# My Story — Sylvain Kalache

URL: https://www.sylvainkalache.com/my-story

Twenty years of infrastructure and reliability work, and what happened along the way.

## Early days — Growing up in France

Born in France and moved a dozen times growing up, following my father's work. A different region every few years, and a lasting opinion about cheese.

Locations: France

## 2006 — Started a Master's, and my first datacenter job

Began a Master's in Computer Science in France, the first leg of a degree that ended up spanning three countries. Alongside it, started at a private cloud company, racking datacenter hardware and automating its administration.

Locations: France

## 2008 — Continued the Master's in China

Spent a year in Tianjin studying Computer Science at Hebei University of Technology. That's where I met my wife!

Locations: Tianjin

## 2009 — Finished the Master's in San Francisco

Moved to San Francisco to finish the degree in 2011. Fell in love with the area, and Silicon Valley is a pretty good place to pursue a career in IT.

Locations: San Francisco

## 2011 — First SRE role, at SlideShare

Started my career as a Site Reliability Engineer at SlideShare in San Francisco. My first time on call, for a site then among the 50 most-trafficked in the US, with the engineering team in India and working days that barely overlapped. Just over a year in, LinkedIn acquired the company.

Locations: San Francisco

## 2012 — Founded while42

Started while42, then the world's largest network of French-speaking software engineers, with 3,000 members across 40+ cities, deliberately in-person. The conversations there about the global shortage of engineers led directly to Holberton School.

Locations: San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Palo Alto, Seattle, Boston, Miami, Washington DC, Montreal, Quebec City, Sao Paulo, Paris, Toulouse, Nantes, Montpellier, Marseille, Lyon, Nice, Bordeaux, Caen, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels, Luxembourg, Lausanne, Dublin, Barcelona, Oslo, Bucharest, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Dubai, Tangier, La Reunion, Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Wellington, Saint Petersburg

## 2012 — Senior SRE at LinkedIn

Stayed on through the acquisition as a Senior Site Reliability Engineer. Co-designed a self-healing infrastructure system, granted US Patent US9674031B ("Automated management of a distributed computing system") in 2017.

Locations: San Francisco

## 2016 — Co-founded Holberton School

Co-founded Holberton School, a software engineering school that threw out the traditional playbook: no teachers, no lectures, and no tuition until students were hired. They learned by building and teaching each other. We raised $33M and trained thousands of students across 30+ campuses on 5 continents, with graduates hired by Apple, Google, NVIDIA, Tesla and Meta. Acquired in 2022.

Locations: San Francisco, New Haven, Tulsa, New York, San Juan, Bogota, Medellin, Cali, Barranquilla, Montevideo, Quito, Paris, Bordeaux, Laval, Lille, Toulouse, Thonon-les-Bains, Tunis, Beirut, Lagos, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Port Louis, Melbourne, Aguadilla, Ponce, Baku, Cairo, Guatemala City, Lima, Maseru, Merida, Panama City, Riyadh, Tirana, Sydney, Frejus, Macon, Rennes, Sens

## 2021 — PR and DevRel consulting

Worked independently as a PR and developer relations consultant for devtools and infrastructure companies, travelling while I did it.

Locations: France, Spain, Baja California, Switzerland, Dolomites, Salt Lake City, Florida, Jamaica

## 2024 — AI Labs & DevRel at Rootly

Leading AI Labs at Rootly, building AI-driven open-source reliability tools and prototypes, sponsored by Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and Google Cloud. The work is on the road as much as at a desk.

Locations: Dublin, London, Berlin, Toronto, New York, Austin, Denver, San Francisco