Nicolas Grange
CTO at Retriever Communications- Claim this Profile
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French -
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Bio
Credentials
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Certified Scrum Master
Scrum AllianceMay, 2013- Sep, 2024 -
Apache Kafka Series - Kafka Connect Hands-on Learning
Udemy -
Apache Kafka Series - Learn Apache Kafka for Beginners
Udemy -
Google Analytics for Beginners
Google
Experience
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Retriever Communications
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Australia
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Software Development
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1 - 100 Employee
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CTO
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Mar 2015 - Present
A hands-on technical leadership role focused on Technology, Culture and Innovation.Evaluates new technologies, particularly in Mobile, Automation, Integration, Security, and Cloud, to identify technologies that can be used internally or integrated into the product suite. Provides valuable leadership in the design and architecture of the software, including creation of new microservices. Involved in code reviews of new services or libraries and writes code mainly for prototypes or infrastructure/performance related projects. Has worked very closely with the Operations team to introduce infrastructure-as-code and automation using Terraform, Packer and Ansible. Has helped the teams gain better visibility into production systems through performance metrics monitoring and automated error reporting using tools like InfluxDB, Grafana, Raygun and ElasticSearch.Assists in the management of Retriever’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering which runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Regularly evaluates new AWS services to see if costs can be reduced or performance and reliability can be improved. Heavily involved in the recruitment of operations and engineering roles. Runs regular 1-on-1's with 10 technical staff to help their professional development. Has led DevOps initiatives to improve the collaboration of the engineering and operations teams. Has helped drive several research projects on interaction design and emerging technologies with the University of Technology, Sydney. The most recent project has involved using Mixed Reality with Microsoft’s HoloLens. Started initiatives like HackDays, Lunch & Learns to encourage and foster an innovative and learning culture.
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Engineering Manager
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Jan 2010 - Feb 2015
Technical manager of a team of software engineers and testers responsible for the development of a Mobile Enterprise Application Platform and building industry and customer specific products using this platform.Took over a team of 6 engineers and steadily grew it to more than double through hiring graduates and senior engineers. Invested considerable time in mentoring and training the graduates, which has been rewarded by seeing them develop into highly competent engineers.Adjusted my approach to maintain the quality, balance and culture within the team as it grew. Learnt to delegate more and to rely on capable team leads. Also learnt when it is appropriate for me to write code and when it wasn’t.Gained experience in dealing with remote teams through initially outsourcing to a US-based company and later on with direct reports in our US office. Hard work and discipline has been essential in maintaining good communication when working in a different time zone.Started a number of initiatives including:• Adoption of Scrum and daily stand-ups• Focus on Continuous Integration through Jenkins and ‘I-broke-the-build-hat’• Quality improvements through external TDD/BDD/automated testing training• Migration to JIRA for shared use across departments• Migration to GIT and use of Stash with Pull Requests to facilitate knowledge sharing• Introduced Docker to help bridge DevOps gap and experiment with new softwareHandles the hiring process of software engineers and testers in Australia and in the US from start to finish. Had to make difficult decisions in dismissing engineers not performing. Holds regular one-on-one meetings with each direct report. Sets their Key Result Areas and carries out their performance/salary reviews.
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Senior Software Engineer
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Jun 2008 - Dec 2009
Worked to establish our London office to better support and grow our European customer base. Carried out various tasks with limited number of staff in the office. Learnt to work independently as my direct manager was in our Sydney office. Main tasks were developing mobile applications and integrating back-office systems. Also ran some “train the trainer” sessions, helped the rollout of devices and supported users
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Software Engineer
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Jun 2004 - May 2008
Started off as a graduate learning and being mentored by Senior Engineers. Mainly developed in Java for J2EE Web Applications and C# for Windows .NET & Compact Framework. Later on became a Team Lead.
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Illumin8 Pty Ltd
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Australia
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Software Development
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1 - 100 Employee
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Software Developer
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Apr 2001 - Dec 2002
C++ development using MS Visual C++. RDBMS - Informix & MySQL. Maintaining firewalls, web servers Apache and IIS. Documentation of systems using UML C++ development using MS Visual C++. RDBMS - Informix & MySQL. Maintaining firewalls, web servers Apache and IIS. Documentation of systems using UML
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Education
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1999 - 2004
University of Technology Sydney
Bachelor of Engineering, Software, Engineering
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