Client project · Marketplace · Symfony

Delcampe Marketplace Platform

Contribution to the maintenance, evolution and technical quality of an international marketplace platform dedicated to collectors.

Period: April 2018 – March 2019
Role: Backend Developer integrated into the main development team
Organization: Delcampe, mission through Blubird
Main stack: PHP 7, Symfony 3.1, MariaDB, REST APIs, SOAP, JavaScript, GitLab CI/CD, Docker

Associated experience

Blubird

Backend PHP Developer / Consultant · 2018 — 2019

View related experience

Project context

Delcampe is an online marketplace dedicated to collectibles such as stamps, postcards, coins and other collector items.

The platform connects sellers and buyers worldwide and manages listings, transactions, messaging and user interactions.

In addition to the web marketplace, Delcampe also provides a desktop application used by professional sellers.

This application connects to the platform through a mix of REST and SOAP APIs to synchronize marketplace data.

I joined the development team as a consultant through Blubird and contributed to the maintenance and evolution of the main marketplace platform.

Project objectives

Maintain and improve the core marketplace platform
Fix bugs and ensure system stability
Improve existing features and pages
Contribute to new feature development
Maintain high code quality within a large production codebase

System architecture

The platform was built as a modular monolithic application based on the Symfony framework.

The system included several interconnected components: the web marketplace platform, APIs used by internal services and the desktop client, an internationalized user interface and internal services supporting marketplace operations.

My role

I worked as a backend developer integrated into the main development team.

Over the course of the mission, I worked on different parts of the system depending on priorities.

Fixing bugs affecting the marketplace platform
Implementing improvements to existing pages and components
Participating in feature development
Collaborating with frontend developers when features required both backend and frontend work
Contributing to code reviews and technical discussions

Team structure

The software department was organized into two closely collaborating teams.

This structure helped maintain strong alignment between product decisions and technical implementation.

Product team

Product lead
Senior product expert
Innovation / product strategy role
Two frontend developers

Development team

Lead developer
Technical lead
Two internal developers
Three Blubird consultants, including myself
Three freelance developers

Development practices

The team followed an Agile workflow inspired by Scrum practices.

The development process also included dedicated branches for each bug fix or feature, systematic code reviews before merging and controlled release branches for production deployments.

This workflow helped ensure the stability and maintainability of the production platform.

Sprint planning cycles of two to three weeks
Daily stand-up meetings
Poker planning for task estimation
Sprint retrospectives
Technical design discussions for complex features
Feature branches for each bug fix or feature
Systematic code reviews before merging
Controlled release branches for production deployments

Technologies used

Backend

PHP 7 with object-oriented programming and SOLID principles
Symfony 3.1
MariaDB

APIs

REST APIs
SOAP services used by the desktop application

Frontend tooling

JavaScript
Gulp
NPM
Bower

Testing

PHPUnit for backend unit tests
Jasmine for JavaScript testing
CasperJS for browser-based automated tests

Monitoring

Sentry for application error monitoring

Version control & CI/CD

Git hosted on internal GitLab
Dedicated branches per bug or feature
Mandatory code reviews
GitLab CI/CD pipelines
Automated tests executed before releases

Containerization

Docker used within the CI/CD environment

Project management & documentation

Jira for ticket management
Confluence for documentation and knowledge sharing

Infrastructure

Hosting and infrastructure management handled internally by the company

Technical challenges

Working on a mature marketplace platform

The project involved contributing to a large and long-lived production system serving an international community of users.

Understanding the architecture and navigating the existing codebase required collaboration with experienced team members.

High code quality standards

The development team maintained strong expectations regarding code structure, testing, development workflows and review processes.

Multi-language platform

The marketplace supported multiple languages and international users, increasing application complexity.

Connected ecosystem

The web platform was connected to APIs and to a desktop application used by professional sellers, requiring particular attention to compatibility and stability of data exchanges.

Outcomes / impact

My work contributed to maintaining and improving the stability and quality of the Delcampe marketplace platform.

Through bug fixing, incremental improvements and feature development, the team continued evolving the platform while maintaining reliability for its large user base.

Personal learnings

This mission was one of the most formative experiences in my early career.

It allowed me to experience a well-structured development environment, discover the practical impact of Agile and Scrum-inspired workflows, work within a large Symfony production application, understand the importance of automated testing in long-term projects and experience the positive impact of a healthy and collaborative development team.