I'm Xavier Grand, and I've spent the last decade building products that scale—not just in theory, but in the hands of real engineers and real customers.

My journey began at Algolia when we were just five people around a table. I joined as a founding engineer and stayed through the ride to 750+ people, shipping our core search technology from zero to global scale. Along the way, I evolved from engineer to engineering manager leading search, to principal engineer, and now to CTO. But no matter the title, my focus has remained the same: making hard technology reliable, predictable, and genuinely usable.

I believe in taking deep technology and productizing it—not as tech demos that wow at conferences, but as tools that a normal engineer can integrate in hours, not weeks. I thrive close to the ground: close to users, close to reliability, close to shipping. My strength lies in scaling products and infrastructure while the company hyper-scales around them, ensuring that growth doesn't come at the cost of quality or user experience.

Beyond Algolia, I'm passionate about sharing what I've learned. I train at Pollen, where I help equip people with the skills they need to tackle the challenges of today's economy.