D-TECK assists organizations in maximizing the performance potential of their teams and individuals. They do this by making the science of psychometric assessment universally accessible and effective through their software platform. D-TECK leads the science behind this solution with a team of organizational psychologists that combine assessments and leading HR tools with big data and algorithms to help business leaders make informed, data-driven HR decisions
In today’s blog, we feature a chat with Felix Roberge, CTO of D-TECK and their journey with Solo.io and Google Cloud. Félix describes himself as a self proclaimed programmer, architect, technology enthusiast, and conference speaker who enjoys technology disruption and transformation and is involved in open source meetup groups in the Montreal area to help build the local community.
You can learn more about D-TECK, Felix and Solo.io’s Gloo Gateway at an upcoming webinar on July 16th at 10:00 am Pacific — Register Here
What Brought You to D-TECK:
In today’s world, a company’s capacity to meaningfully use data, machine learning and artificial intelligence will set them apart from their competitors to their customers. This is why I decided to join D-TECK almost a year ago — so we could help companies recruit better and faster by leveraging our data and algorithms into a software platform. My approach to technology is that I take pride in building scalable and reliable software solutions that people will use and love while simplifying the operations and streamlining costs.
Challenge
Today, companies know they have to depend on using HR tech to make data-based decisions regarding workforce management. In late 2018, the D-TECK team wanted to address that challenge by demonstrating “a day in the life” of a typical client using the assessment platform in a Proof of Concept (POC). We wanted to design a solution to allow our client go through the following workflow:
- Candidate selects an available time slot to take the assessment
- Candidate pays for and takes the assessment
- Upon completion, the client has the option to generate the candidate report by request
We started off our POC with Google Cloud Function and Google App Engine as the core cloud services. Once we proved that the assessment platform was possible, we transitioned to putting together a production solution.
Selecting the Solution Components
As we moved to building the production solution, we realized that we needed to add an API Gateway to the environment. We gave ourselves one week to research and evaluate various technologies in the market to see which we wanted to use in our solution.
Here is the list of priorities we had for evaluating API Gateways
Must Have (in order of importance)
- Cloud vendor agnostic
- Support for serverless
- Allows for growth and scale
- Free offering to start
- Good community support and enterprise support option
- Ease of implementation
Nice to Have
- Support for Istio
- Microservices first
- Runs in Kubernetes
During this process we researched Ambassador, Google and Solo.io’s API Gateway solutions in this process. In our experience with the Solo.io Gloo Gateway, we found the team so responsive, passionate and reliable in helping with our evaluation process. The feature set met our needs, the ease of implementation and the collaboration with the Solo.io team made it easy to select Gloo Gateway for D-TECK.
The D-TECK Platform
Since the initial POC, we have launched and alpha version of the platform to production in early May 2019. We have evolved some of the components that make up the platform during that time and our platform’s stack includes Node, Typescript, Python, ReactJS and Kotlin. Since going live in production, our roadmap including adding more security capabilities and scaling the solution.
POC Environment
- Google App Engine
- Google Cloud Function
- Google Cloud SQL
Production Environment
- Google Cloud Engine
- Google Cloud SQL
- Solo.io Gloo Gateway
Solo.io Gloo Gateway
Solo.io connects the worlds applications with APIs and service mesh across any infrastructure to help simplify the journey to a cloud native future with the flexibility and control to digitally transform at any pace. The Solo.io Gloo Gateway is a next generation API Gateway that connects legacy monoliths to new microservices and serverless functions to create new hybrid applications. Gloo Gateway is available in both Open Source and Enterprise editions.
Learn More about Solo.io and D-TECK
- Visit the D-TECK website
- Learn more about Gloo Gateway and download the trial
- Join the Solo Community
- Register for the Webinar
