Senior Software Engineer · Lead PHP Magento Developer
Smile Open Source Solutions
Smile is Europe's leading open-source integration and managed services company, founded in 1991, with approximately 2,000 employees across 9 countries and a group revenue of approximately 160 million euros. As an ESN (IT Services Company), Smile operates on a multi-client model with dedicated project teams, industrialized development standards and regular developer rotation between assignments. The group brings together specialized brands: SensioLabs (Symfony), Alter Way (Cloud), UX-Republic (Design), creativestyle (E-commerce).
The Bordeaux agency had approximately 45 experts, initially located at 2 rue du Jardin de l'Ars.
1991
Founded
~2 000
Employees
9
Countries
~160M€
Revenue
Within the Smile Bordeaux agency, I was positioned as Lead PHP Magento Developer and responsible for technical supervision of the e-commerce team. My scope covered both redesign project development and application maintenance (TMA) for multiple enterprise clients in parallel. In this ESN context, I navigated between client delivery deadlines, Smile's internal processes and the code quality expected on high-traffic e-commerce platforms.
My direct contacts: the Smile project manager, business teams at each client (Fleurance Nature, Cultura, Bricorama, GIFI) and the agency's technical management. Alongside the Fleurance Nature redesign carried out independently, I handle technical leadership and team supervision: code review, Magento and PSR standards enforcement, technical planning and workload estimation, ticket tracking and reporting via Redmine.
- Technical debt audit and mapping on each client project, prioritization of remediation work
- Analysis of functional and technical requirements, documentation of architecture decisions and coding conventions
- Development of complex features on Magento Enterprise Edition (advanced content manager, catalog price rules, customer segments, advanced promotions)
- Development of custom Magento modules to meet each client's specific needs
- Code review and validation for other engineers, dissemination of best practices and PSR standards
- Bug fixing and application maintenance (TMA) for enterprise clients
- Mentoring junior and intermediate developers, pair programming
- Collaboration with the project manager to translate requirements into technical specifications
- Production deployment, monitoring and incident diagnosis (New Relic)
- Continuous improvement proposals and contribution to the technical roadmap
Client Projects
Complete redesign of the Fleurance Nature e-commerce website on Magento Enterprise Edition. This project covered HTML integration, product attribute configuration, custom widget development, and a full sales funnel overhaul. The shopping cart was the most complex challenge: managing multiple promo codes, catalog price rules, multi-carrier shipping, tax calculations, and the advanced promotions engine. Initially planned for a team of developers, ultimately delivered solo with commendations during QA testing. The version developed at that time is still in production today on the website.
Key highlights
- Complete redesign delivered solo, originally planned for a team
- Complex sales funnel: promo codes, price rules, multi-carrier shipping
- Commended during QA: very few corrections required, version still in production today
- Cleanup and reorganization of legacy code left by numerous developers: existing code audit, prioritization by business impact, progressive refactoring module by module to avoid regressions
- Page load optimization, caching, and SEO indexing improvements
- Custom widgets: advanced search filters, product carousels, third-party integrations
Major Elasticsearch search engine project with millions of products to index and complex search queries to implement. Performance and relevance optimization of search results across the product catalog.
Application maintenance on the Bricorama e-commerce platform, a catalog of tens of thousands of DIY and gardening product references. Resolution of complex bugs related to price rules and cross-category promotions. Performance optimization on high-traffic product listing pages.
Application maintenance on the GIFI e-commerce platform, a home decor and furnishing retailer with a network of over 500 stores. Bug fixes on the checkout funnel and stock availability calculations. Feature enhancements to improve synchronization between the website and the physical store network.
Supervision and mentoring of a Magento development team. Systematic code review, enforcement of best practices and Magento and PSR (PHP Standards Recommendations) standards. Technical planning and workload estimation management. Ticket tracking, reporting to the project manager, ensuring quality and on-time delivery. Regular self-training and knowledge-sharing sessions organized to maintain a high level of technical competency within the team.
Languages & Frameworks
Databases
Search & Indexing
Interoperability
Tools & Infrastructure
Servers
- Ensure technical quality and scalability of e-commerce platforms
- Deliver smooth user experience: performance, ergonomics, speed
- Contribute to best practice standardization within the Smile agency
- Support e-commerce growth for major clients (Fleurance Nature, Bricorama, GIFI, Cultura)
Smile was a formative experience, but not for the right reasons. The industrialized processes of an ESN of this scale allowed me to level up on enterprise e-commerce standards.
However, I mainly observed the limitations of this model: the high developer turnover on projects created considerable technical debt, with each developer having completely different skill levels and techniques.
Projects were understaffed: the Fleurance Nature redesign, planned for a team, was assigned to me alone. This experience mainly taught me what not to do in a technical organization, but also the importance of rigor, consistency in code standards, and meticulousness in deliveries.
Leading a project solo when it was planned for a team, although difficult, proved my ability to absorb the workload and deliver with quality.
9 Technical Skill · 6 Soft Skill
Technical Skill
Fullstack development on Magento Enterprise Edition, Fleurance Nature e-commerce integration.
E-commerce architecture design on Magento Enterprise, custom modules.
Applying Magento MVC patterns, extension modules, observers, and plugins.
E-commerce transaction security, customer data protection.
Functional and regression testing on the e-commerce platform.
MySQL optimization for product catalog, index management and complex query tuning.
Application performance monitoring and e-commerce metrics tracking.
Continuous deployment and production operations for the platform.
Monitoring the Magento ecosystem and open source practices.
Soft Skill
Technical guidance and code review within the project team.
Collaboration with the Smile team and the Fleurance Nature business teams.
Solving complex technical issues on a high-volume e-commerce project.
Quick integration into the Smile environment and ramp-up on the client project.
Coordinating technical deliverables for an e-commerce platform redesign project.
Interface between the technical team and business stakeholders at the client.
Example of an achievement from this professional experience. Other projects were carried out during this mission but are not yet documented.
