About this experience

Joining Laboratoires Gilbert was my first professional experience as a web developer — and a key step in my technical growth.
It’s where I learned the real foundations of the job: building software in a real-world environment, collaborating with multidisciplinary teams, understanding production constraints, and delivering tools that are actually used every day.

The technical team was small but diverse: one Ruby developer maintaining legacy apps, one WordPress developer for e-commerce, and two of us working on a new, modern stack (Laravel + Vue.js) chosen by the lead developer.
This setup pushed me into a fast-paced learning curve, with a structure that was both demanding and formative.

Key responsibilities

Gaining proficiency with a modern stack

I trained and worked as a full-stack developer using Laravel and Vue.js.
The first months were challenging, but they helped me build solid foundations in backend design, frontend development, code organization, and database management.
It was my first real exposure to modern development workflows.

Nginx configuration and server management

I learned how to configure and maintain Nginx environments, which gave me a deeper understanding of performance optimization, routing, security, and web application deployment.
It also introduced me to the operational side of web development, beyond just writing code.

Contributing to CI/CD workflows

I participated in the setup of CI/CD pipelines for several projects:

• preparation of GitLab runners,
• SSH key management (id_rsa),
• configuration of deployment scripts and pipelines for staging and production environments.

This experience gave me a first insight into DevOps practices and automation principles.

Developing internal applications autonomously

While design discussions were collaborative, I was quickly trusted to handle projects from start to finish, including:

• requirements analysis,
• technical architecture,
• frontend and backend development,
• testing, deployment, and maintenance.

This autonomy helped me learn how to structure my work, anticipate technical issues, and deliver solutions aligned with business needs.

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Summary

This experience at Laboratoires Gilbert was where I transitioned from student to professional developer.
I gained hands-on experience in modern full-stack development, learned the principles of CI/CD and DevOps, and became confident managing a project independently.

It was a defining period that laid the foundation for my later technical maturity and independence as a developer.