NAME
Le Baron - Director of Engineering - Platform Engineering (DevX, Data, AI & Security)
SYNOPSIS
Le Baron de Charlus [--hire] [--contact jobs@lebaron.sh] [--experience 12+years]
SUMMARY
Director of Engineering - Platform Engineering at Wooclap since July 2026, owning a cross-functional tribe spanning DevX (incl. AI & infrastructure), Data, and Security. Single technical entry point for the business across the full platform stack, setting vision and strategy, managing the Data and Security leads alongside DevX, and ensuring technical, strategic and delivery coherence across the domain.
Promoted from Engineering Manager - Developer Experience (DevX) at Wooclap (Jan 2026 - Jul 2026), leading a cross-functional squad (AI, frontend, backend, infra, QA, platform) and owning DevX as a product: roadmap, reliability/SRE practices, and security engineering by design.
10+ years of software engineering experience combining engineering leadership, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), and DevOps, across startups, scale-ups and large infrastructure teams (OVH, PayFit, RadioKing, Altirnao). Specialized in Linux/Unix systems administration, cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP), Kubernetes, Terraform, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC).
Track record of leading SRE and DevOps practices at scale: on-call operations and incident management for 380,000+ servers at OVH, security-focused engineering management at PayFit, and hands-on CI/CD, automation, and observability/monitoring work (Zabbix, Nagios, ELK Stack) throughout.
Background also spans cybersecurity, backend development (Python, Golang, Rust, Shell, JavaScript), and technical training. Teached Advanced UNIX Systems Engineering, Cybersecurity, and Cloud Platform architecture at Master’s level.
SKILLS
core-competencies[]
Director of Engineering, Platform Engineering Strategy, Multi-team Leadership, Data Platform, Security Engineering, Stakeholder Management, Org Design, Engineering Management, Developer Experience (DevX), People Leadership, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), DevOps, Cloud Infrastructure, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), CI/CD, Automation, Incident Management, On-call Operations, Cybersecurity, Linux/Unix Systems Administration, Technical Training & Mentoring
unix[]
programming[]
technologies[]
Backstage, Sonarcloud, Git, Ansible, Docker, LXC, VMware, ZFS, KVM, Proxmox, OpenVZ, OpenStack, Nutanix, NewRelic, Sentry, Zabbix, Munin, Nagios, Shinken, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Varnish, Nginx, Apache, HA-Proxy, Pfsense, Juniper, ELK Stack, Kubernetes, Rancher, Traefik, Terraform, RabbitMQ, Redis, GlusterFS, OpsGenie, Cloud-Init, Okta, ArgoCD, CircleCI, SOPS
providers[]
methodology[]
Agility, Scrum, Jira, Confluence, OTRS, GLPI, ITIL
EXPERIENCE
Jul 2026 → now
Leading Platform Engineering, a tribe spanning DevX (incl. AI & infrastructure), Data, and Security. Single technical entry point for the business across the full platform stack.
- Own vision & strategy across DevX, Data, AI and Security as one coherent domain, rather than three disconnected roadmaps
- Act as single technical entry point for the business, translating business needs into technical direction across data, security and infrastructure
- Manage and grow the Data and Security leads, in addition to DevX: multi-team / domain leadership
- Technical counterpart for the business tool stack, partnering with the functional stakeholder
- Align stakeholders, prioritize across teams, and own delivery quality and execution across the domain
- Drive AI initiatives (owned by DevX) as a structural lever across the organization
$ tech: JavaScript, React, Node.js, Golang, AWS, Terraform, GitHub Actions, Claude
Jan 2026 → Jul 2026
Leading the DevX squad (frontend, backend, infra, QA, platform), owning Developer Experience as a product for all Wooclap engineering teams.
- Lead & grow the DevX squad: hiring, onboarding, career development, servant leadership
- Own DevX vision & roadmap, prioritizing by impact, risk and effort
- Drive reliability & SRE practices: status page, reporting, SLA reviews
- Drive security engineering by design: standards, automated checks, vulnerability remediation SLAs
- Stay hands-on across frontend, backend and platform; challenge technical decisions and architectures
$ tech: JavaScript, React, Node.js, Claude, AWS, Terraform, GitHub Actions, Claude
2024 → 2026
Graduate Program (Master's level), Advanced UNIX Systems Engineering
- Cybersecurity & Infrastructure hardening
- Software Engineering & SRE practices
- Cloud Platform architecture & operations
2024 → Jun 2025
Working on Google Drive Product, building enterprise-grade solutions
- Lead DevX engineering
- SRE Cloud Platform engineering
- Developer
$ tech: Golang, Python, Shell, Terraform, GCP
Sep 2022 → Feb 2023
Corp Security Team, Devs & Automation & Security projects
- Lead technical roadmap
- Train engineering team
- Solve complex issues
- Improve PayFit security
$ tech: Python, Shell, Linux, Django, OAuth2, Redis, Docker, AWS
Sep 2021 → Sep 2022
Corp IT Security Team, Devs & Security projects
- Created Linux devices management system
- Developed mining blocked extension
- Internal HRSI (automated onboarding/offboarding)
$ tech: Python, Shell, Linux, K8s, ArgoCD, CircleCI, SOPS, Docker, MariaDB, Redis, JS
Feb 2020 → Aug 2021
System Engineer Team + Volunteer Oncall Ops
- New Rescue Linux Kernel (patched kernel for internal robots)
- Bring Your Own Image (BYOI) feature
- BAU: Fix and improve technologies & internal robots
Sep 2018 → Jan 2020
Dedicated Operational BareMetal Team, management of +380k servers
- Oncall: Infrastructure, Delivery, LBaaS, Private Network Vrack
- International Trainer: US, India
- Project Lead: Migration alerting/monitoring
- Nantes Office Manager relay
$ tech: Perl, Python, Bash, Golang, Unix, Cisco, Arista, Windows
2017 → 2018
GDPR officer, architecture, production environments, security
$ tech: K8s, Python, Bash, Golang, Ansible, ELK, Docker, Swarm, Rancher, Terraform, ZFS, Redis, RabbitMQ, Postgres
2016 → 2017
Management of 3000+ servers, French Ministry of Education
- Python: video processing (SFTP, NFS4, FFMPEG, Pyinotify)
- REST API development (Bottle/Flask)
- PHP web application for ministry services
2015 → 2016
Support Tools Developer, customer infrastructure management, UNIX/BSD Cloud specialist
EDUCATION
No formal university degree. Self-taught: all technical skills were built through 10+ years of hands-on production experience, self-directed learning (documentation, books, open source), and on-the-job mentoring across OVH, PayFit, RadioKing, and ATE.
DESCRIPTION
Le Baron de Charlus is a nice guy (that’s what my mother says) who likes to learn from others and help make the world a better place. Always smiling, feeling useful and participating in making people happy.
Working in the IT world for over ten years with great human and technical adventures. Worked for large groups, small structures, startups, with people living less than a kilometre from home, and on other continents.
Pet companions: “Herr Ludwig Van Chacha” (cat) and “Franz Chienbert” (dog).
OPTIONS
--nationality
French
--languages
French, English, Spanish, Greek, Chti
--uptime
31 years
--lived-in
France, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Congo, Kuwait
--visited
England, Croatia, Jordan, Belgium, Egypt, Poland, Greece, Germany, Holland, Italy, Vatican, Ireland, Scotland, Portugal
--loves
wife, cat, Devoxx, Weboob.org, Thinkpads, english boxing, climbing, crossfit, bike touring, l'echo des gnous, music, photography, coffee (and chocolate)
--donates-to
FreeBSD Foundation, Cloud Native Foundation
FILES
~/websites/lebaron.sh
NOTES
$ Uses Kinesis Advantage keyboard in bépo layout
QUOTE
“Let me make an analogy between programs and recipes”
SEE ALSO
jobs@lebaron.sh, lebaron.sh, github.com/LeBaronDeCharlus, linkedin.com/in/cderet