Photo of Kitty Giraudel

I am a non-binary trans frontend engineer with over a decade of experience and a strong focus on web digital accessibility, diversity and inclusion. I have spent the last 7 years leading teams and growing engineering departments in a healthy way. My other skills include (but are not limited to) automated testing, frontend performance, web security, documentation, inclusive design and agile practices and methodologies.

I also happen to be a former technical writer who loves everything documentation. I have authored two books on CSS and Sass respectively at the start of my career and over 300 technical articles on various popular publications, from CSS-Tricks to Smashing Magazine, from Codrops to Tuts+. As a result, I have great communication skills and a passion for writing all sorts of things.

I have done my fair share of open-source work over the years. I am the author of Sass Guidelines, a Sass documentation translated in 13 languages and used by companies all over the world. I have authored and maintained a11y-dialog since 2015, one of the most popular libraries for creating accessible modal dialogs. More contributions and projects can be found on GitHub.

Anecdotally, I am a former Google Developer Expert in frontend development as well as a nominee for the Developer of the Year (2015) Net Awards.

Skills

Technology

HTML (knowledgeable), CSS (authored 2 books about it), JavaScript, React (main JS framework for the last few years), accessibility (steady theoretical knowledge), security (knowledgeable)

Other skills

Documentation (tech-writer and passionate), hiring/team building, workplace safety (minorly involved in N26 Works Council formation), agile practices (informed)

Experience

VP of Engineering @ Cofenster Berlin, 2022–2023

  • Bring software engineering maturity and processes to the team
  • Organise the Product & Engineering team in cross-functional squads to improve delivery
  • Champion quality topics such as security, scaling, accessibility and compliance
  • Maintain and actively contribute to company-wide documentation, particularly about culture, product and engineering
  • Support technical initiatives such as compliance and certification acquisition
  • Contribute to the product roadmap and strategy as well as its implementation
  • Take over hiring and onboarding for engineering roles

Group Engineering Lead @ Gorillas Berlin, 2021–2022

  • Helped grow the Product, Design & Engineering organization from a few dozens to over 200 people.
  • Established processes and guidelines for the department (most notably the 360 feedback process, but also absence policies, engineering practices, IT and security guidelines…).
  • Championed accessibility, diversity and inclusion, as well as workspace safety in the organization.
  • Supported officializing the use of the culture-add interview for all roles and helped design and conduct that interview stage.
  • Designed the interviewing process for web engineers (through which over a dozen hires too place), and helped hiring tech recruiters and group leads.
  • Worked with the security team to enable relevant policies and guidelines for the department.
  • Took part in Due Diligence exercises to audit the quality of the organization’ SDLC, architecture and security practices.

Lead Web Engineer @ Gorillas Berlin, 2021–2021

  • Hired as one of the first engineers to build up the Product, Design & Engineering organization at a time where there wasn’t one.
  • Grew the web team to over 10 engineers, whose seniority levels spread from junior to engineering lead.
  • Defined the early web infrastructure such as the adoption of Next.js, Sanity, Cypress, Fela and other frameworks and technologies.
  • Championed accessibility, testing and security in all web projects.
  • Championed diversity and inclusion at the organization level to ensure it grows in solid and healthy bases.

Web Tech Lead @ N26 GmbH Berlin, 2018–2020

  • Grew the web team from 1 to 20+ engineers, now in 4 different offices over the world.
  • Built a culture of feedback, inclusion and respect, now powering a very diverse and high-performing team.
  • Designed and implemented a test automation strategy and deployment pipeline to release multiple projects on a daily basis.

Senior Frontend Developer @ N26 GmbH Berlin, 2016–2018

  • Set up the groundwork for all N26 customer-facing web projects to ever come, now supporting the marketing website, the support center, the N26 webapp, the signup process and more.
  • Installed high quality practices such as security, accessibility and testability, shared with all members of the web team and beyond.
  • Initiated the web docs hub and wrote most of the existing documentation (70,000+ words).

Web Developer @ Edenspiekermann Berlin, 2015–2016

  • Worked on a variety of frontend client projects.
  • Paired with designers on a regular basis to ensure consistency between design deliveries and final implementations.
  • Encouraged authoring guidelines and practices across the organisation, especially around CSS.
  • Started the Edenspiekermann dev blog.

Web Developer @ Crédit Agricole Grenoble, 2011–2015

  • Implemented frontend of a now-retired e-commerce platform.
  • Set up Sass guidelines to author CSS which could scale.
  • Designed Twig (Symfony) architecture to support theming.
  • Developed a simple ad management system in PHP.

Projects

Notable open-source projects

Achievements

Publications

Honor & Awards

  • Former Google Developer Expert in Web Technologies
  • Web Developer of the Year 2015 Nominee
  • Open Source Xena Awards 2023 Nominee

Hobbies

Playing Geoguesser, video games and pool, hanging out with my cats, writing, cooking, and the occasional side project that never gets finished. 😅