Skip to main content
Skip to main content

Hi, I'm Karim Boudjema. I'm a Senior Backend Developer living in Montréal, Canada, passionate about Drupal, AI and automated testing.

Résumé

Karim Boudjema

Drupal Developer / Drupal Trainer / AI Adoption & Tooling

SUMMARY

Belgian Drupal developer living in Montréal, Canada, working as a Senior Backend Developer, Team Lead, and Drupal Trainer. Over 15 years of Drupal and PHP experience across large-scale newspaper, e-commerce, and enterprise intranet projects, with a current focus on custom Drupal backend development, automated testing, and building AI tooling and governance across the full development lifecycle; from analysis through development assistance and code review to automated testing. Comfortable leading development teams, mentoring developers, and delivering complex, high-traffic Drupal solutions.

SKILLS

Technical Skills:

  • Programming languages: PHP, JavaScript, Python
  • CMS / frameworks: Drupal (7 to 11), Symfony components
  • Front end: HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript
  • Server, search, cache: Apache, Nginx, Apache Solr, Memcached, Redis, Varnish
  • Databases: MySQL / MariaDB, MongoDB
  • Testing: PHPUnit, Drupal Test Traits, Playwright
  • AI & developer tooling: Claude Code (Team administration, skills, sub-agents, hooks, plugin marketplace), Model Context Protocol (MCP), OpenTelemetry, AI governance and security
  • DevOps and tooling: Composer, Git, GitLab, GitHub, DDEV, Acquia
  • Systems: Linux, macOS, Windows

Soft Skills:

  • Exceptional presentation and public speaking skills
  • Pragmatic, problem solver and decision maker
  • Collaborative and team player
  • Commitment and loyalty
  • Constant learner
  • Loves to teach and very patient at explaining concepts

WORK EXPERIENCE

Symetris

Montréal, Quebec, Canada

Drupal Backend Developer: Full-Time Assignment at a Global Enterprise Client (confidential)

Permanent Full-time. October 2022 to Present.

  • Develop and maintain multiple Drupal intranets for the International HR Division.
  • Code services and plugins to integrate with the Division's ecosystem APIs.
  • Implement various custom features, including:
    • Custom entities (Entity API)
    • Complex multi-step forms (Form API)
    • Custom events and route subscribers/resolvers (Routing API and HTTP Kernel API)
  • Write functional tests using Drupal Test Traits.
  • Build skills and sub-agents for the other developers.
  • Perform security updates and major version upgrades.

Skills: Drupal Development, Drupal Automated Testing.

AI Adoption & Tooling Lead

Permanent, part-time. March 2025 – present.

Cross-functional mandate: selection, rollout, governance, and tooling of AI assistance across the full development lifecycle, for a 17-developer Drupal production team.

  • Governance & security
    • Lead the comparative evaluation and selection of the agency's AI coding assistant platform.
    • Author the company's AI security policy: six-layer defense-in-depth secrets management, an adapter pattern isolating secrets from application code, PreToolUse hooks as the deterministic enforcement point, a risk matrix, and an operations playbook (onboarding, rotation, incident response, quarterly audits). 
    • Deploy and administer the Claude Code Team account (18 seats): provisioning, quotas, permission scoping, and per-developer consumption observability via OpenTelemetry.
  • Internal platform
    • Design and build the company's internal plugin marketplace: distribution of skills and sub-agents, semantic versioning, and governance through code review (PR, version bump, plugin update).
    • Build an automated Drupal code review tool: OWASP Top 10 catalog with Drupal-specific patterns, tiered-severity performance patterns, statically detectable WCAG 2.1 AA criteria, and CSS logical properties for RTL support.
    • Codify the company's Drupal coding standards and best practices into executable rules, versioned by Drupal major release, with a per-project override layer.
    • Extend tooling upstream into analysis: draft user stories in INVEST + Gherkin format from the analysis document, with per-acceptance-criterion criticality classification and systematic detection of missing AC (uncovered roles, error paths, edge cases); the resulting criteria feed the agency's automated testing strategy.
  • Enablement
    • Design and deliver weekly AI training workshops, including: onboarding, custom commands, sub-agents, skills, hooks, context window management, and the internal marketplace.
    • Track individual adoption and unblock developers one-on-one.

Skills: AI governance and security, internal developer platform, standards codification, technical training.

People Success Manager

Permanent Part-time. January 2021 to Present.

  • Manage the career development and well-being of Symetris developers by aligning their personal goals with company objectives.
  • Conduct quarterly evaluations, set individual goals, and track progress.
  • Meet with each developer bi-weekly to discuss progress and address concerns.
  • Facilitate a weekly workshop on the latest trends in Drupal, PHP, and AI-related technologies.
  • Lead a monthly workshop focused on contributing to Drupal code.
  • Oversee a three-month onboarding program for new developers.
  • Implement a Learning Management System (LMS) for knowledge management and record videos on various Drupal development topics.

Skills: People Management, Knowledge Management.

Drupal Lead Developer: centura.ca Project

Permanent Full-time. October 2021 to September 2022.

  • Collaborate with the project lead to address client needs while adhering to project specifications; present weekly progress updates to the client.
  • Manage a team of four Drupal developers and QA engineers across various sprints.
  • Oversee code branching (Bitbucket), Acquia infrastructure, and deployment processes.
  • Develop a system for daily updates of products and variations in Drupal Commerce (pricing and regional availability) from Epicor Prophet 21 (ERP).
  • Optimize the application using Cache API and Memcached.
  • Launch the site and address post-launch requirements.

Skills: Agile Project Management, Acquia.

Drupal Backend Developer: centura.ca Project

Permanent Full-time. March 2021 to October 2021.

  • Migrate over 300,000 records from ProcessWire CMS to Drupal Commerce using the Migration API.
  • Implement the search system and facets using Search API and Apache Solr.
  • Set up the Memcached caching system.

Skills: Drupal Development, Drupal Performance.

Drupal Backend Developer

Permanent Full-time. November 2019 to March 2021.

Skills: Drupal Development, Drupal Performance.

Smartica

Cochabamba, Bolivia.

Drupal Backend Developer / Acquia Site Studio

Full-time. September 2018 to October 2019. 

  • Work remotely for several US and Canadian companies such as Diamond Resorts, Apollo Group, and Symetris.
  • Comfortable working as part of a team.
  • Train Drupal teams in caching / performance and custom module development.

Drupal Developer / Drupal Architect / Drupal Trainer

March 2016 to September 2018. 

  • Work closely with clients to develop digital strategies; design and implement Drupal solutions to achieve their goals.
  • Architect Drupal solutions and lead teams of designers, themers, and developers to deliver on time and under budget.
  • Develop custom Drupal modules to meet client needs.
  • Design and configure complex search solutions using Search API and Apache Solr.
  • Provide Drupal training for end users and IT teams.
  • Projects:
    • SamsungStore Bolivia: online store with several Bolivian and international payment gateways and integration with the four major banks in Bolivia for online credit applications. Drupal Commerce + Search API with Apache Solr. Result: 170% of the sales goals achieved after only 6 months.
    • Encuéntralo Marketplace and Business Directory: the biggest marketplace in the country, business directory of more than 10,000 businesses. Drupal Commerce, Search API with Apache Solr, Views backend with Solr, Memcache and Varnish; custom payment gateways with local banks. Result: launched September 2018, 10,000+ businesses registered in three months.
    • Los Tiempos Newspaper: second largest newspaper of Bolivia, 3M+ unique visitors and 16M page views per month. Drupal, Search API with Apache Solr, Views backend with Solr, Memcache, performance focus. Result: recovered second place with +700% digital revenue, +160% unique visitors, +170% page views within a year.

EL DEBER Media Group

Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

Drupal Architect / Digital Business Manager

August 2013 to February 2016.

  • In charge of defining a new digital strategy for the first media group of the country.
  • Plan, design, develop, and implement several Drupal 7 websites with internal and external Drupal teams: eldeber.com.bo, diez.bo, sociales.com.bo, clasificados.eldeber.com.bo, laguia.bo, contrata2.bo, atodomotor.bo.
  • Solutions based on Drupal Commerce, Search API with Apache Solr, Views backend with Solr, Memcache and Varnish; custom modules integrating in-house CRM and ERP.
  • Result: the El Deber Group dominates the national digital market with segmented content and e-commerce platforms generating more than 18% of its corporate revenue.

Smartica

Cochabamba, Bolivia.

PHP and Drupal Full Stack Developer

January 2008 to July 2013. 

  • Trained internal and external developers in Drupal.
  • Developed various websites in Drupal 6 and Drupal 7.
  • Founded the Drupal Bolivia local community.
  • Created and maintained the first version of lostiempos.com in full PHP-MySQL.

COMTECO

Cochabamba, Bolivia.

PHP Developer and Product Manager

June 2003 to January 2008.

  • In charge of web development for all company websites: comteco.com.bo, bandaancha.com.bo, noticiasbolivianas.com, boliviatel.com, supernet.com.bo, interac.tv.bo.
  • In charge of strategic and operational marketing for the broadband products.
  • Achievements: featured, developed, and deployed the first Bolivian WebTV and Video On Demand service; ranked the company news website 4th in Bolivia (17,000+ voluntary subscribers); led the Banda Ancha COMTECO broadband service to regional market leadership (72% market share) via a brand-differentiation strategy; grew customers from 1,080 to 6,000 in 16 months; increased monthly income by 380% in 16 months.

AES Communications

Cochabamba, Bolivia.

PHP Developer

February 2002 to June 2003.

  • In charge of developing competitive advantages based on content creation and web services with a national focus.
  • Achievements: created a new concept for delivering news in Bolivia at http://www.noticiasbolivianas.com; the site was so successful that COMTECO purchased it after only four months.

EDUCATION

  • Facultés universitaires 'Saint-Louis', Bruxelles (Belgium)
  • Candidature en Sciences Économiques, 1986 to 1988

CERTIFICATIONS

  • Acquia Certified Site Studio Site Builder
  • International Webmaster Association: CWP Web Developer Certificate

LANGUAGE SKILLS

  • French: native
  • Spanish: near-native
  • English: professional