Thiébaud /tebo/ ERNSTBERGER

Distinguished Software Engineer & Tech Lead

Technical owner of the compute area of Walmart's Kubernetes-based Internal Developer Platform (WCNP) — the fleet of clusters that runs Walmart's container workloads across edge, public and private cloud. I set the technical direction for how that compute layer is designed, scaled and operated, and stay the technical lead on the cross-organizational initiatives that cut across it.

Some of what that covers:

• Own the architecture of the platform's compute layer: cluster lifecycle, fleet scale, multi-tenancy, and the add-ons every cluster runs
• Set and maintain the technical roadmap for compute, and guide the principal engineers delivering against it
• Technical lead on cross-organizational initiatives that span compute — workload identity, serverless, and compliance
• Partner with the platform's engineering leadership as its technical counterpart, translating platform strategy into architecture
• Founder and lead organizer of the Walmart Cloud Native Con
• Mentor engineers across the platform, and still write and review code

Principal Software Engineer & Tech Lead

Principal Platform Engineer and Architect on Walmart's Kubernetes-based Internal Developer Platform (WCNP), serving 13k+ users across 7k+ Kubernetes clusters. I designed solutions around Kubernetes, Istio, Vault, Flagger, Consul-template, Helm and Prometheus, mostly in Golang.

Some accomplishments include:

• Technical lead on cross-organizational initiatives — Serverless, Workload Identity with SPIFFE, and PCI compliance
• Technical lead on initiatives internal to the platform team — cluster add-ons and security hardening
• Founder and lead organizer of the Walmart Cloud Native Con, which drew 6.5k unique viewers in 2023
• Co-wrote two accepted KubeCon talks (KubeCon NA 2023 and EU 2024)
• Founder of the Platform Coding Standard Committee
• Led the implementation of secret consumption on WCNP using HashiCorp Vault, with an abstraction layer covering both cloud and edge use cases
• Co-led the implementation of Canary deployment and its abstraction layer, including open source contribution
• Designed auto-provisioning of Walmart-signed certificates for application ingress
• Implemented cluster-level policy enforcement via OPA, and worked with auditors on SOX and HIPAA
• Developed multiple Kubernetes admission webhooks and operators
• Mentored WCNP engineers and ensured their professional development

Staff Software Engineer & Tech Lead

Started as Staff Software Engineer on Walmart's Cloud Native Platform (WCNP), mainly focused on cross-squad initiatives. In February 2020, I became the Technical Lead for Cloud Native Security & Compliance on WCNP.

Lead Software Engineer

As a lead engineer I’m responsible for the architecture of a micro service ecosystem for the Freedom Debt Relief program. I work closely with Product in order to identify Business needs and design scalable solutions.
I’m also the technical lead of the company move to a new Content Storage System. For this project I evaluated and wrote POCs for 3 solutions (Box, Google Cloud Storage and Metastor). I then presented my findings and recommendation to the leadership team. The project also included the migration of 20+ million files, designing an abstraction layer along with a set of embeddable widgets for agents, and creating a high volume ingestion process for automated uploads.
I also actively participate in the recruiting effort for all engineering positions as well as representing the company at job fairs and conferences (Google Next, HackerX, HackerNest...)

Lead Software Engineer

During my time at Acenda I designed the architecture of an e-commerce platform. The heart of Acenda is a powerful, highly scalable Rest API where stores, plugins and admin interfaces can manage customers, products, orders and more.
My role was to participate in planning, demo and scrum meetings in order to organize Acenda’s roadmap. I have also worked on all aspects of the software from an architecture allowing users to download and manage themes and styles for their stores, to ensure the best response times for search queries using Elasticsearch.
For my last project I led the design and development of a plugin platform allowing stores to integrate with many different platforms such as Amazon, Walmart and Shipstation.

Senior Software Engineer

Media Universal was a marketing company focused on email campaigns. My addition to the team allowed the company to expand to social media marketing. In just a few months I was able to triple the conversion rate of most email campaigns. I also designed and participated in the development of a Facebook Ad Management Software. This application had many automated processes that would help any employee manage many campaigns and funnels.

Software Engineer

While working for MorningCroissant I had the opportunity to work on a platform that participated to the travel revolution led by AirBnB. Comparably to its competitor, MorningCroissant.com offers an alternative to paying for hotels. I started by upgrading their customer facing website, by adding some core features:

• A messaging system so users can commnunicate directly on the platform
• Log-in with Facebook
• Highly dynamic landing pages allowing for A/B testing and where user interactions are tracked.

I then worked on two bigger integrations, the first one was a customer service platform and the second one was interfacing our backend with other property management platforms.
As part of my daily responsibilities, I participated in updating the Product Roadmap and mentored interns and younger developers.

Software Engineer

During my short time at DCNS, I developed an internal application for the "Quality Inspector" service. This service is in charge of Quality Insurance for vendors' orders across France. I wrote the specifications with the client and managed the software development until the final release. The application was written in .NET.

Web Developer

Working as an Independent Contractor was my primary source of revenue during graduate school. Even today, I still ocasionnaly work on some projects.

Web Developer

No Work Tech was an internet cafe that offered web development services.

Epitech - Paris, France

Epitech has arguably the best Computer Science program in France. Students work on 50 to 70 real practical applications throughout each of the first 3 years.

Projects were in: C, C++, PHP/JavaScript, Java, ASM & SQL

Some relevant projects

• Study of design patterns
• Development of a Unix Shell and Ray tracing software in C
• Development of a video game (R-type copycat) in C++
• Development of a path finding algorithm based on A* with sampled dynamic weighting