Benjamin - Data Science Lead

Sales Applications Technical Manager Ralph Lauren,

• Solution Architect supporting a complete in-house redesign of the B2B E-commerce solution for EMEA. This web
application is the customer facing sales applications used in both showrooms during market (650M€ /year) as well as
seasonal reorders (65M€ / year). Back-end based on .NET and SQL Server, front-end based on jQuery and Bootstrap.
Integration of the recommendation engine described previously. Media integration with Adobe Experience Manager
(AEM).
• Development manager for the team in charge of wholesale customer facing sales applications (showrooms & reorders).
Point of contact between the business teams and the technical teams in India. Projects managed using an agile
methodology with support from the JetBrains tools stack (TeamCity, YouTrack and UpSource). Technologies in used include
SAP-FIORI (in showrooms) and ASP.NET (B2B re-orders / pre-books). Implementation of Enhanced E-commerce for GoogleAnalytics (B2B re-orders / pre-books).

Planning Application Architect Ralph Lauren, Geneva, CH
February 2017 to July 2017 (6 months)
• In charge of the architecture and the project management for the implementation of a Planning Tool solution (Financial
Planning, Attribute Planning & Assortment Planning) for the Retail business.
• The idea here is to leverage the work already done for the wholesale business few years back and implement it for the
retail business this time. Few adjustments were necessary, but overall this is customization of an existing product for a
different Ralph Lauren business.
• The technical team is located in India and the methodology in use is the Agile methodology. Project management tool stack
includes JetBrains TeamCity, YouTrack as well as UpSource. The technology in use is a standard WPF + WCF + SQL-Server
project, in which we are using Unity, AutoMapper, etc.

Data Science Lead EMEA Ralph Lauren

• B2B E-commerce recommendation engine: (Computer Vision) Building a semi-personalized recommendation engine,
based on the visual similarity (distance) of the products currently sold on our B2B website. Classification of products using
a CNN (TensorFlow 2) for high-level features extraction. Hyperparameters tuning using Keras Tuner (Hyperband). Benefits:
redirect sales toward similar in-stock products.
• Material-master auto-attribution: (Classification) Automated attribution of hierarchical product-attributes using a
hierarchical machine-learning based models’ implementation (scikit-learn). Features extraction from free text fields using a
universal sentence encoder (TensorFlow). Input data, output data and training session management persistence in SQL
Server. Web based management system developed using ASP.NET, jQuery and Bootstrap. Benefits: employee engagement
and enablement, re-focus time to more interesting and value adding activities, improved data accuracy for trading analytics
and decision making.
• Online and physical stores traffic prediction: (Time-Series) Creation of dedicated ML models used to forecast the traffic in
our retail stores using on-premises traffic counters. The models are based on a combination of RNN (LSTM) used as an
additional regressor for Prophet. Full integration with Neptune for Experiment Tracking. The data is stored in Amazon
Redshift and transit via S3 in AWS. Benefits: improve other forecasts based on store traffic forecast. Better staff planning.
• Judging the Columbia University Data Science Institute Datathon: ********-fall-dsi-datathon/
• Mentoring a team of students from the Columbia University working on a Capstone Project about Returns Propensity
Prediction for Online Orders: ********-fall-2020-capstone-projects/

• The SAP R3 Project (>$300M) is the EU implementation of SAP at Ralph Lauren (PTP, HTR, OTC, RTR and STP). A 3 years’
project, involving over 300 persons in various RL locations (EU, US, AP).
• Involved in this role for analysis, design, build and test phases. Transitioning to Deployment Lead role for deployment,
controlled-start and hypercare phases.
• Leads the technical definition, design and integration of systems into SAP including EDI using a common platform and
approach. This is a cross-functional role. Responsible for the overall design authority at a technical and system level.
• Also managing the implementation of a Portfolio-Management application (WCF JSON Web-Services, JQuery, d3.js, EF) to
support the integration of a global landscape of 120 systems and +400 interfaces (SAP/PI, MQ, REST, SOAP, Custom
interfaces) and to support main phases of the project (analysis, design and build).

Lead .NET Architect and SQL Server Expert Ralph Lauren

• Lead .NET software architect and technology manager.
• Technical lead for the .NET developers’ teams (Geneva, London, Austin, Karachi & Tianjin).
• Implementing state-of-the-art MVVM applications (WPF, MVVM, Prism, Pivot and SSAS write-back).
• Real expertise in Microsoft .NET and SQL Server technologies.
• Covering functional areas from collaboration, financial & assortment planning to supply chain.

NET Architect

Main Duty Reporting directly to the CTO, I am in charge of the architecture and implementations of the i-comm™ backend platform, a rich-media (video, documents, games, magazines, etc.) content delivery software + service solution. The solution offered includes B2B, B2C and B2E scenarios. My technical advisor role covers architecture, design, implementation, as well as management and team leading of the outsourced teams.

Infrastructure Management Virtualization of the data-center using VMware Server. Implementation of the Load-balancing using Zeus ZXTM. Fail-over architecture of the Hardware. Usage of VMware and Vizioncore tools. Setup and maintenance of the development, QA and production environments. Design of the application monitoring solution using Spice-Works, custom Event-Log to RSS and ping monitors.

Platform Web Management and Administration Design and implementation of internally used web tools to administrate monitor and troubleshoot the software platform. Implementation using ASP.NET Ajax, Telerik Rad-Controls and Dundas charting controls. Migration of the existing tools to work outside the VPN using secured web-services.
Design of a web-management platform for end users using ASP.NET Ajax, Telerik Rad-Controls and Dundas charting controls. Managing the implementation team outsourced to Ukraine. Usage of the EntLib caching and logging application blocks. Using .NET framework 3.5.

Outsourced Team Management Management of the QA team and the development team outsourced in Ukraine, Norway and Serbia. Design and implementation of the shared development and source control environment. In charge of code-review and ICG guidelines compliance check. Providing coaching support. In charge of tasks assignments.

Platform Automation API Implementation Design and Implementation of the Automation Layer API of the server platform using SOAP Web-Services. Providing .NET, Java and JavaScript (COM) client proxy libraries. Brokered and Direct authentication using AWS Token Pattern. Implementation of distributed transactions over stateless services. Compliance with DIME and MTOM attachments specifications.

Content Management Geographic load-balancing and fail-over of the Content Delivery Networks using Akamai and AmazonS3 Edge networks, SOAP API and DIME. XML Digital Signature of the content using dynamic RSA key pairs.

Data Management Design and maintenance of the MS-SQL servers. Migration from SQL 2000 to SQL 2005. In charge of the data integrity and data migration over the 3 environments. Using Red-Gate tools SQL Compare, SQL Data Compare and SQL Data Generator. In charge of performance-tuning and load-testing.

Reporting & Business Intelligence Design and implementation of a Reporting portal solution based on Visual Studio Tools for Office 2007, extensibility support using dependency injection pattern. Requirements gathered from end users. Definition of acceptance tests.
Also managing the design of a SQL 2005 based business intelligence solution. Providing interfaces for data-warehouse loading. External consultancy involved.

Geneva Pre-Sales Consultant

Main Duty I am in charge of writing technical proposals as well as assessing products for which CTP has recent partnerships. Also providing some technical help to CTP Novartis team in Basel and Philip Morris development team in Neuchâtel.

QA Environment Assessment of the latest Mercury Quality Assurance platform. The goal here is to match and leverage CTP QA Methodology and offer new solution to clients. This activity was done in a team of 4 consultants. Interviewing the Orange team currently using the Mercury suite to validate methodologies in use.

Reporting & Business Intelligence Proof of concept of a SQL 2005 based business intelligence solution. Providing cube and reports based on the candidate database repository. This activity was done in a team of 3 consultants.

Neuchâtel Project Manager

Main Duty Project Manager for the Products Monitoring System (PMS) project which allows R&D users to monitor and report production centers performance in the world. I am in charge of managing a team of 7 developers (2 LIMS developers, 2 .NET developers, 1 SQL Server DBA and 1 Business Objects consultant).

Smart Client Application The PMS client application is a Citrix deployed smart client written in .NET 2.0. It uses the dependency injection and distributed caching patterns. Lightweight reporting using Cristal Reports.
Reporting & Business Intelligence The PMS solution offers a Business Objects access to OLAP cubes. The data-warehouse is built using SQL Server 2000 and Data Stage.

Neuchâtel SeniorNET Developer

Main Duty Senior .NET Consultant for the Brands Follow Up System (BFS) and the Products Monitoring System (PMS) project which allows R&D users to benchmark monitor and report production centers performance in the world. In charge of the design and implementation of the applications and the transactional databases. Team leader and coaching role within the CTP team on site.

BFS Application The BFS client application is a .NET WinForms application deployed using Microsoft SMS. Implementation of the single-sign-on based on AD group membership within the organization. Provisioning and De-provisioning is automated via R&D Intranet. Migration of the database from Sybase to SQL Server, migration of the code base from VB6 to C#. Extensibility of the application based on a custom solution involving SMS deployment and a pseudo dependency injection using reflection. Preparation and management of the user acceptance tests.
PMS Application The PMS client application is a Citrix deployed smart client written in .NET 2.0. It uses the dependency injection and distributed caching patterns. Lightweight reporting using Cristal Reports.

Chambéry Consultant

Design & Development of a Multilanguage Web site (********). Responsible for the overall architecture of the web site. Feasibility study, proposition and estimation of the solution. Implementation of secured online payments. Tests and deployment of the application.
Environment: Microsoft.NET (C# / ASP.NET), Win32 (C++, COM and ASP), XML/XSL, Access.

Project leader

In charge for the study of the Microsoft .NET platform. Responsible of the architectures recommendations for documents management, collaborative work, contents management systems, migrations of Internet sites and applications. SharePoint Portal Server, Content Management Server, Exchange Server 2000, SQL Server 2000, Active Directory. Creation of online courses for developers.
Technology used: Microsoft.NET (C# / Managed C++ / ATL).

July 2001 to Mars 2002 Secured Multi-platforms Web Mail Components (********). Management of 5 people in a 10-people team. Integration of the solution with PKI Server, Java application servers. Strong Authentication and Digital signatures via GSM. (Regarding ISO 15408 standards). Development of object scripting language, HTML interpreter and Cryptographic libraries using portable C++ (Targets: Win32, Mac Os > 9, Win CE). Compatibility with Internet Explorer, Netscape over Web Browsers, Windows CE and Mac platforms. Compliance for security certifications over several levels. Technical presentations to the project's group. Environment: Win32 (C++ / ATL, Visual-Studio 6, and CodeWarrior), Cryptography (SHA, Triple DES, RSA), Java (Jsp, Servlet).

October 2002 Project leader and lead developer of a Proxy Server TCP/UDP for ******** web site (France Telecom Interactive, ********). Proxy Server used for massive online games.
Environment: Multi-threaded C++, Winsock 1/2.

March 2001 to June 2001 Project leader and lead developer of an application based on a probabilistic calculation core allowing optimization of electric wiring for Valeo. Attribution of appropriations seeks (ENVAR) for the developments.
Environment: C++. Managing 3 persons.
Other projects Development of architectures and C++ developments, ASP and ASP.NET, FTP Server, COM Objects, RS-232 interface, C++ sources documentation tools, architecture client/server SOAP…