Raphaël Oester

Gameloft is a video game production company founded in 1999.

In 2017, 2.5 million Gameloft games were downloaded daily. The company has nearly 187 smartphone games developed in its 20 creative studios.

I joined the Paris studio to develop the online game 'Project Fireball,' scheduled for release in 2025.

As an Online Developer, I was responsible for creating the game's backend, almost from scratch.

My scope covered two main aspects:

- Metagame (authentication, player progression, reward attribution)

- Matchmaking (creating balanced matches between players while minimizing wait times)

The relatively complex business requirements naturally led me to adopt a strict craft approach.

Domain Driven Design and TDD were essential to achieve scalable solutions offering game designers great control for adjusting game parameters.

Technologies used:

- GO/Golang

- Microsoft Azure PlayFab

- Openmatch

- Docker

- Perforce Helix Core

- Kubernetes

Assurmax is a startup founded in 2017. It is an insurtech company behind the SaaS POWER, an insurance contract marketing platform.

Over the last 3 years, it has tripled its revenue, which is now €10 million.

When I joined Assurmax, the context was the refactoring of a SaaS. This SaaS aims to connect insurance brokers and wholesalers.

A v1 of the SaaS already existed (written in JS), but it had several problems:

- Numerous bugs

- No configuration flexibility

- Very difficult maintenance

- Business needs not met

- Poor performance

It was therefore decided to write a new version in GO, which would not have these problems. Development cycles were long and the methodology was waterfall.

In this context, it seemed relevant to me to highlight the technical debt upon my arrival.

My first tasks therefore consisted of:

- Implementing SRP in repositories

- Inverting all dependencies

- Separating services from controllers

- Properly isolating the domain

- Creating anti-corruption layers for business logic code

- Spreading contexts where they were uniformly ignored

- Creating a testing framework (no tests were present when I arrived).

I succeeded in getting clean architecture adopted as a standard.

The codebase greatly benefited from increased cleanliness, stability, clarity, and flexibility.

After that, I returned to feature development.

- Multi-step client onboarding with data recovery and caching

- Authentication with SSO (Keycloak)

- Full RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) to authorize access to business resources

Technologies used:

- GO/Golang

- PostgreSQL

- GORM

- Zap

- Gin/Gonic

- Fizz

Notable integrations:

- Universign

- Keycloak

Tasks performed:

- Scoping business needs

- Developing backend applications in GO (Golang)

- Code quality control

- Implementing automated tests

- API development

- Building SQL database schemas

- Refactoring old applications

- Implementing clean architecture

CopyAds is a startup founded in Dubai in 2023.

Its mission: to make AI accessible and usable by copywriters/marketers.

In 2023, the project raised €400k from private investors.

Its story began in April 2023.

I was contacted to propose a short one-week project.

The objective: to code a simple CLI. This CLI would become the PoC of the SaaS.

With the company founded, I maintained my freelance developer position.

And as future CTO, I acquired 20% of the shares.

In this context, I was involved in:

- Developing the backend from scratch (Clean Architecture, DDD, GO/Golang)

- Designing the infrastructure on a public cloud (with IaC)

- Mentoring the front-end development team

- Sourcing and recruiting new profiles for the team.

The beta version was ready after 4 months of work.

Technologies used:

- GO/Golang

- gRPC

- PostgreSQL

- Native SQL

- Testify

- Zap

- Google Cloud Run

- Terraform/Terragrunt

- Github Actions

- Docker

Tasks performed:

- Scoping business needs

- Developing backend applications in GO (Golang)

- Code quality control

- Implementing automated tests

- API development

- Building SQL database schemas

- Deploying applications on a public cloud (GCP/AWS)

- Implementing clean architecture

- Microservices design

- Implementing CI/CD pipelines

- Training and upskilling development teams