Jean-Nicolas Boulay

Bonjour! Welcome to my website!

Here is a little biography about me. I started coding whilst I was still in high school in around 2002 (PHP, SQL, JavaScript, and C). I also repaired people's computers (I read CompTIA A+ back then), did a bit of Photoshop and video editing (with Adobe Premiere Pro), and ran a Linux server from home to host websites and tools I used in school. Back then, some of my other achievements: I assembled 20+ computers in one night, built a CMS system for a B&B, programmed a picture rating web tool for my high school administration, coded a JavaScript debugger, and participated in a robotic contest, helped build my school's theater play set, I also was the chief technician for my school auditorium meaning I managed a group of unruly teenagers to handle the sound system (soundboard, microphone, etc.), the building of the theater set, lights, etc. And if it wasn't enough, I programmed two websites for my school.

Anyways, I did a million things! So much so that I was awarded: Le Prix du Lieutenant-Gouverneur.

Thereafter as the software architect and full-stack web developer, I built a custom CMS for a book publishing company and made custom websites in which I paid attention to my client's requests. In that period, I also managed cloud servers using Linux.

I continued with web development and worked on high-traffic websites full-time, where I needed to resolve scaling issues with caching technologies like Redis and Varnish and modernize the front end of multiple websites to be responsive. I also worked with search engines such as ElasticSearch and Sphinx during that period. I took leadership over specific projects. I always ensured my fellow team members had the help they needed. Moreover, I performed refactoring work on old code and trained coworkers on best practices for front-end and back-end development. In addition, I have programmed time series and have done database normalization. After a few years of web development, it was time for me to change paths.

For the past three years, I have worked in the enterprise sector with ESBs (Enterprise Service Bus) using WebMethods, Java Spring, Python, AWS, IaC (infrastructure-as-code) utilizing Ansible, Terraform, Packer, CloudFormation, and many other technologies. Making use of Java Spring Boot and Shell, I have been developing internal tools to automate many internal tasks like code transfer between Windows servers and automating the building of the code. I also built interfaces for these tools using Angular.

Furthermore, I helped manage tasks for different projects from the environment, ops, QA, and dev teams to keep everything in sync. Often resolving internal issues employing tools, namely CloudWatch (AWS), Splunk, WebMethods, and CMDBuild. I also helped resolve technical production and testing environment issues and helped refactor integration servers systems. I also contributed to helping modernize the ESB environment from WebMethods to the AWS cloud environment. The new cloud environment switched from programming in WebMethods to using the Java Quarkus framework and Python.

I have accumulated four years of experience coding in Java, plus a course at Concordia University in 2012. I built tools with Apache Tika to extract file mime types and other metadata and data to send to Apache Kafka and then ElasticSearch. Additionally, I am working with Apache OFBiz an ERP (Enterprise resource planning) program, and Apereo CAS (Central Authentication Service) based on Java Spring.

On a personal note, I use Linux Qubes OS and Kali Linux as my daily drivers. I run most of my code in containers using RedHat open source project Podman (similar to Docker). So for that reason, I have extensive knowledge of container technologies and VMs. I recently learned Rust, GStreamer, and a little of SRE (Software Reverse Engineering) with Ghidra. I also know big data (Hadoop, Accumulo, Scoop, Hive, HBase) and web scraping.

So if you are looking for someone that knows web development, ESB, scaling large websites, database technologies (RDBMS, key based and graph), Linux, cloud, ElasticSearch, Big Data, working in an enterprise environment, etc., I am your guy.

I invite you to look at my GitHub repo: https://github.com/jnbdz^[external].

I am also into sports like downhill skiing, canoeing, kayaking, sailing, and martial arts like karate, vovinam, kickboxing, and Muay Thai.

I have been to many countries like Mexico, Morocco, Tunisia, Israel, Kenya, Cuba, Isle of Man, and the USA.

By the way, in my free time, I fly Cessna's 172.