Our team

Portrait of Pascal, Team Lead and R&D Engineer at Tixeo

A keen sportsman with a love of adventure, Pascal has been Team Lead and R&D Engineer at Tixeo for four years. With his team, he works on optimising and developing our secure video collaboration solution.

No stranger to a challenge!

On 16 March 2020, Pascal logged on to the Tixeo virtual open-plan office for the first time. The welcome lunch planned for that day, near the head office in Montpellier, was cancelled because of the health crisis that was just beginning. No matter: the team members were there virtually to welcome him. “I arrived at a turbulent time. We had a huge number of requests (Editor’s note: following the widespread shift to remote working and the urgent need for video conferencing). It was a great technical challenge, in extraordinary conditions”.

It was this taste for challenges that first led Pascal to join the secure video conferencing software company. After more than 15 years in large organisations, where he worked first as a development engineer and then as a Java expert, he wanted to join a company on a human scale, with real ambitions for growth. “Meeting Sébastien and Renaud (Editor’s note: the founders of Tixeo) made me want to discover the cybersecurity sector”.

A few months after he joined, in the middle of July, the Saint-Quentin native met his colleagues in person at a seminar in La Grande-Motte. Some of them had in fact already crossed his path professionally.

From satellite TV to the number one online bridge game

In 2002, after studying in Rennes at IFSIC (now ESIR) and working at Thales on satellite TV, Pascal moved to the north of France, near Lille, to start a family. He changed sector and moved into the railway industry as a C++ software development engineer, before returning to his home town in 2014.

After several years in retail and software publishing, Pascal joined GoToGames to develop the online bridge game FunBridge. “When I arrived, it was a game you had to install on your computer. The aim was to turn it into an online game.” In 2023, FunBridge had more than 360,000 connected players.

It was there that Pascal first tried hybrid remote working, “but without the right collaborative tools, working as a team remotely quickly becomes complicated”. Commuting is time-consuming and tiring. At Tixeo, he discovered enhanced remote working and a cross-functional organisation: “I take part in lots of projects with different teams, and it’s very rewarding”.

Developing software and sporting talent

Having joined Tixeo as an R&D engineer working on the back office, Pascal took charge of meeting and user management and now supports a dedicated team. “What I love about my job is finding solutions, and managing a team day to day”. Pascal is also in contact with customers, which allows him to identify their needs precisely and also “to see in concrete terms what our work is for!”.

And if he enjoys working 100% remotely, it’s also because it lets him live his passion 200%. A volunteer secretary at his running club, he has also been able to take on the role of coach for young people aged 10 to 14.

The time saved by no longer commuting, and the freedom to organise his days as he wishes, have freed up energy for this activity, and also for hiking, walking and cycling out in nature.

/ A typical day at Tixeo

“In the morning, I get up fairly early and usually go for a run. Then I log on to Tixeo at around 8 am and work on my own for an hour. After that, the teams join me and we move straight on to the Dailies, our team meetings. I then schedule my tasks for the day. At lunchtime, if I haven’t done it in the morning, I go for a run! In the afternoon, for specific topics, I sometimes work while on a video conference with my team, as if we were in the same room. In the evening, I log off and head to training.”

/ If he had to sum up what makes his role special…

“Our daily challenge is to find smart solutions that fit the requirements of cybersecurity and technological sovereignty, in order to meet the needs of our most strategic customers. My technical choices are constrained by a number of legitimate criteria, to strengthen security at every level. At the same time, I am given a great deal of trust, which lets me experiment with a lot of things.”