Meet the Qovery Team: Julien, Technical Product Manager

#Please introduce yourself and describe your professional background briefly.

Bonjour 👋!

I am Julien Dan, a technical product manager based in Nantes since 2018. I grew up in Normandy 🐄 and moved to Paris in 2008 for my engineering studies.
I specialized in image processing and was able to work with the forensic police for my end-of-studies project.

Thanks to this project, my first professional experience was at Safran Morpho. I worked for 5 years on biometrics (facial recognition) and eSIM cards as a systems engineer and industrialization manager.

In 2018, I decided to leave Paris to discover another French city. I chose Nantes for its quality of life and proximity to the sea. Having worked in biometrics for 5 years, I was keen to discover other fields, especially the big world of data. Luckily, one of the leaders in this field has an R&D center in Nantes.

So, I joined a fantastic team at Talend! This team had only been there briefly, coming from a startup called Restlet, which had just been bought out. I took on the roles of product owner and quality engineer for products dedicated to APIs. That's when I realized how important it was to deliver a product with impeccable functionality and how important it was to be user-centric to achieve this goal.

During my 5 years at Talend, I also discovered Kubernetes and how laborious it is to deploy a development environment for our team.

So here I am, in the summer of 2023, wanting a new challenge. Remote work has spread all over the world. I'm discovering new companies, but I wanted to work in a start-up. That's how I found Qovery, which offers a product that really meets a need in the tech world.

#What is your role at Qovery, and what do you do?

I am the Technical Product Manager, driving the development and defining the requirements of our product.
I make sure everything is ready for development. This may involve reviewing Figma designs with the front-end team and our product designer.

I also make sure that the user's needs are clearly understood so that I can specify the best technical solution.
I also lead scrum ceremonies, whether daily, sprint planning, or retrospectives.

#What do you like the most about working at Qovery?

Qovery is a young company with a lot of very experienced people. The cohesion is very strong between the different members and the founders.

The full remote policy gives me real freedom: I can work from anywhere and arrange my working hours with complete autonomy.

As far as the product made by Qovery is concerned, it meets a user's need, and that's what I was looking for more than anything else. The developments are progressing quickly, and that's great!

#What does your typical day look like?

In the morning, I first look at all the customer's feedback on Slack or our forum.
I look at the priorities regarding the specifications I need to work on.

This allows me to plan my day so I know what I will do.

Then, it's time for our daily scrum meeting. I ensure no one is blocked and everyone understands the priorities. It's also a time when we discuss various technical issues.

Afterwards, I read up on technical subjects and challenge users needs to get as much information as possible to work on a new feature.

I take the time to write the specifications in notions, specifying the evolutions on the backend, frontend, or even at the API level.

Once the specifications are ready, I create and schedule the JIRA tickets for the next sprints.

At the same time, I often work with Alessandro, our Lead Product Manager, to discuss our progress. This is also an opportunity to divide the workload and share our vision on different subjects.

#How do you like to spend your free time when you are not working?

I play music, especially piano, guitar, and bass, in my spare time.

Twice a week, I go to the gym.

I spend a lot of time every evening cooking a good meal.

I love to travel around Europe in a van with my family.

And if I have time, I play video games :)

#Do you have final advice for someone wanting to join Qovery?

Don't be afraid to join us because there's nothing more exciting than working on a valuable product in a cool atmosphere, all from wherever you want.