Olivier Chouinard-Banville
I’m the technology coordinator at Genovalia, Université Laval, where I design, deploy and operate the infrastructure behind a research programme in animal genomics: a data catalogue, standardised schemas, a metadata API and a data explorer used by scientists and their partners.
I work across the full stack of a production research platform: OpenShift and Kubernetes, CI/CD, identity and access management, object storage, and the Python services that run on top of them. Before that, at a political science research chair, I applied machine learning to large text corpora and built automated content-analysis tools and an interactive survey platform.
Outside work, I run a homelab of several machines and write the software on it: a gateway in front of a local LLM, a personal knowledge graph with search by meaning, and MCP servers (the protocol AI assistants use to call outside tools) so AI assistants can use them. They’re the same questions I deal with at work, at home size: which operations an agent may run, what it may see, what gets logged, and which irreversible actions stay with a person.
Experience
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Technology Coordinator and Metadata Specialist
- Build and operate the production platform of a research programme in animal genomics on the university’s OpenShift cluster: environments, containers and resources, PostgreSQL, S3 storage on Ceph, monitoring, upgrades and incident response.
- Design and develop the data services themselves, a metadata API and a data explorer in Python, then ship them with GitHub Actions and versioned Kustomize manifests across development, test and production.
- Designed Genovalia’s metadata model on DCAT in JSON-LD, with controlled vocabularies and ontology mappings, so datasets stay findable and reusable beyond the project that produced them.
- Built curation and validation pipelines for public genotyping datasets (Dryad, Zenodo, Borealis): DCAT descriptions, OCA schemas, quality reports and ingestion into the catalogue.
- Own identity and access: Keycloak and OpenID Connect, federated research identity and ORCID, roles for the internal team and external partners.
- Coordinate the developers and work daily with scientists who aren’t software engineers, turning research questions into technical requirements.
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Business Analyst, Data Management
Centre de recherche en données massives (CRDM), Université Laval
- Supported research projects in health, environment, social sciences and animal sciences, from defining requirements to putting tools into service.
- Developed technology solutions for research teams and adapted research methods to the university’s infrastructure.
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IT Analyst, Full-stack Developer
Université Laval
- Custom research tooling for health and social science projects.
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Consultant and Associate Researcher
CLESSN, Université Laval (self-employed)
- Machine learning applied to political and media text corpora, evaluated against human-coded samples.
- Automated content-analysis tooling and an interactive survey and salience-analysis platform.
- Django backends for research projects, including Projet Quorum; technical support and training for graduate students.
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Change Management Consultant
Edgenda
- Office 365 rollout at the Quebec National Assembly: deployment phases, device and workstation migration.
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Test Coordinator, then Environment Configuration Lead
Fujitsu Americas (contracts at the CSPQ)
- SAGIR upgrade to Oracle EBS R12: maintained multiple Oracle environments, automated regression testing, liaison with client ministries.
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Technical Documentation Designer
ACPE inc.
- Documentation standards, training material, English-to-French translation.
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Video Game Developer
Frima Studio
- Web game development and mentoring of interns.
Education
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B.A., Political Science
Université Laval
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AEC, Video Game Programming and Integration
Collège Bart
Skills
- Programming and web
- LLM systems
- Machine learning
- Security and access
- Infrastructure
- Data systems
- Observability
Continuing education
- Architecting on AWS · AFI Expertise
- Scrum Master · AFI Expertise
- Green Belt in continuous improvement · AFI Expertise
Languages
French (native) · English (fluent)
Interests
Historical reenactment with the Société d’histoire des Filles du Roy, including a Régiment de Carignan-Salières kit I partly make myself. Leatherworking, 3D printing and small electronics. Tabletop role-playing games, and game development.