Raphaël Bessin
Building software that's well-crafted
and genuinely useful.
CS @ Northeastern Honors · Class of 2029
Boston, MA · US / French Citizen · Tokyo · London · New York
I care about building software that's both well-crafted and genuinely useful — from interactive tools and editors to web applications used by real teams.
I'm a dual US-French citizen, raised between Tokyo, London, New York and the French education system, which gave me a deep appreciation for both rigorous thinking and creative problem-solving. Outside of code, I spend my time traveling, hiking, training for a marathon, playing chess, and exploring through a camera lens.
I recently finished building Signal Relay, an interactive digital logic circuit simulator in Godot, and took on two new roles as a Software Lead for Northeastern Electric Racing and an E-Board Member for the Honors Alumni Mentoring Network at Northeastern.
Education
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
John Martinson Honors College · Khoury College of Computer Sciences
- ▸GPA: 4.00 / 4.00 · Dean's List: Fall 2025, Spring 2026
- ▸Relevant Coursework: Object-Oriented Design, Algorithms & Data Structures, Discrete Structures
High School Diploma & International French Baccalaureate
- ▸Ranked 1st in grade · Mention Très Bien (Highest Honors)
- ▸High Honors in Mathematics & Physics
Skills
Languages
Frameworks & Libraries
Databases
Tools & Platforms
Spoken Languages
Projects
Won Social Impact & Sustainability at HackBeanpot — assembled a team from scratch, built the initial MVP, and led the full feature set in 24 hours. A CO₂ estimation engine combining network usage (Performance API) and regional grid carbon intensity (ElectricityMaps API) with goal tracking. Published to the Chrome Web Store.
Digital logic circuit simulator in Godot featuring a chip abstraction system with automatic pin detection. Fixed multi-minute freezes via a two-state lazy instantiation architecture — visual-only by default, full circuit instantiated on simulate, cutting load times to seconds.
GPU-accelerated implementation of Alan Turing's Gray-Scott model — the mathematics behind leopard spots and coral branching — using WebGPU compute shaders (WGSL). Dual ping-pong storage textures, full compute pipeline, and an interactive parameter explorer.
Experience
Software Engineering Intern
- ▸Built a Spring Boot proxy and API documentation platform covering 9+ domains (auth, deals, royalties, financials, SFTP) with dual JSON/XML format switching and bearer token auth flows integrated directly in Swagger UI
- ▸Built Claude Code skills for endpoint calling, bulk testing, and natural language DB querying — surfaced SQL injection, silent errors, and type truncations across upstream services, authoring 10+ remediation proposals
- ▸Implemented 10 new APIs with authentication, pagination, sorting, and custom error handling
Software Lead
- ▸Architected a canonical unit conversion system with global metric/imperial defaults and per-field overrides across 20+ conversions; reduced steering oscillation 80% via a low-pass filter on Stanley controller output in NERSim
- ▸Implemented global car filter on FinishLine (270+ users, 100,000+ LOC), replacing duplicated logic with a single reusable filter component via middleware-backed filtering across 20+ endpoints, after the feature had stalled
- ▸Proposed and built FinishLine's first developer documentation system — a statically generated Docusaurus site auto-generating Claude AI skills from docs to avoid maintaining two separate sources of truth for 30+ developers
Web Developer
- ▸Contributed full-stack features to a Next.js / TypeScript / Express / MongoDB magazine platform replacement for a team of 10 developers
- ▸Refactored JWT authentication system and resolved authorization middleware errors across the platform
- ▸Built Jest tests to ensure platform reliability ahead of production launch
Web Co-Lead & Outreach Coordinator
- ▸Qualified for and competed at World Championships twice, placing top 16 out of 8,000+ teams globally
- ▸Built The Ocean Scout, a scouting platform integrating The Orange Alliance API with user comments, admin system, and group organization
- ▸Organized and refereed an FLL competition impacting 50+ young students
- ▸Led outreach programs with teams across 5 countries including Tunisia, Burkina Faso, Brazil, Kazakhstan, and India
- ▸Helped raise over $7,000 through fundraising initiatives
Technology Intern
- ▸Attended live deal meetings with portfolio candidates, gaining direct exposure to investment evaluation at a top NYC venture capital firm
- ▸Conducted a gene editing market analysis to identify emerging investment opportunities in the biotechnology sector
Technology Intern
- ▸Shadowed technology infrastructure teams working on enterprise data systems at Citi's headquarters
- ▸Observed data pipeline architecture and data quality processes across the organization