Olivier Stephan
Software Development Manager chez Orange

I am a technical leader involved in key strategic products that leverage skills and new ways of working within a team focused on data and AI. Having started with 7 people directly reporting, I was continuously able to hire and managed up to 15 people while implementing strategy to be a software company. My main responsabilities are about designing a configurable voice assistant, consolidating tools upon edge AI, but also building features to automate data governance. All of these projects are hosted on a private and internal cloud platform based on gitlab and OpenShift, but hybrid architecture is a target we are looking for with help of different identified providers. Contributing into european projects like Fiware with help of Python and Hadoop ecosystem (at least HDFS, NIFI and KAFKA). Exploring and designing deep usecases on GCP with technologies like Anthos and Kubeflow for MLOps. Delivering products onto Azure to enrich customer experience within several domains from Home to Retail. Some examples of the activities I manage with partners transversal to the Group and sometimes shared as open-knowledge within a local industrial consortium that aims to start cross-innovation. I daily then prepare and regularly present technical reviews to directors and even at CxO level. My role in project is to lead and enhance a digital transformation while propagating software culture to business units and coding main components that will be baseline in future products. I currently lead a team of dozen developers dispatched in several projects that combine several forces from researchers, designers, developers but also operationals. SAFe is a standard that we assume, but I often use to say that Agility may be resumed in only three words : adaptability, communication and collaboration.

Software Craftmanship, Servant Leadership, Product Lifecycle Management are three principles and guidelines I intend to share within team. In an entrepreunarial spirit I focus people to raise their skills by sharing same passion. I recruited this way a student in apprentice to explore Lambda architecture in order to improve team culture. Results conducted into SMACK comparative as a solution that we are dealing with for Orange web portal audience. I still keep a look in community discussion on these technologies and especially articles about K8ssandra as a potential next step. Always leveraging in regards of business needs and constraints led us from ELK for Big Data initiatives to conversational AI projects. Djingo designed with Deutsch Telekom and Nuance is a relevant example of the story for which I dealt with business owners to be part of the development. With a truly agile failing fast fact, the Orange digital assistant recently moved from the speaker access towards other channels to interact with. Prototypes are following ideation steps during a recent hackathon and aimed to enhance experience with contact centers. I am truly then committed to align skills and find people or expertise in order to make innovation concrete towards success of modern usages. My true thinking is that digital chatbots and callbots virtualize a multimodal and omnichannel communication that unifies voice or text messages in a better experience for customer relationship.

My main role was about designing and consolidating a C# portfolio during all customer digital journey from ticket selling until access controlling in arenas like le Stade de France. I reproduced here data constraints I encountered previous this experience. SQLServer logshipping strategy was then deployed to ensure consistency and backup. SSIS usage for legal constraints and reporting to the professional football league were also a functional need to integrate with. One another feature I had to develop with researchers was to provide APIs compliant with a newly protocol called NFC. These APIs were consumed by thousands of mobile to validate digital tickets and to ensure they were authorized for an event. I am particularly proud to have proposed and be listened at reuse software components in distributing stack to other .net developments. Code has been then audited from internal expert community and was shared as recommandation for C# developers. For example, implementation of the presales quote tooling suite is finally designed with these same librairies and concepts introducing ,net Core and Domain Driven Design approach. These projects I technically led were running in a fully microsoft ecosystem, and especially Team Foundation Server, nowadays entitled Azure DevOps Server.

My main role was about developing in C and refactoring a Linux RHEL 3-tier application to command robots in supply chains deployed in several plants of Renault-Trucks. One feature I had to develop was to ensure data redundancy with help of archive logs in Oracle. Robots protocol (mainly ModBus or JBus) and runtime constraints were also a true challenge I had to succeed, especially for maintenance with very short timeframe not to disrupt human chain production. Infrastructure was shared in a datacenter that provided computing resources for at least 5 plants dispatched in different locations in France. A configurable platform as a service was indeed deployed on a single infrastructure and enablers that were hosted and managed by a dedicated operational team I sometimes had to help and support 24/7. Virtualization based on VMWare was at the core of the solution to provide Oracle SQL instances for Windows or Linux instances for runtime applicative that managed Samba or MQTT protocol to share fabrication order files.

My main role was about implementing and supporting APIs in C++ that partners at international consumed to enable electrical features within CATIA workbench. One feature I had to develop was to encapsulate an innovative and patented routing algorithm that use a topological space within the digital sketch and ensure a minimal usage of wires at best and green cost. Partnership was central to reach aeronautics and automative markets. Boeing and Toyota were indeed principal customers from which we got a special attention on their concrete needs in order to prioritize our backlog. In an agile way, I had to regurlarly deploy in a CI/CD approach on several configurations from Solaris to Windows and different versions from legacy V4 to prospective V6. Internal source code manager helped a lot for that with concepts of branch that are currently mainly approved as a standard in modern GitOps infrastructures.

My main role was about developing a C++ Code-Generating tool based on a data model designed within Rational Rose XDE, an UML graphic editor embedded within Visual Studio or Rational Application Developer. My tasks were mainly focused on understanding core model of ENOVIA components and how to draw or infer these data models into IDE thanks to COM meta-programming language and plugins deployed within Windows registry. My exploration and results drived me to initiate support tickets and establish exchange directly with IBM high-level support in order to solve technical issues. Lifecycle management of Rational legacy products into IBM roadmaps finally ended this software add-on, However conceptual function keeps to live as ENOVIA models, data versioning and sharing are in center of collaborative tools for CATIA V6 and 3D Experience.