The Story
Born in 80s France with a dad in IT, no wonder I got into computers. I started programming at 7 because that’s all you could do with them once you played all the games you had.
I consider myself lucky to have witnessed tech change so much in my lifespan. It kept me on my toes and forced me to always be learning. And to be fair, I just love to do that.
My career path is not the typical one: I got degrees in network engineering but my first job was where many engineers never go: support. Mainly because the IT job market was a bit rough in France at the time. Anyway, that journey from support to ops to architecture to platform - it gives me a different perspective on what we should strive to achieve with tech. And a lot of empathy for other people too.
The thread throughout has always been curiosity and problem-solving. That’s probably what kept me in this field for the past 20 years or so.
What I Do Now
I’m a Senior Software Engineer on a platform team at Doctolib, focused on improving developer experience across all our services. My operational background - fielding support calls, years of being on-call, and managing production systems - shapes how I think about the tools we build. I’ve felt the pain, so I know what actually helps.
Beyond the Keyboard
Home lab enthusiast: I have way too much Raspberry Pis scattered around the house running various experiments, also a 18U rack in the basement for the “necessary” core house infra. Currently writing this from my NixOS laptop.
Security tinkerer: From cracking passwords as a kid to bug bounties as an adult, I’ve always been drawn to security puzzles. CTF challenges scratch that itch when time allows.
Sports: Competitive discgolf (still a noob on the verge of breaking 800 rating), recreational basketball. I’ve also done football, judo, tennis, American football, baseball, and weightlifting over the years.
Outdoors: Hiking and hammock camping when I can escape the screen.
Puzzles: Escape rooms, armchair treasure hunts - the same problem solving mindset that drove the early hacking drives this too.
Reading: Always have multiple books going.
Speaker Bio
Renaud Martinet is a Senior Software Engineer at Doctolib, where he works on platform tooling to improve developer experience and ensure standards across the tech organisation. His career spans user-facing support, SaaS operations, performance, architecture, and now platform engineering. This unconventional path gives him an end-to-end understanding of SaaS, from the code that ships to the users who rely on it, and everything in between. Based in France, he’s passionate about home automation, NixOS, and competitive discgolf.