Can you tell us about your job?

Nicolas Froidure – As Technical Director, my role is to manage the development of our predictive maintenance software and ensure the reliability of the platform so that we can offer an optimum service to our end customers.

I work closely with the Data Science department, which develops the algorithms used in our software. Our aim is to blend the Data Science and Dev cultures, to understand what data scientists want to do and help them to do it in a scalable, instrumentable way.

In short, being a CTO means knowing how to stand back while remaining connected to day-to-day problems. To do this, you need a long-term plan and a good vision of where the company wants to go technically, while knowing how to adapt it to customer feedback and all the hazards that can arise in the field. It’s a balance you have to live with every day.

What does CTO mean in everyday life?

N.F – On a day-to-day basis, I wear a number of different hats. On the operational side, I’m in charge of developing all the software’s functionalities: from developing the connectors to retrieve the data from our customers to displaying the dashboards on our software. All the while taking into account the constraints of cybersecurity, computing power and display time.

In terms of innovation, I’m in charge of the technical development of the platform (monitoring, forecasting) and I assist the product team in the development of functionalities, their time cost and their technical feasibility.

On the HR side, I manage the team of developers, look after their recruitment and help them to develop their skills.

Before joining us, was there a project you worked on that particularly stood out for you?

N.F – I’ve worked in several start-ups in different sectors (marketing, music, agriculture, etc.). It’s very challenging to arrive at a company at the start of an adventure with all the technical infrastructure to develop!

I’ve loved working on open-source projects that have enabled me to create a toolbox to increase my efficiency in solving problems that are common to every company I’ve worked in. In particular, I have developed several open-source libraries for managing REST APIs (back-end development), their automated link with the OpenAPI standard and strong typing with TypeScript to ensure that API documentation conforms to the code in production (see our API documentation).

What are your favourite challenges in your job?

N.F – My favourite challenge is to create a product that is useful to users from scratch. I also really enjoy mentoring young developers, giving them the codes and knowledge that are useful in this profession and, above all, seeing them progress.

The bonus question: which film character could do your job?

N.F – Captain Kirk, who would be much better at this job than I am 🦸‍♂️