Djamel Bougouffa
Software engineer with 7+ years of experience. I design and build AI tooling for large, long-lived codebases: code parsing, retrieval, agents over MCP, and the product on top.
Based in France. Open to remote roles with international teams.
Built and shipped
Recent work, each with a link you can check.
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Since 2025
Case studyAI platform for legacy modernization
Ippon Technologies
Designed and built the whole product: a Rust CLI, a web app and an MCP server on one core. Tree-sitter parsing, retrieval, generated documentation, separate workspaces per organization and LLM cost tracking. Rolled out to 120+ consultants.
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Since 2025
Source on GitHubsemtree
Open source, Rust
Semantic code search, local by default: tree-sitter chunking across 20 languages, on-device embeddings, hybrid vector and BM25 ranking, and an MCP server for coding agents. 9 crates on crates.io.
Terminal recording from the semtree README: indexing semtree’s own source (9 files), then two searches in semantic mode. -
Since 2026
Case studyRegulated B2B extranet
Suez IWS, client engagement
Hazardous-waste tracking for industrial customers. Rebuilt the CI/CD pipeline, worked on security hardening, and contribute to the ongoing move of a legacy Liferay front end toward Angular micro frontends, while shipping Java features in the core.
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Since 2025
Product siteGo Togother
Own product
Intercity carpooling for Thailand, built solo end to end: NestJS API, React Native app, Next.js web app and PromptPay QR payments. Pre-launch.
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2022 – 2024
Case studyBonus and store operations
METRO France, via Wemanity
Led the front-end repository of a bonus-by-objectives product used by 4,000+ employees and 1,000 managers. Shipped point-of-sale, kiosk and order-tracking features across the 93 METRO France warehouses.
Writing
All articles- AI Writes the Code Now, Which Is Exactly Why You Should Master Architecture AI didn't make developers obsolete. It moved the value. Typing code is being commoditized; deciding how the system should be shaped is not. Here's why architecture and craft just became the skills that appreciate, and why the 'classic' implementer should start leveling up now.
- Hexagonal Architecture Is the Best Gift You Can Give an AI Agent Ports and adapters weren't designed for AI. But isolating your business logic behind clean boundaries turns out to be the single most effective way to let a coding agent work fast without wrecking your domain. Here's why, with a real Java before/after.
- Why I Left the AI IDE for the Terminal, and Built Tooling Around It I traded my AI-enhanced IDE for a terminal agent. It stuck, not because the terminal is cooler, but because it's composable. Here's what changed, the honest trade-offs, and the tooling I had to build.
- Deploying a Self-Hosted RAG App on AWS with Terraform: Why I Chose EC2 Over Bedrock A practical breakdown of deploying a Rust RAG application on AWS EC2 using Terraform: stateful Qdrant data on EBS, GitLab OIDC for credential-free CI/CD, and the real trade-offs between self-hosting and AWS Bedrock.
Hiring for a remote engineering role?
Email me with the role and a few words about the team. I usually reply within two days.
dbougouffa@gmail.com