in France. Diagamter’s customers include technicians, notaries, real estate agencies and end customers.

Diagamter sells its brand and IT platform, called monDiagamter, to franchisers. This platform is based on Laravel, and I gained my first professional experience developing new features on the platform.

Once my internship was over, I kept working for them as a freelancer when needed; I helped building the end customer website as well as the careers website.

During my first internship, I worked for Orange, the biggest telecom service provider in France.

I worked on a PHP application called Part Variable Vendeur - Orange Promotion, responsible for calculating the variable part of sellers. It was built on the Orange Framework & Tools, an homemade framework based on components from Zend Framework 2 and Symfony.

It is a 2-year program dedicated to Software Engineering. aimed at enhancing analytic and design skills as well as improve one’s ability to present technical material in written form. Throughout the program, I was trained to work on all aspects of the software product life cycle and learned how to develop high-capacity computer software in a controlled, systematic and quantifiable manner and ensure it is reliable, efficient and economic.

Here is the list of the courses I have taken:

• Advanced Programming Practices: I wrote a tweet displayer using the Play framework in Java. I replicated the paper “How Not to Structure Your Database-backed Web Applications: A Study of Performance Bugs in the Wild” in the Laravel ecosystem. I found performance issues in some open-source applications and I fixed them.
• I added support for C# to the the Ptidej tool suite using ANTLR4.
• Introduction to Artificial Intelligence: I wrote 3 mini projects in Java and Python to learn about Good Old Fashioned Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning on datasets and Natural Language Processing.
• Software Verification and Testing: I wrote a static bug detector in Java.
• Advanced Design Software Architecture
• Software Comprehension and Maintenance
• Software Design Methodologies
• Software Engineering Processes
• Software Measurement
• Software Project Management
• Systems Requirements Specifications

I started to study computer science and software engineering full-time at Efrei (Engineering School of Information and Digital Technologies), where I prepared an engineering bachelor and masters degree in software engineering.

I obtained my undergraduate degree in software engineering there, and took advantage of the dual-degree program they had with Concordia University to move to Montreal. This means that graduating in Montreal made me also graduate from Efrei with a Masters.

I did some interesting projects, most notably a C# chat that uses TCP sockets and an Android application to show pollen forecast.

Exchange semester done while I was studying at Efrei. This is when I discovered what living abroad was like for the first time and that played a major role in my decision to move to Canada.

I took the following courses there:

• Entrepreneurship
• Operating Systems
• Introduction to Web Programming
• Object Oriented Methods with UML

Two-year undergraduate intensive course in mathematics, physics, engineering sciences and computer science.

Icam (Institut Catholique des Arts et Metiers) is a general engineering school, with a focus in mechanic.

At the term of this two-year formation, I passed a national exam (Banque PT) and entered Efrei, which was my top choice as I wanted to prepare a software engineering degree rather than a mechanical one.