CHRISTOPHE BERNARD

Staff Engineer / Product-minded Tech Lead

Paris • Remote worldwide
christophe.bernard@gmail.com • +33 6 67 24 54 46
chris-bernard.github.io • github.com/chris-bernard
Christophe Bernard
Engineer with 20+ years of experience helping startups and scale-ups build the right product before building it right.

I combine product thinking, pragmatic architecture and fast execution to avoid wasted development and accelerate time-to-market.

EXPERIENCES

Datalok — Product Advisor 2024–2025
Datacenters marketplace (early-stage) - Pre-product-market fit
  • Took product from 0 → 5 paying clients
  • Structured product positioning and user feedback loops
  • Defined UX, roadmap and iteration cycles
  • Bridge between founders, product vision and engineering
Independent Projects & Product Strategy 2022–2024
Entrepreneurship & Exploration
  • Explored and bootstrapped multiple product ideas (SaaS, marketplaces)
  • Continuous exploration of AI, LLM workflows and MCP
  • Built and structured a coaching activity for freelancers
Malt — Staff Software Engineer 2021–2022
Europe's leading freelance marketplace - Series C funding
  • Led initiatives improving freelancer acquisition and experience
  • Contributed to product decisions impacting conversion and retention
  • Aligned engineering execution with product and business goals
Wegrow — First Engineer / Tech Lead 2018–2021
Early-stage SaaS - From pre-PMF to seed
  • Built SaaS platform from scratch (architecture + delivery)
  • Owned roadmap, prioritization and delivery cycles
  • Combined engineering leadership with product decisions
Gaston Services — First Engineer 2017–2018
B2C automotive SaaS (early-stage) - Pre-PMF
  • Built full product (customer app, ops, backoffice)
  • Designed event-driven architecture (event sourcing)
  • Contributed to product design via event storming
Homework.chat — First Engineer 2015–2016
EdTech startup (early-stage) - Pre-PMF
  • Designed and implemented fullstack architecture (API + frontend)
  • Delivered MVP of a tutoring marketplace and iterated on early user feedback
  • Explored business model and product positioning
Earlier Experiences — Architecture & tech lead roles in large-scale systems 2006–2015
Positions in Software Engineering and Delivery
  • Travel Services: Amadeus, SNCF Connect
  • Banking: Natixis, Société Générale CIB

CORE EXPERTISE

  • Engineering: Architecture, APIs, event-driven systems
  • Tech: Java, Spring, TypeScript, Angular
  • Product: Discovery, MVP, roadmap
  • AI: LLM workflows, MCP

WHAT I BRING

  • Challenge what should be built
  • Connect business, product and engineering
  • Explorer: strong pre-product-market fit experience
  • Pragmatic: speed of learning over perfection

EDUCATION

  • IMT Mines Alès — Engineering
  • Université Paris XI — Economics