Jean Ducrot

I keep large engineering organizations moving without breaking the rules they can't afford to break.

Portrait of Jean Ducrot, smiling, facing the camera

Twenty-five years in software, twenty of them shipping code. I run the operating model between Product, Design, and Engineering for regulated, high-stakes platforms, and I'm now pointing that experience at AI-native products.

See the work Get in touch
Most recently
Division technical operations lead, Elsevier (40+ product teams)
Based in
Saratoga Springs, NY — remote-first
Speaking
CSUN 2025: the ION Framework for AI chat interfaces

Selected work

  • A federal complaint threatened Pearson's higher-education portfolio. I ran a nine-month remediation program across ten product teams, presented technical outcomes directly to the external parties, and closed it out with a formal written retraction.

    Threat withdrawn in writing · engagement up 30% in the affected segment Read the case study: Retiring a federal litigation threat

  • Designers and engineers were catching the same defects late, in QA. I built a company-wide Figma annotation toolkit and design review workflow from scratch, then wired Axe and Cypress into the CI/CD pipeline so the standard release process enforced it.

    Defect escape rate down 66% within three months Read the case study: Figma-to-engineering review workflow

  • An operating model for 40+ teams

    Elsevier, 2024–2026

    Owned intake, backlog governance, and roadmap operations for Elsevier's largest division. Co-authored the global Definition of Done, established the KPI framework for defect escape and remediation velocity, and led adoption of an AI-augmented documentation and testing platform.

    Documentation production time cut 50% · 40+ conformance reports unblocking enterprise sales Read the case study: An operating model for 40+ teams

  • The ION Framework

    CSUN 2025, 2025

    Existing evaluation heuristics don't fit conversational AI. With a co-author, I built ION, a heuristic framework for evaluating AI chat interfaces, and presented it at CSUN, the largest assistive technology conference in the world.

    Original methodology, presented publicly Read the case study: The ION Framework

  • A component library from zero

    Interfolio, 2014–2020

    Founded Interfolio's first accessibility practice and architected a WCAG-compliant Angular component library, documented in Storybook, that became the company-wide engineering standard. Led compliance work for NYU, SUNY, and the University of Washington.

    Adopted as the engineering standard across all product lines Read the case study: A component library from zero

Talks and writing

  • Accessibility Considerations of AI Chat Interfaces: ION Framework reveal CSUN 2025
  • An accessible application architecture in HTML, CSS, and JS CSUN 2021
  • Benefits of the Collaborative Accessibility Evaluation Model Article
  • Accessibility best practices for drag-and-drop interfaces Article
  • Building an accessible digital escape room Article
  • The dreaded first post Blog

How I work

  • Technical empathy over process administration: I've shipped the code, so I know where roadmaps actually get stuck.
  • Compliance as velocity: standards belong in the Definition of Done and the pipeline, not in a review at the end.
  • Tooling as a force multiplier: the right workflow changes behavior faster than any training program.
  • AI-augmented by default: I use AI in documentation, evaluation, and program throughput, and I evaluate AI interfaces with the same rigor.

About

I'm a French-named, sports-loving, upstate New York technologist. I started writing enterprise software for the Air Force at the Pentagon, spent a decade as a full-stack engineer at Interfolio, then moved into program leadership at TPGi, Pearson, and Elsevier. Along the way I ran my own advisory practice for a dozen organizations and sat on the board of Beyond My Battle.

I'm bilingual in English and French, hold a CPWA certification, and have a bachelor's in business administration and information technology from Colorado Technical University. Off the clock: hockey, cycling, and whatever's on at Saratoga.

Building something in a regulated space and need it to move faster?

I'm open to technical product and engineering operations leadership roles, remote-first. Email is best.

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