Benjamin Darnault

Lead Developer · Backend & Cloud

Twenty-five years designing and running high-volume platforms (SMS, adtech, conversational AI), alternating between development, infrastructure architecture and team management. After two years co-founding Upstart.gg, I am looking to join a tech company in a hands-on lead developer role.

Emailbenjamindarnault@gmail.com
Phone+33 6 82 40 05 08
LocationVincennes · Paris area, France
LinkedInlinkedin.com/in/benjamin-darnault
Download PDFVersion française →
25 yrs of experience7 yrs of management4 platforms designed and built

Roles & Technologies over time

Hover a band for details
2001200520102015201820192020202120222023202420252026CompaniesNetsizeNetsize — 2001 to 2008French Ministry of Education — 2009 to 2009Ns.Netsize · Gemalto group — 2010 to 2011MobPartnerMobPartner · Cheetah Mobile — 2011 to 2018Unique.aiUnique.ai (now SoWhat AI) — 2018 to 2021Scw.Scaleway — 2021 to 2021Unique.aiUnique.ai (now SoWhat AI) — 2021 to 2024Upstart.ggUpstart.gg — 2024 to nowRolesSoftware engineerSoftware engineer — 2001 to 2008School teacher →School teacher — 2009 to 2009← Senior devSenior dev — 2010 to 2011Lead devLead dev — 2011 to 2016CTOCTO — 2016 to 2018Senior devSenior dev — 2018 to 2021EMEngineering Manager — 2021 to 2021Senior devSenior dev — 2021 to 2024Co-founderCo-founder — 2024 to nowLanguagesC++C++ — 2001 to 2011C#C# / .NET — 2010 to 2011PHPPHP — 2011 to 2018PythonPython — 2018 to 2020JS / NodeJavaScript / Node.js — 2018 to 2021GoGo — 2021 to 2021JS / NodeJavaScript / Node.js — 2021 to 2024PythonPython — 2021 to 2024TypeScriptTypeScript — 2024 to nowDatabasesSQL ServerSQL Server — 2001 to 2011MySQLMySQL — 2011 to 2018RedisRedis — 2011 to 2018MongoDBMongoDB — 2018 to 2021PostgreSQL →PostgreSQL — 2021 to 2021MongoDBMongoDB — 2021 to 2024BigQueryBigQuery — 2022 to 2024PostgreSQLPostgreSQL — 2024 to nowSQLiteSQLite — 2024 to nowInfra & cloudOn-premise / dedicatedOn-premise / dedicated — 2001 to 2018AWSAWS — 2013 to 2018GCPGCP — 2018 to 2021HerokuHeroku — 2018 to 2021KubernetesKubernetes — 2019 to 2024GCPGCP — 2021 to nowHerokuHeroku — 2021 to 2024CloudflareCloudflare — 2024 to now

Experience

June 2024 →
present

Upstart.gg·Co-founder

Paris

  • Designed and built, full-stack, an AI-assisted SaaS platform for creating websites and applications.
  • Multi-tenant architecture on Cloudflare Workers for Platforms: workers, data (D1) and assets (R2) isolated by site.
  • Development of the AI agent for website generation: tool calling, sub-agents, multi-LLM providers (Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, Mistral).
  • Infrastructure and operations on GCP: agent execution sandboxes, APIs and jobs on Cloud Run, CI/CD.
  • Nearly 200 users, 150 sites published in production
TypeScriptReactTailwindPostgreSQLCloudflare WorkersD1R2GCPVercel AI SDK
Aug 2018 →
June 2024

Unique.ai (now SoWhat AI)·Senior Developer

Paris — Contractor (2018–2020), then permanent employee (2021–2024) after a year at Scaleway

  • Designed, then evolved a conversational platform (Rasa framework) easing recruitment processes, deployed on web, Messenger and WhatsApp.
  • Designed and operated the micro-services infrastructure on Kubernetes (GCP) and Heroku, with CI/CD.
  • Set up monitoring and performance analytics tooling for the conversational agent.
  • Over 30M messages, over 2.5M candidates assisted, over 50 clients in France and internationally
PythonRasaFastAPINode.jsMongoDBBigQueryKubernetesDockerGCP
Jan 2021 →
Dec 2021

Scaleway·Engineering Manager

Paris

  • Managed 2 teams of 4 engineers: Kapsule (managed Kubernetes) and Serverless (Functions, Containers & Jobs).
  • Led the technical roadmap with Product and Infrastructure teams.
  • Took the Serverless offering to general availability (GA).
KubernetesServerlessGoPostgreSQL
Aug 2011 →
July 2018

MobPartner · Cheetah Mobile·Lead Developer, then CTO

Paris

CTODec 2016 → July 2018

  • Managed the Paris engineering organisation (3 teams, around 10 people) after the acquisition by Cheetah Mobile.
  • Led cross-site projects with the Cheetah Mobile teams in Beijing.

Lead Developer · Team ManagerAug 2011 → Dec 2016

  • Architecture, development and maintenance of high-volume adtech platforms: ad servers, statistics engine, data storage.
  • Architecture and managed hosting of the platforms (on-premise, then AWS) with an external provider; set up a steering committee.
  • Over 5M requests/day, 5 people in the team, infra budget of €100k/year
PHPMySQLRedisRabbitMQAWS
Jan 2010 →
July 2011

Netsize · Gemalto group·Senior Developer

Paris

  • Feature development on the SMS platform and ownership of the public APIs.
  • Rewrote Netsize's SMPP (SMS protocol) server.
C++C#/.NETSQL Server
Jan 2009 →
Dec 2009

French Ministry of Education·Primary school teacher

  • Teaching and leading a group, skills I have reused ever since to onboard and mentor developers.
Mar 2001 →
Dec 2008

Netsize·Software Engineer

Paris

  • Direct SMS/MMS connections to 50 mobile operators across Europe, the Americas and Australia; public SMS/MMS API.
C++SQL Server

Education

1998 – 2001ESIEA, Paris
Master's degree in engineering (computer science, electronics, automation)1996 – 1998Classes préparatoires (PSI)
Two-year intensive programme preparing for engineering schools

Other

LanguagesFrench (native), English (fluent, international teams)InvolvementEmployee representative: Netsize 2003–2005, MobPartner 2014–2018