Who is Gaël Demette?

Gaël Demette, alias Panda, is a software architect and ESS (social and solidarity economy) entrepreneur. He is president of adnap and part-time CTO at Cashway. He previously founded and ran Qonfucius for 7 years.

What is Gaël Demette's expertise?

Software architecture, DevOps (Kubernetes, Nix, Terraform/Pulumi), Rust, automation, cybersecurity, high availability, and advising mission-driven (ESS) companies. 15+ years of experience.

Which companies has he founded or led?

adnap (mission-driven ESS company, president since 2025), Qonfucius (president 2018-2025, up to 14 employees). CTO at HungryUp (2016-2018) and Cashway (since 2025).

How to contact Gaël Demette?

Via email (website.may2025@aka.pand.app), GitHub (pand-app), GitLab (pand.app), LinkedIn (gaeldemette), Bluesky, Mastodon (@gael@mastodon.demette.fr). The /contact page lists all channels.

Where to find his blog?

The blog lives at https://gael-demette.fr/blog. Articles are also exposed as raw Markdown at /blog/ .md to make programmatic access easier for AI agents.

Curriculum vitaeFull

Gaël Demette

Software architect, social-economy entrepreneur

From IT maintenance to company president: development, infrastructure, technical leadership and consulting.

Essonne, France

Speaker
Open-source contributor (+100 repos)

Last update, Sep 2026

A technical director of 34, I fell into code as a child. My first open-source contribution was in 2007, at 14, to get my maths homework done faster. Self-taught by temperament, I keep a constant watch on new technology.

My interests are software architecture, automation and cybersecurity.

Today marks a new step: adnap belongs to the social and solidarity economy and is a mission-driven company. Our aim is to help organisations gain autonomy and reduce their dependence on third parties.

I believe in empowering teams, betting on trust, competence and a dose of good communication.

Professional experience

Presidentadnap

Mission-driven company in the social and solidarity economy. Technical leadership of the company. Support for digital sovereignty

Public AI usage policy, with three deployment tiers: business service excluding training on submitted data, sovereign inference hosted in France, and self-hosted open-weight models down to air-gapped environments.
Declared agent surface on my own systems: read-only MCP server, llms.txt index and capability descriptor, with a versioned access policy that explicitly excludes personal content.

Infrastructure and cost optimisationAroma Zone
Six months on transverse concerns: monitoring, infrastructure cost reduction, GCP and Azure.
GCP Azure
Safeguarding reports platformFrench social affairs ministries
Support for regional health agencies tracking reports concerning vulnerable adults.

Rust Nix Kubernetes Gitlab Consulting Open Source Management Budget management Vendor management Project management Pulumi Deno VueJS/Nuxt PostgreSQL Redis Scaleway GCP Azure TypeScript Linux Docker Claude Code MCP AI-assisted development

CTOCashway

Part-time

Rewrote a production system from Python to Rust, with the scope revised following an audit.
Took over a product with none of its original team available: audit, reverse engineering and written documentation.
Built the non-regression metrics that framed the rewrite.

OVH Pulumi Vendor management Disaster management Security Rust Python PostgreSQL Linux Observability AI-assisted development

PresidentQonfucius

Up to 14 employees and ~€1M revenue. Technical leadership of the company.

Founded to build a team from zero: 14 employees at its peak, low turnover, fully remote from day one, and revenue peaking at around €1M in 2022.
Transitional technical leadership
Worked on the Foncia group's ERP: raising code quality, and taking part in the team's technical debates and trade-offs.
Audits & consulting

e-ChauffeurFrench Ministry of Armed Forces
Real-time tracking of Armed Forces drivers through cellular data tracing, on the model of an Uber without the payment layer.
NodeJS VueJS/Nuxt MongoDB
Transverse DevOps infrastructureFrench Ministry of Armed ForcesLead DevOps
Deployed the incubator's software onto in-house infrastructure hosted at Scaleway, and supported the development teams.
Scaleway
carrefour.fr rebuildCarrefour
A roughly six-month engagement rebuilding the site.
Incubateur des TerritoiresANCTLead Tech
Deployed the incubator's software onto infrastructure hosted at Scaleway, and supported the project teams.
Scaleway
Offline cloudFrench Ministry of Armed Forces
Evaluation, benchmark and proof of concept for a cloud offering that runs disconnected from the internet.
StargateFrench Ministry of Armed Forces
Access management for defence bases. A CI pipeline producing a self-contained archive, for deployment with no internet connection.
NodeJS ReactJS MongoDB
E-commerce platformInVivo
A roughly six-month e-commerce engagement.

Consulting Vendor management Project management Kubernetes Terraform/OpenTofu Gitlab Github Azure Continuous Delivery SLA Continuous Integration Support Budget management Management High Availability Training Remote work Open Source Security VueJS/Nuxt PostgreSQL Redis ArangoDB Scaleway Directus TypeScript Docker Ansible Linux Observability Agile Microservices TDD

CTOHungryUp

Very high availability of the application, with zero downtime.
Led a technical team of fewer than five people.
System and application architecture, APIs and the critical features, up to a substantial scaling capability.
Provisioning benches for Android tablets and devices via GenyDeploy; AWS Elastic Beanstalk infrastructure.

NodeJS Gitlab AWS EmberJS Management Budget management Recruitment Project management High Availability SLA MongoDB Training Continuous Delivery Continuous Integration Security Linux Docker

Lead DeveloperAdrenaline Hunter

Built a new product with Symfony.
Technical coordination with the product and marketing teams.

PHP AWS Symfony Github Continuous Integration

Web Campus Lab Manager & lecturerSupinfo

Ran the web Campus Lab and taught students on campus.

Training

Self-employed and freelancer

Training for engineers BAC +3 to BAC +5 (Java EE and Web)
Contributions to e-commerce and e-learning platforms

Training MySQL NodeJS PHP PrestaShop Github Remote work

Web DeveloperWebtales

Rubedo
Open-source CMS built on Zend Framework 2, MongoDB and Elasticsearch, with a Big Data slant. An early adopter of MongoDB and of industrialised site delivery, when both were rare.
Zend Framework MongoDB Elasticsearch PHP

MongoDB OVH Hypervisor PHP Zend Framework Github Open Source Continuous Integration Elasticsearch

Web DeveloperIzeos

Worked across all of the company's platforms (medical, e-learning, e-commerce, media sites), mainly in PHP 5, under Subversion.

Subversion MySQL PHP Zend Framework SPIP

Web DeveloperCom' des grands

Custom development around Joomla and PrestaShop for the agency's clients.

PHP PrestaShop Joomla MySQL

IT Maintenance TechnicianHAVAS

Front-line support for the agency's internal teams, across every kind of IT issue.

Volunteering & commitments

Homework support

Supporting young people with their homework, from primary school to the final year of secondary.

MemberMouvement Impact France

Member of the social and solidarity economy interest group.

Volunteer MemberRéseau Entreprendre 91

Startup mentoring

Mentored two startups, a construction-industry ERP and a passwordless authentication product, as a sparring partner to surface their blind spots.

Coaching Mentoring

Volunteer Trainerassociation "Le lien : l'informatique & nous"

Training people affected by digital illiteracy.

French, native language
English, technical

Recommendations

Recommendations published on LinkedIn

Sep 2026clientwritten in French

Gaël se distingue par sa grande polyvalence technique et sa capacité à intervenir sur des sujets variés, au-delà de son périmètre de développement habituel. À l'aise avec différentes technologies et les problématiques d'architecture, il sait investiguer les sujets complexes et trouver des solutions pragmatiques.
Il n'hésite pas à questionner les choix techniques ou organisationnels lorsqu'il estime qu'ils peuvent être améliorés, toujours dans l'intérêt du produit. Force de proposition, il apporte un regard critique et constructif aux réflexions de l'équipe et contribue ainsi à faire progresser les solutions et les pratiques.

Aurélie DroulersCheffe de projet SI, Direction du numérique des Ministères Sociaux (DNUM)

context: Safeguarding reports platform @ adnap

Sep 2026clientwritten in French

Gaël était devOps en freelance pour l'Incubateur des territoires de l'ANCT.
Il a toujours été très pro et très compétent. Il gérait l'hébergement sur Kub de nos services numériques !

Julie RipaDirectrice de transition, Incubateur des Territoires (ANCT)

context: Incubateur des Territoires @ Qonfucius

Sep 2026direct manager

Gaël was one of the first freelancers I hired at the FabNum, initially as a full-stack developer on a single project.
Over the three years we worked together, he grew into a transversal technical role, notably building the DevSecOps environment used by all our projects, and bringing several great people into the team. I would happily work with him again.

Fred BardolleDirecteur, Fabrique Numérique (Ministère des Armées)

context: Transverse DevOps infrastructure @ Qonfucius

Mar 2016direct managerwritten in French

Ayant recruté et encadré Gaël pendant plus d'un an en tant que responsable technique chez IZEOS, puis collaboré avec lui sur des missions freelance, je peux affirmer qu'il est très rare de trouver un développeur Tech Enthusiast aussi pointu et compétent.
Gaël est soucieux des bonnes pratiques, avec toujours un cran d'avance sur les nouvelles technos. Mais, plus important encore, il est ouvert à la discussion et aux avis divergents.
Gaël est le Lead Dev que toute startup tech rêverait de recruter avant ses concurrents.

Lénore CorbeauxCTO, Izeos

context: Web Developer @ Izeos

Dec 2015studentwritten in French

Gaël est passionné par son art et parvient à transmettre efficacement son savoir même sur des sujets pointus.

Bastien M

context: Self-employed and freelancer

Mar 2015direct managerwritten in French

Gaël s'est rapidement intégré à l'équipe de R&D de WebTales/Rubedo. Sa bonne culture informatique générale et son adaptabilité lui ont permis d'appréhender rapidement de nouvelles technologies (NoSQL, Big Data) et de mener à bien de façon autonome des chantiers structurants (conception et mise en place d'une API REST).

Didier FanchonCo-founder & CEO, WebTales

context: Web Developer @ Webtales

My skills

Education

Master of Science

Supinfo — Paris, Tour Montparnasse

Advanced programming (Java, C#), project management, cloud computing, network architecture, cybersecurity.

Bachelor of Science

Supinfo — Paris, Tour Montparnasse

Web development (PHP, JavaScript), databases, virtualisation, Linux administration.

BTS Information Technology Services for Organizations (S.I.O.) Option Software Solutions and Business Applications

IRIS — Paris XVII

Software development, systems maintenance, database management, networks and telecommunications.

Professional Baccalaureate in Electronic and Digital Systems (S.E.N.) Option Telecommunications and Networks at IRIS

IRIS — Paris XVII

Digital electronics, telecom networks, network infrastructure, systems maintenance.

Professional experience

Presidentadnap

Infrastructure and cost optimisationAroma Zone

Safeguarding reports platformFrench social affairs ministries

CTOCashway

PresidentQonfucius

e-ChauffeurFrench Ministry of Armed Forces

Transverse DevOps infrastructureFrench Ministry of Armed ForcesLead DevOps

carrefour.fr rebuildCarrefour

Incubateur des TerritoiresANCTLead Tech

Offline cloudFrench Ministry of Armed Forces

StargateFrench Ministry of Armed Forces

E-commerce platformInVivo