Thibaud Colas

Senior developer and Wagtail consultant,  Torchbox

February 2019 —  Present   a month

UI architecture & Wagtail consultant. Open source governance, Senior Management Team for Wagtail proposition, accessibility, digital sustainability.

Software Architect,  Codemate

March 2018 —  December 2018   10 months

Technical architecture, project management, and front-end development for a variety of projects, with a focus on full-stack JavaScript with React and Node backends.

• Single-page apps, React, Redux, react-router, TypeScript
• Node, Express, Knex.js, Hapi, MongoDB, PostgreSQL
• PHP, WordPress, MySQL, SQL

Technical Director - Front-end Development,  Springload

September 2016 —  November 2017   a year

Front-end leadership for a team of 10 developers. Front-end Direction for a 40-person agency. Oversight of web development projects, either CMS-driven or data-driven single-page apps. Strategic direction, technical architecture, training plans, sales and recruiting.

• Direction on 10+ API-driven web app projects, with React, API backends, and client-side routing
• Direction on 10+ content-driven site projects, with a CMS, front-end component library
• Technical architecture and project planning for long-term build and maintenance projects
• HR management, career progression (OKR), training direction, hiring, and public relations
• Front-end lead for a large-scale CMS redevelopment, built with a pattern library and headless CMS
• Team standards definition - open-source contributions, code reviews rollout, performance targets
• JavaScript (ES2015+), React, D3, REST APIs, BEM, Express, Django, Wagtail, GitHub, CodeShip, Travis

Senior Front-End Developer,  Springload

March 2015 —  September 2016   2 years

Front-end development for websites and web apps, primarily with React, Django and Node. Mentoring and training for other front-end developers, R&D, tooling, and pre-sales activities.

• Front-end lead for the kick-off of a new data-driven digital platform for a major New Zealand pension fund. Single-page app with React
• Interactive data visualisation development (D3) for New Zealand’s statistics department and other statistics agencies
• Other CMS-driven sites and apps for organisations such as NZ Red Cross and Kiwibank
• QA expertise, roll out of systematic CI pipelines for all projects as well as front-end unit & integration tests
• Switch to ES6 JavaScript and bundled modules with npm and Browserify, then Webpack
• Participation to bids & proposals, marketing, hiring
• JavaScript (ES2015+), React, D3, REST APIs, BEM, Express, Django, Wagtail, GitHub, CodeShip, Travis

Lead Web Software Engineer,  CGI

January 2014 —  November 2014   10 months

Team Lead during design and development of an e-commerce portal (six developers, 500 man-days). Consulting and technical expertise activities at all stages of the project.

• International project with teams in France, Denmark, Sweden.
• Frequent client meetings abroad and by telephone.
• Participation to presales projects with innovative technology stacks (POC with Angular, Polymer, Spring microservices).
• Participation to the CGI Web Factory’s Excellence Team, dedicated to improve tooling and processes throughout all projects.
• Deployment of Selenium on the agency’s Continuous Integration platform (Jenkins), available for all projects.
• Mentoring of three interns.
• LAMP, Drupal, JavaScript, Angular, jQuery, RWD, SOAP, REST, Jenkins, Selenium, Git, Redmine, JIRA, Scrum

Web Software Engineer,  CGI

March 2013 —  January 2014   a year

Web Application Development — Participation to PHP development projects with the CGI Web Factory, from design to maintenance.

• Technical referee and Project Lead backup on two portal maintenance projects. Team of six developers.
• Direct mentoring of two developers.
• Improvement on functional regression rates by adding Selenium to the team’s testing process.
• Customer Satisfaction: 9.6/10
• LAMP, Drupal, JavaScript, jQuery, RWD, SOAP, Jenkins, Selenium, Git

Graduate Teaching Assistant,  Montpellier University

September 2012 —  January 2013   4 months

Organization of three groups in a JavaScript class (Master’s degree) and a Computer Science initiation class (Bachelor’s degree).

• Teaching of HTML, CSS, JavaScript

Web Developer,  LIRMM

June 2012 —  November 2012   6 months

Design and development of new features for Datalift, as part of an internship. Datalift is a linked data publication platform for the Semantic Web. Data Visualization and transformation in the SemWeb spirit.

• This position required a high level of autonomy as the development team was scattered across France.
• JEE, Jersey, Knockout, Bootstrap, D3, SPARQL, Sesame, RDF, Git

Webmaster,  Cornelius Communication

April 2010 —  June 2010   3 months

Integration, Development and Webmastering as part of an internship for the end of the DUT.

Contact with clients and teamwork with the Webmaster and designers.

• PHP, MySQL, JS, jQuery, SEO, UX, accessibility, hosting, Photoshop

W3C Sustainable Web Design Community Group , Participant

August 2023 —  Present   a month

Community group participant supporting the creation of the Web Sustainability Guidelines (1.0)

Outreachy 2023 , Organizer and mentor for Wagtail

October 2023 —  March 2024   5 months

Organization admin and mentor for Wagtail projects through the Outreachy program, with a focus on accessibility

DjangoCon Europe 2023 , Volunteer & organizer

May 2023 —  June 2022   a year

Code of Conduct team volunteer, opportunity grants for DjangoCon Europe 2023

Google Summer of Code 2023 , Organizer and mentor for Wagtail

May 2023 —  October 2023   4 months

Organization admin and mentor for two Wagtail projects through the Google Summer of Code program, with a focus on climate impact

Django Girls PyCon UK 2023 , Mentor

September 2023 —  September 2023   a few seconds

A free programming workshop for women, held at PyCon UK 2023 in Cardiff

DjangoCon Europe 2022 , Volunteer

September 2022 —  September 2022   4 days

Code of Conduct team volunteer for DjangoCon Europe 2022

Google Summer of Code 2022 , Organizer and mentor for Wagtail

May 2022 —  October 2022   4 months

Organization admin and mentor for three Wagtail proposals through the Google Summer of Code program for 2022: Contrast Themes, Editor's Guide, UX Unification

DjangoCon Europe 2021 , Volunteer

June 2021 —  June 2021   4 days

Code of Conduct team volunteer for DjangoCon Europe 2021

Django , Accessibility team

July 2020 —  Present   a month

Django is a high-level Python web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.

Coders of Colour , Mentor

June 2020 —  June 2020   2 days

In June 2020, 15 young people have been learning Git, Python and Wagtail to make a website for a charity in need of an online presence.

Django Girls Bristol , Mentor

October 2019 —  October 2019   a day

A free programming workshop for women, held at Torchbox offices in Bristol

Wagtail , Core team

April 2015 —  Present   a month

Wagtail is a content management system built on Django. It’s focused on user experience, and offers precise control for designers and developers.

Oulu Web Development Meetup , Organizer & founder

May 2016 —  Present   8 years

A Meetup.com group about Web Development, open to everyone from professionals to newcomers, creative types to technical. Each event explores a specific topic in the form of presentations, open discussions or workshops.

• Local, english-speaking group of common interest
• Meetups every month

Draftail

November 2016 —  Present   a month

A configurable rich text editor based on Draft.js, built for Wagtail.

• ES2015+, React, Draft.js, Jest, Prettier, Webpack, Rollup

Draft.js exporter

July 2016 —  Present   a month

Library to convert Draft.js ContentState to HTML

• Python, pypi, PEP8, Draft.js, BeautifulSoup, lxml

Awesome Wagtail

June 2016 —  Present   a month

A curated list of awesome packages, articles, and other cool resources from the Wagtail community. Wagtail is a Python CMS powered by Django, focusing on flexibility and user experience.

Draft.js filters

January 2018 —  Present   a month

Filter Draft.js content to preserve only the formatting you allow. Built for Draftail and Wagtail.

• ES2015+, React, Draft.js, Jest, Flow, Prettier, DangerJS

Django Girls Wellington , Organizer and Coach

December 2017 —  December 2017   2 days

A free programming workshop for women, held at Springload

Django Girls Oulu , Coach

November 2017 —  November 2017   2 days

A free programming workshop for women

Front-end starter kit

April 2015 —  November 2017   3 years

A reference and starter kit for front-end development.

• Pattern library
• Code styleguides and quality checklists
• Job descriptions and OKRs
• Webpack, React, Sass, BEM, ITCSS

Django Girls Wellington , Organizer and Coach

December 2016 —  December 2016   2 days

A free programming workshop for women, held at Springload

Rails Girls Oulu , Coach

November 2016 —  November 2016   a day

Free two-day beginner workshop about Ruby on Rails

Moulinette

July 2016 —  July 2016   a month

Bioinformatics (biochemistry) data processing scripts for NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance), and protein data analysis (PyMOL)

• Python, PyMol, Statistical inference

Test-drive D3

January 2016 —  January 2016   a month

Test-drive D3 is an intro to D3 via a set of self-guided workshops

• D3, Node, SVG, jsdom, NodeSchool

RubeGoldBash

January 2015 —  January 2015   a month

A command-line quest where your goal is to invent Rube Goldberg machines in bash! Create the longest one-liners you can, the more pipes (|) the better. Master Rube ((◕‿◕) Hi there!) will help you during your quest.

• Bash, Heroku, Node

Zori

January 2014 —  June 2014   5 months

A real-time link sharer using Firebase as its backend and AngularJS on the front-end.

• Side-project built with friends to use together and to discover Firebase.
• AngularJS, Firebase, RequireJS, Bootstrap, Gulp, Bower, npm

Smoov

September 2013 —  September 2013   2 days

Cross-platform transportation app built with Sencha Touch and Cordova. Node.js backend dispatching transportation data from data repositories (time tables) and SOAP/REST services (real time data, weather data).

• Built by a team of four during the Montpellier Unlimited Hackathon, won second prize.
• Sencha Touch, Sass, Cordova, Node, SOAP, REST

Skimbo

May 2013 —  June 2013   2 days

Skimbo is a social-networks mash-up. It helps you manage your social networks, for example by viewing and posting to a lot of social feeds at once.

• First started by the Froggies team for the TypeSafe contest, development continued during the Montpellier Startup Weekend.
• Scala, Play 2, AngularJS, Less, MongoDB, WebSockets

Datalift Visualisation

February 2013 —  March 2013   a month

DataCubeViz is a Datalift module which helps visualizing statistical datasets using the DataCube ontology. It was created to fulfill the needs of the Datalift project to work with statistical linked data.

• Datalift, SDMX, DataCube, Knockout, RequireJS, jQuery, Datatables, D3

Triple Bench

January 2013 —  January 2013   a month

A benchmarking app for interconnected triple stores (Semantic Web).

• Integrates a GUI SPARQL client and an interface to select triple stores on which to execute the query
• Java EE, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Jena TDB, Jena SDB, D2RQ, Sesame, Bootstrap, jQuery, Google Charts, D3

D4

November 2012 —  January 2013   2 months

D4 is a Datalift module to visualize RDF statistical datasets using the DataCube ontology. D4 is built with Bootstrap, D3.js and CoffeeScript.

• D4 was made as part of a Master’s degree Web Development course.
• JEE, Jersey, CoffeeScript, Knockout, Bootstrap, Underscore, D3, NVD3, SPARQL

iCopter

October 2012 —  October 2012   a month

An arcade game for iPhone and iPad, with parallax horizontal scrolling and adaptive sound effects

• iOS, Objective C, XCode, FMOD Designer

Web Architecture and Software Engineering, Master’s degree

2011  —  2013   a year

Montpellier University

Computer Science, Bachelor’s degree

2008  —  2011   3 years

Paris 11 University

Torchbox J-P Memorial Prize 2023

Awarded on: Feb 24, 2023

A commemorative prize by Torchbox to remember J-P and his values: Be the change you want to see in the world - Do the right thing; not the easy thing - Help others to shine more brightly.

Startup Weekend Wellington Health 2015 - Second place

Awarded on: Jul 04, 2015

Arrived second with our "Paper Preen" project. An automated quality control / linting and reviewing tool for research papers, prototype built with React and a Node.js backend

JS1K 2014 — Honorable Mention

Awarded on: Apr 16, 2014

Honorable Mention by the JS1K Jury for Dragonsnake, a mash-up between snake and fruit ninja written in less than 1K (1024 bytes) of JavaScript!

Montpellier Unlimited Hackathon — Second Prize

Awarded on: Sep 22, 2013

Second Prize for a public transport route calculation app (handles tramway, buses and bikes) in the Montpellier Area. Cross-platform app built with Sencha Touch and Cordova. Node.js backend dispatching transportation data from data repositories (time tables) and SOAP/REST services (real time data, weather data).

Personal Website and blog

Published on: Dec 06, 2013

Notes, Thoughts and Open-source software.

2022 Web Almanac - Accessibility , HTTP Archive

Published on: Sep 26, 2022

Writing & data analysis for the Accessibility chapter of HTTP Archive’s annual state of the web report

How Springload scores on the Joel Test and why it matters , Springload

Published on: Aug 01, 2017

Ever heard of the Joel Test? It’s a simple 12 question measure of the quality of a software team, introduced by Joel Spolsky of Stack Overflow and Trello fame. The test is famous in the software development community as a no-BS calculation of the maturity of a development team. So, how’d we do?

Exploring uncharted datasets , Springload

Published on: May 15, 2017

I’m a self-diagnosed data nerd. For me, there’s nothing like trying to make sense of a phenomenon by looking at data, exploring an uncharted dataset to uncover insights. Sure, I don’t expect everyone to be as excited as I am about the release of the latest seasonally adjusted chain-volume GDP – but I do think that basic data literacy is becoming a vital part of running a successful business, or being an informed citizen.

Bringing our mad skillz to Wagtail , Springload

Published on: May 03, 2017

Springload regularly attends development sprints of Wagtail. They’re a great occasion to meet with other core contributors, and drive the project together towards the needs of its users, aka our clients. In the past our work has taken us to Ede, Netherlands, and Cape Town, South Africa but this time we headed North to Reykjavík, Iceland thanks to our friends at Overcast Software.

Awesome Wagtail , Springload

Published on: Feb 02, 2017

Disclaimer: this blog post contains a high amount of unreserved enthusiasm about Wagtail and its community.

Blurring the line between web and desktop apps , Springload

Published on: May 30, 2016

Two years ago, the folks at GitHub released a new text editor called Atom. They built it with web technologies: HTML, CSS and JavaScript. As part of this project they released Electron, a framework to write cross-platform desktop applications with web technologies.

A stable front-end stack for 2016 , Springload

Published on: Feb 22, 2016

We’ve been trialing new front-end tools and libraries over 2015 but our main stack has remained very stable. Starting a new project? Here are Springload’s picks, all available in our front-end starter kit.