Pierre Thalamy

Pierre Thalamy, PhD

Lead Software Engineer, Platform & Data at Uptale · Backend, cloud infrastructure and team leadership

Profile

Full-stack software engineer, working since 2017 across research and industry, strongest on backend and cloud infrastructure. I lead the Platform & Data team at Uptale, owning accounts, integrations and analytics. I joined when it was an early-stage startup and grew with it into a scale-up. I care about systems that are simple to operate, secure by default and pleasant to work in, and when the team hits friction I build the tool that removes it. AI native: I work with coding agents daily and publish the workflows I automate as open Agent Skills. PhD in distributed algorithms for modular robotics.

Experience

Nov 2020 to presentParis · remote

Lead Software Engineer, Platform & Data

Uptale, immersive learning SaaS (360° and VR training) used by more than 500 organisations including Airbus, Stellantis, TotalEnergies, L'Oréal, Sanofi and Siemens, 9 million euro fundraising in 2024

Joined in November 2020, when Uptale was an early-stage startup, and grew with the company through its shift to a fast-growing scale-up. Software Engineer, then Senior Software Engineer, then Lead of the Platform & Data team since February 2026, while remaining an individual contributor on the backend and infrastructure.

  • Own the Platform & Data area end to end: accounts, integrations and analytics, from data model and API to the React and TypeScript front end.
  • Scaled the platform from a few hundred training sessions a day in 2020 to tens of thousands today, past two million sessions delivered in total, on a backend that still has headroom.
  • Took a multi-tenant SaaS to private deployments: the same product now runs in customers' own Azure subscriptions and on premises inside restricted networks, from one shared codebase. Technical lead and first contact for those customers, from project to support.
  • Moved the infrastructure to code, Bicep first, then Terraform: production, a US peer region, a production-like staging and the dev environments all come from one codebase, with no drift between them.
  • Led the backend migration from ASP.NET MVC to ASP.NET Core and the edge migration from Application Gateway to Azure Front Door.
  • Brought backend and infrastructure into ISO 27001 compliance with the CTO and head of engineering, certified in November 2025, and have guarded their security since, including the remediation of each yearly penetration test.
  • Developer experience: CI/CD builds on virtual machine scale sets, faster pull request gates, automated dependency upgrades and branch merges, plus the coding guidelines and skills that developers and AI agents use every day.
  • Lead the team: technical direction, code reviews and design discussions, mentoring, delivery planning with product.
2017 to 2020Montbéliard

PhD Researcher in Computer Science

FEMTO-ST Institute, CNRS, Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté
  • Research on distributed intelligence for programmable matter built from large ensembles of modular micro-robots.
  • Technical lead on VisibleSim, the C++ modular robotics simulator used by several research teams worldwide.
  • Five publications in international journals and conferences; guest reviewer for Algorithmica and IROS.
  • Taught and coordinated undergraduate courses; took part in the design of a distributed programming course.
2017, 6 monthsAntibes

Software Engineer, graduation project

Supralog, Intr@ssoc ERP software

Secure REST backend in C# for an ERP aimed at non-profit organisations, with a Vue.js web module and a cross-platform Xamarin mobile app on the same API.

2016, 4 monthsHong Kong

Research Assistant, software engineering intern

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
  • Brought VisibleSim from a pre-release state to its first stable version.
  • Architectural overhaul, refactoring, documentation and new modules to support research.
2014, 5 monthsPittsburgh

Research Assistant, Claytronics project

Carnegie Mellon University
  • Contributed to modular robotics research for programmable matter.
  • Implemented in C an embedded virtual machine for the Meld language, later used in education and research.

Education

2017 to 2020

PhD in Computer Science

Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, FEMTO-ST Institute, CNRS

Thesis: Distributed Algorithms and Advanced Modeling Approaches for Fast and Efficient Object Construction Using a Modular Self-reconfigurable Robotic System. Supervised by Prof. Julien Bourgeois and Dr. Benoît Piranda. Defended 9 October 2020.

2014 to 2017

MSc in Computer Science and Engineering

Grenoble INP - Ensimag, Grenoble Institute of Technology

French grande école in computer science and applied mathematics. Specialisation in information systems engineering, graduated with high honours. Exchange semester at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (fall 2016).

Skills

Backend and cloud

C#, .NET, ASP.NET Core, REST APIs, SQL, Azure, Terraform, Docker, CI/CD, observability, security hardening

Front end

TypeScript, React, modern JavaScript, HTML and CSS, Vue.js (past)

Systems and research

C++, C, Python, distributed algorithms, multi-agent systems, simulation, performance analysis

Leadership

Team lead, technical direction, architecture and code review, mentoring, delivery planning, technical writing and teaching

AI-assisted engineering

Coding agents in daily use, authoring Agent Skills, agent-friendly guidelines and tooling, github.com/pthalamy/skills

Publications

  1. P. Thalamy, B. Piranda, J. Bourgeois. 3D Coating Self-Assembly for Modular Robotic Scaffolds. IEEE/RSJ IROS, 2020.
  2. P. Thalamy, B. Piranda, F. Lassabe, J. Bourgeois. Deterministic Scaffold Assembly by Self-Reconfiguring Micro-Robotic Swarms. Swarm and Evolutionary Computation, 2020.
  3. P. Thalamy, B. Piranda, F. Lassabe, J. Bourgeois. Scaffold-Based Asynchronous Distributed Self-Reconfiguration by Continuous Module Flow. IEEE/RSJ IROS, 2019.
  4. P. Thalamy, B. Piranda, J. Bourgeois. A Survey of Autonomous Self-Reconfiguration Methods for Robot-Based Programmable Matter. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 2019.
  5. P. Thalamy, B. Piranda, J. Bourgeois. Distributed Self-Reconfiguration Using a Deterministic Autonomous Scaffolding Structure. AAMAS, 2019.

Teaching

2017 to 2020

University of Franche-Comté

  • Network Infrastructure Security, course coordinator (lectures, tutorials and labs, 2018 to 2020).
  • Operating Systems and System Programming, course coordinator (2017).
  • Teaching assistant: Security and Performance, Internet Technology, Introduction to Web Development, Swarm Robotics and Modular Robot Programming (MSc IoT).

Honours and service

Honours

  • IFAAMAS mobility scholarship, AAMAS 2019.
  • Participant, Dagstuhl Seminar 18331 on the algorithmic foundations of programmable matter, 2018.

Service

  • Guest reviewer, Springer Algorithmica, 2020.
  • Delegate reviewer, IEEE/RSJ IROS 2020.

Languages

French (native) · English (proficient, TOEIC 985) · Spanish (intermediate)

This page is the up-to-date version of my CV. Use the print button above to save it as a PDF; the layout is optimised for A4. A French version is available here.