Mailjet Monday: Arnaud Breton

What do you for Mailjet?

I lead an amazing team of 3 Developer Evangelists :).

Our main mission, as Developer Evangelists, is to build relationships with other developers in the space and in the process, introduce them to the Mailjet product and the email industry as a whole. These interactions happen both online and offline. We work with developers that are looking to build off of our API both at hackathons or on Github, StackOverFlow. More typically at events that we’re either sponsoring or speaking at, we provide developers with everything they need to get started (code wrappers, documentation). In the process, we also learn a lot from them - how they use Mailjet and new features they’d like to see.

The Mailjet team also dedicates time to do side projects and stay up-to-date with the latest trends in the industry, because, after all, everyone in the team is a developer at heart!

On the other side, I'm highly involved internally in the release process of the API, from its design/ specification to its release and communication.

At the end of the day, being a Developer Evangelist is a very exciting job. You are always working with a diverse range of subjects, mixing technologies, meeting new people and having fun (the most important factor, right?)!

What’s one thing everyone should know about email/APIs?

Today, email is a commodity, everyone has it, every system has support for it but yet, reaching the inbox is still a real challenge.

It's mostly because the process of an email campaign - from creation to sending to landing in the recipients inbox, is a complex journey full of criteria that the sender has to meet in order to maintain a high sender reputation.

Using an API helps streamline this process - you have everything in hands to send, track and analyze, to integrate these emails deeper into the workflow of your software.

What does a typical day look like for you?

Our day starts with a short meeting between the European team (those based in London, Sofia and Paris). Since we have a fairly global team, this is dedicated time where we can check in, catch everyone up on what projects we’re working on, what’s next on the agenda and ask the team for help where we need. It's a great culture to have in place, since it also gives us a moment to just say “how’re you doing?” and kick-off the day on a positive note!

Following that, I work with the European team to handle daily challenges. Then later in the afternoon, the day begins for Tyler, our Developer Evangelist in NYC (6 hours behind us in Paris). Him and I hold a similar check-in to kick-off his day.

Between these meetings, I'm juggling a variety of different subjects, from API specifications to helping developers online and discussing / preparing for coming events.

Managing a team across 3 time zones (and growing!) is a real advantage - it challenges you to manage your time efficiently and also increases your global footprint. Between the 4 of us, we’re pretty much able to connect with developers around the world 24/7!

Favorite Mailjet moment?

Every API release is an exciting moment for me, even if it's a minor bug we patched up, it always feels great to be moving forward and providing our developer community with a product that is constantly improving, day after day.

Our daily morning meetings are also some of my favorite moments. It gives us a moment to take a small pause from hustling to check on everyone in the team and be sure everyone has what they need to move forward and tackle coming challenges!

Are you working on any neat projects of your own lately?

I live in Paris, and as you may know we experienced a violent terrorist attack back in January against the Charlie Hebdo satiric newspaper. To be honest, before this event, I don’t think I fully took the time to look into  the work they do, this event made me realize that I have missed out on an important piece of culture.

Which lead me to publish Dessine Moi Charlie ("Draw Me Charlie"), a simple app that helps you randomly discover Charlie Hebdo drawings. It's my humble contribution to the massive movement (#jesuischarlie) in France.

In general, I like to work on small projects, with a main focus in mind, like learning about new technology - I had some fun playing with the Yo app and brainstorming new ideas a while back and am also a huge Go-lang fan, the gopher currently lives on my desk:

What's next for the Developer Evangelist team?

Having a global team is an amazing opportunity to connect with developers from all other the world.

We participate in an average of 3 bigger scale events across the globe each month, including conferences and hackathons. We are also highly involved in local meetups and initiatives (accelerators, incubators, etc). Every event is a unique occasion to chat with developers face to face and hear what they think of Mailjet, educate them on email trends and of course sharing our passion of programming.

As mentioned before, we're constantly working on ways to improve our API and the suite of tools we publish for developers. In the coming months, you’ll see releases of new features that are simple, yet powerful, with a real focus on the Developer Experience (a concept which has really started to take off since APIs have been increasingly considered standalone products).