Valentin Bonnet

San Francisco, CA  ·  github.com/vbonnet  ·  linkedin.com/in/valentinbonnet

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Tech Lead with 12+ years building developer infrastructure at Google and Verily. Current focus is AI agent infrastructure: meta-harnesses, MCP tooling, context architecture, and testing frameworks that give non-deterministic LLM output measurable correctness guarantees. Active open source author in the AI agent engineering space.

Open Source

dear-agent · github.com/vbonnet/dear-agent

A pluggable meta-harness for autonomous AI coding agents, formed by merging two earlier projects (a harness layer and a memory/knowledge layer) into a single product.

  • Harness-agnostic adapter interface unifying Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Codex CLI, and OpenCode behind one session lifecycle. Copy-on-write workspace isolation (OverlayFS on Linux, APFS on macOS), state-aware async message routing, and advisory file reservations for safe parallel agent workflows.
  • DEAR protocol for research-loss prevention: enforces commit / push / human-readable branch / completion-notification gates before a session can be archived, eliminating the "stranded work on UUID branches" failure mode that plagues long-running agent sessions.
  • Persistent cue-based memory so agents retain context across conversations and sessions, with a metacontext Go service backing 3-tier (filter → rank → load) retrieval at <1ms p50.
  • Phased SDLC workflow engine (Wayfinder) with LLM-as-judge validation gates and a plugin architecture for MCP connectors and tool integrations. Go, Apache 2.0.

Technical writing

I write about AI agent engineering, developer tooling, and what breaks when agents try to be software engineers.

Read the series →

Skills

Go, Python, Java, C++, SQL. LLM integration, RAG pipelines, MCP (Model Context Protocol), multi-agent orchestration, non-deterministic testing, context window management, agent safety and correctness. Bazel, distributed systems, CI/CD, developer platform engineering. gRPC, Protobuf, GCP, SQLite. IAM, identity providers, SCIM.

Work Experience

Senior Software Engineer / Area Tech Lead, Verily

Developer Platform  ·  2022 – Present

Verily is a precision health company under Alphabet (~1,000 engineers). Developer Platform owns the tooling, SDKs, and shared services the full engineering org builds on.

  • Agentic SDLC: Practical AI coding experiments shaped the definition of Verily's Agentic SDLC workstream, a company-level initiative launching in 2026 to adapt the software development lifecycle for AI agents.
  • Grouper / IAM: Led technical strategy and architecture for Verily's company-wide IAM replacement serving 1,200+ employees, producing a 127-page TDD that aligned 7 organizations with conflicting requirements and gave the implementation team the foundation to build a working prototype; managed the Opal vendor relationship as Verily's primary technical contact.
  • ViDA platform: Architected MCP server boundaries, permission model, and evaluation harness for ViDA, an AI-powered developer assistant providing agents secure, scoped access to internal systems.
  • Agent evaluation harnesses: Shipped an evaluation framework for non-deterministic LLM output. Product teams now gate agentic features on measurable correctness thresholds before release, improving pre-production regression coverage.
  • Cross-team technical leadership: Sets cross-team technical direction, reviews architecture proposals, and aligns with product and infra leads on roadmap priorities. Created the Feature Development Lifecycle framework, adopted by the Dev Platform team.

Tech Lead, Google · Core Infrastructure (Boq)

Nov 2021 – Aug 2024

Boq is Google's internal build and deployment platform, used by tens of thousands of engineers.

  • Set technical strategy for the Boq Conformance & Isolation team.
  • Designed, built, and maintained Bazel Rules powering 100K+ build targets.
  • Developed multi-quarter roadmaps to increase developer productivity and lower CI/CD costs across Google by catching errors earlier in the development loop.
  • On-call for high-QPS services critical to Google builds and service deployments.

Tech Lead, Google · YouTube Gaming

May 2018 – Nov 2021

  • Led migration of YouTube Gaming backends from the YouTube Python monolith into C++ microservices.
  • Improved release velocity from weekly to daily.
  • Worked with ML, Search & Discovery, and frontend teams to drive product alignment.

Software Engineer, Google · YouTube Paid Digital Goods

Jan 2016 – May 2018

  • Designed and launched backends for YouTube Live monetization features (Super Chat, Channel Memberships), serving sub-second latency to millions of concurrent global requests.
  • Coordinated with global commerce, legal, and compliance teams to meet regulatory standards.

Software Engineer, Google · YouTube Live

Dec 2014 – Jan 2016

  • Developed PlayStation and third-party API integrations for Live Chat.

Junior Software Engineer, Google+

Jan 2013 – Dec 2014

  • Built a shared code registry framework adopted by all Google iOS apps.
  • Developed OAuth and SSO flows for Google+ and Hangouts mobile apps.

Education

McGill University · Montréal, QC
B.Sc. in Computer Science  ·  2009 – 2013