Understand before building
We do not propose an architecture before understanding the system in place, its constraints and the reasoning behind past decisions. What looks like technical debt is sometimes a sound decision nobody documented.
The firm
Building the consultancy we would have wanted to join
Modders Consulting was founded by Clément Joly, an engineering graduate, after eleven years spent in demanding technical environments and with one simple conviction: a consultancy is more useful to its clients when it genuinely understands the consultants it supports.
Why this firm exists
Taking the time to understand
Modders came out of a twofold observation. On the consultant side, the engagement on offer is too often determined by what is available rather than by the path they are looking for. On the client side, the search for expertise too often turns into CV sorting.
We chose to treat both in the same way: understand the person's background, understand the client's system, then look for the alignment between the two.
A consultant we genuinely know and an engagement we have genuinely qualified: that is the foundation of the Modders model.
The founder
Eleven years on the other side of hiring
Modders was founded in 2025 by Clément Joly. An engineering graduate of EFREI in information systems, he spent eleven years in a consultancy specialising in demanding technical environments, from account management to running a business unit of around a hundred consultants, across corporate and investment banking, energy and asset management accounts.
Those eleven years were about two things: understanding trading-floor and data-team technical contexts closely enough to frame a requirement without wasting the team's time, and recruiting then supporting developers working in those environments.
That is where the Modders way of working comes from: qualify before proposing, know the people you put forward, and treat an engagement as successful only when it is successful for the consultant as much as for the client. Clément still takes part in technical interviews today, alongside the expert who assesses the candidate's skills.
Where the name comes from
Understanding a system deeply enough to transform it
In gaming, a modder is someone who understands an existing system deeply enough to transform it. Not someone starting from scratch: someone who reads other people's work, grasps its logic, and takes it further than intended.
That is an accurate description of the job. The systems we work on already exist, carry years of history and constraints, and do not stop while they are being changed. Working on them takes curiosity, rigour, and a taste for understanding before proposing.
Our philosophy
Three principles behind every engagement
Build what holds up in production
A system that works in a demo has not been delivered. Our engineers stay engaged through go-live, observability and handover to your teams.
Bring expertise, not a resource
Every consultant has a background, specific skills and subjects they want to go deeper into. Our job is to match that with a real need, and that is what makes the difference over the length of an engagement.
Our culture
A culture of learning and automation
Expertise is built. We invest in training paths shaped around each consultant's objectives, and we encourage technical experimentation.
AI and automation are part of the firm's everyday toolkit: speeding up research, development, documentation and repetitive tasks, while holding the same requirement to understand, verify and stay accountable for the result.
The site you are reading was itself designed and built with an AI-assisted development approach.
How we operate
Counting successful engagements, not placements
Modders is a recent and deliberately small firm, led by an engineer. Today our core model is specialist engineers working within client teams over time, while remaining supported by the firm.
We want to grow without losing our ability to genuinely know the people we put forward and to understand the engagements they work on.
Expertise built in France
Our consultants work in France, on French contracts. We do not offshore or nearshore any part of our work.
This is not a posture: on the systems we handle, whether risk, market data or client data, where the team sits and who is accountable are part of the client's own constraints.