Meet the Mission Central Team
At Mission, we practice what we preach. We believe that strong talent is found around the world and have built our business by leveraging these independent workers globally. However, as we have grown, we have built out our Central team with the key full-time players needed to help us scale. Throughout this series, you’ll be meeting 3 members of our Central team at a time, understanding a bit more about their backgrounds and the roles that they are playing in shaping the future of Mission as we grow into a global network of senior talent.
Almost exactly one year ago, Nicholas joined Mission as our Head of Data Engineering. His initial mission was to define a data strategy, implement the infrastructure, and put in place all of the necessary tooling for these initiatives. The goal is to then use all the available data to power some pretty awesome tools and features that will help both Mission members and our customers.
As a Software Engineer with over 15 years of experience, Nicholas began his career doing Web development but quickly transitioned to data, later further specializing in machine and reinforcement learning. His experiences lie largely in helping businesses develop their data strategies and then building feature-enabling services that leverage said data. Not only does Nicholas have extensive experience helping businesses lead their data strategies, he also spent 4 years working on his own research projects. During that period he amassed a sizeable following on Twitch working live on AI and machine learning projects while educating viewers on those topics. This led to the release of Serpent.AI, a popular Python open source framework to create reinforcement learning agents to allow anyone to create AI experiments in video games they own. The visibility on Twitch also opened the door for a contract for a non-profit partner of NASA to do crater detection on telescope imagery to help date space bodies.
When discussing what he is most excited for at Mission this year, Nicholas immediately mentioned the member experience. Thanks to some of the capabilities he and his team are working on and enabling, the member experience is going to get seriously levelled up this year! While we can’t reveal the new features just yet, members can expect to have a lot more opportunities to learn, to network, to better understand how they’re performing, and to take their careers to the next level.
Gabriel’s passion for computers and software engineering began when he was very young. His dad was an accountant and because of this, they were one of the first families in their farming community to have a computer. All of Gabriel’s friends used to come over and play computer games. As he got older his passion really began to develop and he was spending more and more time online, playing video games, chatting on forums and building his overall knowledge. He was about to pursue a technical degree locally but his uncle encouraged him to get a degree in Computer Engineering at the University of Sherbrooke. This is when Gabriel first learned English and he made the decision to really throw himself into learning the language as quickly as possible. Most of the internships he accepted were in English and he even did an exchange in Tampa Bay, Florida.
While in University, Gabriel started to get a feel for project management and knew that this was going to be something he was very good at. Throughout his career Gabriel has developed this skill and even became an Agile Coach.
He joined Mission first as a member of our network because he wanted to work with an engineering driven company. 3 years later he has gone from working on Missions to being an integral part of our Central team as our Director of Practice. His main KPI is to optimize the efficiency and potential of our teams. In this role he is responsible for the member journey — from vetting members, to their onboarding, and career development.
As he looks to the future he is most excited about the growth of the network and the impact we will be able to have on businesses around the world because of that. Mission is going to be known internationally as the place to be for a software engineer.
Stephane joined Mission in August of 2021 as the Director of Partnerships. In this role his main focus is to grow and build relationships with partners to get more talent to join the network.
With over 20 years of experience working in the tech industry, Stephane has spent most of his career in partnership development. While at Expedia, he built the European, Middle East, and African networks of partnerships in over 25 countries. He has extensive experience joining early stage businesses and building out their international networks, a perfect fit for Mission!
Stephane joined Mission because he loves working in global markets, believes strongly in the opportunity, and thrives when a business is in the building and scaling stage. He also enjoys working with entrepreneurs and supporting them in building their businesses.
His big vision for his department within Mission is to have partners around the world who are building their businesses through Mission and benefiting from all the available tools that the platform provides. Stephane believes that providing the opportunity for potential members to work on Missions around the world without leaving their country, and to provide businesses access to global talent is unparalleled. Imagine being based in Ghana and getting to work for a cool startup in San Francisco, the opportunities are huge!
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Stay tuned for the next article in this series where we’ll introduce the members of our Central team who are focused on community building. Interested in learning more about Mission or want to experience what we’re building first hand? Apply to join our network.
