MaidSafe New Team Member:Jean-Philippe Dufraigne
Hi everyone, I’m Jean-Philippe and I am so excited to have joined the team.
I am originally from France and have been adopted by Scotland for the last 12 years, initially in Edinburgh, and now settling in Glasgow.
After completing a master in electronics for embedded systems, I switched track to become a Software Engineer when I interned for Cadence Design System in the south of France researching a new algorithm to tie schematic and layout in custom analog components design like the ones used in most phones. Looking to see the world outside of France, I took my first position at Cadence in Scotland. During the next 5 years I learned to speak English, how to use the C++ programming language, and design a large scale application collaborating with teams from France, India and the United States.
Looking to expand my horizon, I took a year to travel and study using the new exciting tools that were appearing at the time, re-learning math with Khan Academy, starting to learn Spanish with Duolingo, and exploring diverse technical and social subjects with Coursera and EdX. This experience solidified my aspiration to contribute to a project that offer an opportunity to everyone to better their lives. At the time I was not sure which project to contribute to and I felt my skills were not suitable for most open source project.
Over the last 5 years, I have worked on moving forward an established distributed video surveillance system. In this much smaller Scottish company, I was able to take on more of a technical leadership role very quickly, and really built on my passion to learn to develop my C++ skills and build our team skills and best practice culture. I was looking out, seeking to learn more about new technologies and the Free and Open Source Software world and hopefully contribute. This is where I discovered the SAFE Network, at the time written in C++. I was drawn to it. This felt really different, empowering everyone, and yet leaving control in the network participants’ hands. I was impressed by MaidSafe successful transition to the Rust programming language and I started learning rust and contributing to a smaller open source projects.
Now, after all this time, I finally felt ready to approach MaidSafe when a position opened.
It feels amazing to be part of a project I have so much hope for, and whose aspiration so closely match my own.
