About me

I’m Kitty. I’m a Berlin-based non-binary trans frontend engineer with over a decade of experience, currently focused on accessibility, diversity and inclusion. In recent years, I have led engineering teams at both Gorillas and N26 for several years, hired many engineers, and helped scale up both companies. As of late 2022, I am the VP of Engineering at Cofenster.

Professional experience

I originally come from the French Alps where I worked for a few years before having the opportunity to move to Berlin in 2015 to join Edenspiekermann. There, I learnt about building digital products in an agile way and worked on a variety of projects, such as Redbull advertising and German and Swiss digital newspapers.

At the end of the 2016, I joined N26 as a web tech lead to hire a team and rebuild the N26 web platform from scratch. During my time there, I focused on accessibility, security, documentation and team culture.

After 4 years at N26, I decided it was time for a change and joined quick-delivery startup Gorillas as one of the very first engineers to build the Product & Engineering department. I spent 18 months growing the organization, establishing practices and culture and leading web engineering. I was unfortunately part of the wave of layoffs striking the company in summer 2022.

This is how I got to join Cofenster as a VP of Engineering at the end of of 2022, making my move into the B2B world, changing scale and pace in the process.

For a more detailed version of my professional background, feel free to read my resume or LinkedIn.

Open-source contributions

I have done my fair share of open-source work and have initiated some projects of my own you might know: Browserhacks, SassDoc, Sass Guidelines, Simplified JavaScript Jargon, a11y-dialog and a11y-toggle.

You can browse more of my projects.

Awards & achievements

Early 2015, I authored a French book on CSS titled CSS 3 Pratique du Design Web (CSS 3 for Web Design). A year later, I co-authored a book about Sass titled Jump Start Sass with Miriam Suzanne.

I used to be a Google Developer Expert in frontend development and as of 2022, I am an official Sanity community ambassador.

In 2015, I was one of the 5 nominees for the Net Awards under the Developer of the Year category. And recently in 2023, I was nominated for a Xena Awards in the Open Source category.

Miscellaneous

For a more personal glance at my last ten years, be sure to read A decade in review, and if you have any question, feel free to ask me anything on me Ask Me Anything repository.