Meet Leo, Software Engineer building the Koyeb Serverless Engine

We've got exciting news: The Koyeb team is growing! Join us in extending a warm welcome to Leo, a Software Engineer helping us build the Koyeb Serverless Engine.

As a distributed team with a strong presence in Europe, Koyeb is on a mission to build a state-of-the-art serverless solution that lets developers and businesses to deploy full stack applications, APIs, workers, and databases worldwide with ease.

Get to know our new teammate Leo better by reading his interview and discover how he is helping make our vision for serverless deployments a reality.

Hi Leo!

Why did you join Koyeb?

There are two main reasons. On one hand, I wanted to have more responsibilities, and a startup seemed like the right place. This led me to be more open to the market at the time Koyeb showed up and contacted me. The second reason is the awesome tech stack, the interesting product and the amazing folks I met here: I had a glimpse of it during the interviews with those who are now my colleagues, and I can tell now that my impression was correct and I ended up in a place full of nice and competent people, working with amazing technology on a great product.

How did you get into programming?

Contrary to the many stories I hear in this space, I did not learn to program when I was a baby, in some strange BASIC on some old Amiga. I have been exposed to computers since when I was a child and I remember having an internet connection since when I was 6. But I began, slowly and painfully, learning programming at university with the standard C courses that were offered while studying physics.

I always thought computers were cool and programmers were the new magicians of our age, but I did not undertake the endeavor seriously until the end of my PhD. At that point, I was already very much fascinated by the hacker culture and wanted to become one, but it took me quite some years before I managed to professionally work with tech.

I have to admit that this could not have been possible if the web and the FLOSS (Free Libre and Open Source Software) philosophy was not here: I found all the material I could find to learn, experiment, and grow.

What are some of your favorite parts of coding and technology?

I think that what really makes this branch of human knowledge great is the sharing spirit that stemmed, in my opinion, from the FLOSS movement. I cannot find another human scientific venture where the spirit of sharing is so front and center.

Windows, Mac, or Linux?

TL;DR: GNU/Linux for the win!

The longer version is that, as a matter of fact, my first computer was a Dell with DOS, and later Windows 3.1. I only used Windows up until the university, when I first approached GNU/Linux thanks to Ubuntu, and then OS/X with my first and only MacBook Pro (man, I LOVED that laptop so much). But I was so drawn to the FLOSS philosophy that I switched to GNU/Linux again and never looked back.

…and I use Arch, BTW

Docker or git-driven?

Favorite side project you have worked on?

I am pretty fond of a completely useless rust library I worked on: a hash map implementation with finite capacity.

I also have a sweet spot in my heart for another completely useless golang project of mine. It aims at extending the concept of context.Context so ubiquitous in golang, allowing more complex logic to pass through. I hope to make use of them, one day.

How do you like to spend your free time?

I really am that boring person who also codes in my free time, sorry. I also used to play the bass in a band, but I now only occasionally play at home.

When time allows, I really like to practice yoga and hike in the mountains with my wife.

What was the best vacation you ever went on?

The first time I went to Brazil in 2017.

What is your all-time favorite movie or TV show?

To single out one among many is always cruel, but I would say that the whole Star Trek: TNG has a place in my heart.

Do you have any hidden talents or hobbies?

I like to do woodworking, but it ain’t no talent 😅

Finally, how can we reach you on the Internet?

I like the old-fashioned way: you can drop me an email at the first three letters of my name dot my surname at gmail dot com.

If you feel fancier, I have a mastodon handle @blallo@fosstodon.org that I mainly use to lurk the fediverse.

Want more of Leo? Check out his other blog post and deploy on Koyeb!

Back in August 2023, Leo shared how to inspect TLS encrypted traffic using mitmproxy and wireshark. If you haven't read it already, you're in for a delightful dive into TLS's inferno.

Curious to test out Koyeb and see what Leo is working on? Deploy your first service on Koyeb today! Our free tier lets you deploy your first service and managed Postgres database for free. 😎 🚀