Dom Derrien, Developer in Montreal, QC, Canada
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Dom Derrien

Full-stack Architect and Developer

Montreal, QC, Canada

Toptal member since December 22, 2025

Bio

Dom is an experienced full-stack architect specializing in back-end, web, mobile, and AI services. He is skilled in scalable architectures, integration workflows, and modernizing legacy systems. Dom has also led end-to-end design, technical reviews, and platform evolutions, leveraging strong architectural judgment and a maintainability-focused engineering mindset.

Portfolio

Tradelite Solutions
Serverless, Mobile, TypeScript, AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK)...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
TypeScript, Java, Amazon Aurora, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon CloudFront...
MSOP
TypeScript, JavaScript, Flutter, Java, Google Cloud, GitHub Actions...

Experience

  • Java - 20 years
  • Web - 20 years
  • TypeScript - 9 years
  • Serverless Architecture - 9 years
  • AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) - 9 years
  • AWS Lambda - 9 years
  • Amazon DynamoDB - 9 years
  • GitHub Actions - 7 years

Preferred Environment

MacOS, AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK), AWS Lambda, Amazon DynamoDB, Vite, Lit, Vitest, Playwright, Serverless Architecture

The most amazing...

...tool I've developed is a course production platform for HMH content authors, which served lessons to millions of kids in the US via the Waggle service.

Work Experience

Chief Technology Officer

2021 - 2026
Tradelite Solutions
  • Designed a cost-efficient, scalable solution using AWS serverless services for modern web and mobile applications, keeping operational costs below USD 30/month.
  • Developed Web3 smart contracts (token, vesting, staking) on the EDU Chain (Layer 3 atop Arbitrum One and Ethereum) and built a companion dashboard giving users easy access to airdropped tokens and staking offers.
  • Built a modern web app with theming and globalization support using the Lit library, integrating OAuth authentication via AWS Cognito and Open Campus ID.
Technologies: Serverless, Mobile, TypeScript, AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK), Amazon DynamoDB, GitHub Actions, AWS Lambda, Web3, Solidity, Serverless Architecture, Vite, Lit, Vitest, Playwright, Amazon CloudFront, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), JavaScript, OAuth 2, CSS3, Node.js, C#, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Back-end, Large Language Models (LLMs), Full-stack Development, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Claude, Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Nano, Language Models, APIs, HTML

Principal Software Architect

2017 - 2021
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  • Designed a multimedia web authoring platform for HMH content producers. The same components used for editing are also used for final rendering on the web portal for students and teachers. Content producers are confident their intent is respected.
  • Switched many services relying on traditional RDBMS to AWS DynamoDB as it is intrinsically designed for pure transactional workflows. This helped reduce the bills by 68% while freeing DevOps from cluster management and schema updates.
  • Designed a solution to transfer petabytes of archives from a 3rd-party provider to AWS S3 with Snowball machines, reducing bills by 98%.
Technologies: TypeScript, Java, Amazon Aurora, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon CloudFront, AWS Snowball, Serverless Architecture, AWS Lambda, Lit, Web, GitHub Actions, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), JavaScript, Flutter, OAuth 2, CSS3, AWS IoT, Node.js, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Back-end, Full-stack Development, APIs, HTML

Head of Technology

2016 - 2017
MSOP
  • Developed a cloud-based infrastructure supporting the main Las Vegas venue and golf events across the U.S. and Canada, handling user onboarding, profile management, scoring, leaderboards, and continuous player engagement on Google Cloud.
  • Built a golf ball tracking system for the Las Vegas venue using an aerial camera mesh. The system relied on fiducial markers for continuous recalibration, allowing players to score across multiple fields without a marshal to verify the results.
  • Developed a projector-based visual animation system integrated with the ball tracking system, projecting patterns on the green that awarded players extra points when reached.
Technologies: TypeScript, JavaScript, Flutter, Java, Google Cloud, GitHub Actions, Image Recognition, Orthographic Projection, Hospitality, Fantasy Sports, Serverless Architecture, Lit, Web, Express.js, OAuth 2, CSS3, PostgreSQL, Node.js, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Back-end, Full-stack Development, APIs, HTML, Google Sheets

Technical Lead

2014 - 2016
Ubisoft
  • Built an infrastructure for a web companion app using WebSockets to stream near‑real‑time game session data from PS, Xbox, and PC, providing players with location, friend, and foe information.
  • Developed a pipeline to import game assets, enabling 3D previews of avatars with earned or purchasable items from the online shop.
  • Collaborated with the community engagement team to broadcast live programs in the web app and manage forum access based on players’ season pass and leadership, enabling top players to participate in exclusive activities such as Ubisoft Forward events.
Technologies: JavaScript, Express.js, MongoDB, GTLF/GKB, WebGL, Spine, Lit, Web, OAuth 2, CSS3, PostgreSQL, Node.js, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Back-end, Full-stack Development, APIs, HTML

Experience

Mogaland Academy for Financial Health

http://academy.mogaland.io/
The web portal is offering free and controlled access to the following:
• Online courses made of lessons, formative assessments, and summative assessments leading to the issuance of certificates.
• Finance-related casual games: a quiz game, a prediction game, and a memory game.
• A Web3 portal for trading MOGA tokens.

Users are authenticated with an Open Campus ID, which associates them with the credentials (NFTs) published on the EDU Chain.

Users can also register different Web3 wallets (Web wallets, mobile wallets, and hardware wallets) to view and manage their MOGA assets on the EDU Chain.

Family Budget Tracker POC

https://github.com/domderrien/family-budget-tracker
This repository showcases how a modest Family Budget Tracking system can be simply built on AWS infrastructure:

• The front end is hosted on the Amazon S3 setup for website servicing.
• The business logic runs on an AWS Lambda function.
• The data persistence assumed by Amazon DynamoDB.

The project has been built with [Kiro](https://kiro.dev) in _spec_ mode.

Waggle Course Library and Interactive Components

https://www.hmhco.com/programs/waggle
As software architect for the Waggle project, I designed a lightweight course format (JSON on S3 with metadata in DynamoDB) to replace a costly learning database ($1 million a year). Content authors could use a web app to create courses with full interactivity (MCQs, FiB, sorting, etc.) for students, ensuring nothing was lost in translation. The solution leveraged S3 and CloudFront for lesson delivery and Lambda functions for student progression tracking. Most assessments were auto-scored using solutions documented by authors, while a dedicated pipeline handled offline scoring by teachers for textual answers such as essays. Ultimately, the operating costs of the entire publication pipeline were around USD80k/ year.

Education

1991 - 1992

Master's Degree in Computer Science

Université de Rennes - Rennes, France

Skills

Libraries/APIs

Lit, Node.js, Playwright, WebGL

Tools

Amazon CloudFront, AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK), Vitest, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), Claude, Google Sheets, Spine

Languages

TypeScript, JavaScript, CSS3, HTML, Java, Solidity, C#, C, C++

Frameworks

Express.js, OAuth 2, Spring 6, Flutter

Paradigms

Serverless Architecture

Platforms

AWS Lambda, Web, Mobile, AWS IoT, Amazon Web Services (AWS), MacOS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Storage

Amazon DynamoDB, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Amazon Aurora, AWS Snowball, Google Cloud

Other

Serverless, GitHub Actions, APIs, HTTP REST, Back-end, Full-stack Development, Vite, Web3, Large Language Models (LLMs), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Nano, Language Models, Embedded Software, Neural Networks, Fuzzy Logic, FPGA, Microelectronics, Image Recognition, Orthographic Projection, Hospitality, Fantasy Sports, GTLF/GKB

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