Alexandre Bertails

Highlights

• Expert at functional programming and API design. I have been building systems and libraries (almost exclusively) in Scala since 2008. I am very comfortable with Typelevel libraries like cats, cats-effect, or fs2. I have coached and mentored many engineers over the years.
• Skilled at designing distributed systems. I have extensive experience building high-volume HTTP APIs, data processing pipelines, and micro-services. I have worked with various data technologies such as Postgresql, Mysql, Cassandra, Kafka, or Spark.
• Deep expertize with all things data, from data modeling to data processing and data APIs. I have a keen interest in linking data across datasets and for ontology design. I help organizations organize their data as shareable knowledge. Expert at designing and federating GraphQL APIs.
• Experienced with and not afraid of dealing with legacy systems and codebases.
• Excellent communicator, comfortable giving public talks as well as presentations to senior leadership or non-technical people. I have extensive experience writing and collaborating on technical standards and design documents. I have practical experience of working cross-functionally with non-technical collaborators, ranging from project managers to product managers and creatives.

Professional experience

Jan 2022 - ongoing

Netflix • Los Gatos, CA

Senior Software Engineer - Data Platform

Member of the Data Discovery team for the Netflix Data Platform, enabling users/clients to interact with the platform capabilities and find relevant assets.

• Led initiative to federate the Data Platform APIs into the Enterprise GraphQL gateway.
• Maintained, migrated, and federated domain graph services for workflow orchestration and notebooks into the Enterprise GraphQL gateway.
• Maintains the GraphQL Search service for the Data Platform.

Mar 2015 - Jan 2022

Apple • Cupertino, CA

Software Engineering Manager - Apple Media Products

Led the engineering team building the platform for AMP (Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Podcast, …) to move its legacy infrastructure to Kubernetes across multiple clouds. Also managed secrets and identity services.

Senior Data Engineer - Fraud Engineering, Algorithms, Risk

Data engineer supporting data scientists through better tooling.

• Maintained our timeseries library for aggregating data in streaming+batch jobs, and for querying models in realtime services.
• Reduced time-to-market for onboarding new Spark jobs from days to minutes.
• Built highly scalable regex-based filtering engine for Spark.
• Implemented GDPR requirements for Fraud's infrastructure.

Staff Engineer - Marcom

Involved in everything data for apple.com in Apple’s Worldwide Marketing Communications. Single-handedly and dramatically improved apple.com's SEO posture.

• Strategized, implemented, and deployed Apple's Knowledge Graph as structured data using the Schema.org ontology and Linked Data principles.
• Oversaw various content management systems and publishing pipelines for the marketing and retail organizations.
• Architected and delivered Today at Apple.
• Joined and represented Apple's interests in the Schema.org Community Group.

Feb 2014 - Feb 2015

Pellucid Analytics • New York, NY

Pellucid makes a tablet- and browser-based software solution for data visualizations.

Senior Software Engineer

Started on the data team and later moved to the vizualization team.

• Designed a graph-based query language and API on top of Datomic using the Linked Data Platform and banana-rdf.
• Implemented the Grammar of Graphics as a DSL in Scala.
• Wrote data extractors for SEC filings.
• Editor for the W3C Linked Data Patch Format as part of the Linked Data Platform (LDP).

Jul 2009 - Feb 2014

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) - Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) • Cambridge, MA

The W3C is an international consortium that develops open standards to ensure the long-term growth of the Web.

Software and System Engineer

I was part of the W3C Systems Team where I led the development of a unified platform for the W3C validators and participated (editor, team contact, software engineer) in various RDF and Linked Data Working Groups.

• Maintained w3.org and various services as the W3C Webmaster.
• Created banana-rdf, a library for RDF in Scala, and read-write-web, a pre-Solid server for personal data.
• Editor for the W3C Recommendation RDB2RDF - Direct Mapping.
• Co-organized nescala and Boston Scala.

May 2008 - Jul 2009

Atos - Open Source Center • Paris, France

Atos is an international IT services company.

Software Engineer

I worked for the French National Library on their digital library and preservation project SPAR.

• Implemented data transformation pipelines, from data modeling in RDF to SPARQL queries using Virtuoso.
• Typical Java stack: Maven, J2EE, Spring.

Sep 2007 - Apr 2008

Entropic-Synergies • Paris, France

Entropic-Synergies is a web-agency specialized in social games.

Software Engineer

Implemented white-label products to be licensed to various Websites.

• Implemented a game engine for web browser games using J2EE and Adobe Flex.
• Real-time stock market game for LeFigaro.fr.
• E-learning platform for 1001lettres.com.
• Real-estate search engine for Comintoo.
• Foodstuff search engine and data scraper for LesProteines.com.

Mar 2006 - Sep 2007

INRIA • Saclay, France

INRIA is the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control.

PhD candidate

I was researching certified compilers for synchronous languages à la Lustre using the Coq proof assistant. I was also teaching Computer Science and Networks at Telecom ParisTech, IFIPS, University of Paris XI, and University of Paris VII.

Education

2006

MSc in Computer Engineering at Telecom ParisTech • Paris, France

2006

MSc in Computer Science at MPRI - University Paris VII • Paris, France

2003

BSc in Computer Science at University Paris VII (ranked 1st) • Paris, France

Language proficiency

French

native

English

fluent