What It Is

PermisPop is a driving-education marketplace built by educators for permit professionals. Through web and mobile experiences, students find instructors and nearby driving schools based on location, book lessons, and manage their learning journey similar to how ride-hailing apps match supply and demand, but tailored to regulated driving instruction in France.

The platform supports freelance instructors and schools with tools for scheduling, messaging, and geographic discovery so learning to drive is easier to access and operate at scale.

The Problem We Solved

Traditional driving education often relies on phone calls, paper schedules, and word-of-mouth referrals:

Students struggle to discover available instructors near them
Schools and freelancers lack a shared system for bookings and availability
Real-time chat and schedule changes are handled outside the product
Legacy v1 systems could not support mobile growth or fast feature delivery

PermisPop v2 centralizes discovery, booking, communication, and administration so students, instructors, and schools interact through one modern stack.

What We Work On

Marketplace & bookings

Deliver PermisPop.fr v2 as lead engineer on a team of three shipping coordinated web and mobile experiences for search, booking, and account management.

Scheduling

Build reliable scheduler modules so instructors and schools manage slots, conflicts, and lesson lifecycle events.

Real-time communication

Implement chat with Socket.IO so students and instructors coordinate without leaving the app.

Maps & discovery

Integrate map-based discovery so learners see professionals and schools filtered by proximity and availability.

Data performance

Tune MongoDB queries and indexes to keep list and booking views fast under real-world traffic.

How It Works (In Simple Terms)

Discover: Students search instructors and schools on a map or list near their location.
Book: Available slots are reserved through the scheduling system.
Coordinate: In-app chat handles questions, changes, and reminders.
Deliver: Instructors and schools run lessons and update statuses in the platform.
Scale: APIs and databases support more regions, users, and concurrent sessions over time.

The architecture splits ASP.NET Core services and Node.js real-time features so transactional booking stays consistent while chat remains low-latency.

Key Outcomes

Modern v2 launch: Full rebuild with mobile parity and a clearer product foundation.
Faster matching: Geo-aware discovery connects students to nearby professionals.
Real-time coordination: Chat reduces drop-off between booking and first lesson.
Operational efficiency: Scheduling tools cut manual back-and-forth for schools and freelancers.
Improved performance: Optimized MongoDB access keeps core flows responsive.

Technologies & Approaches We Used

Area	What we used	Why it matters
Backend	ASP.NET Core	Stable APIs for accounts, bookings, and business rules
Real-time	Node.js, Socket.IO	Low-latency messaging between students and instructors
Frontend	React	Interactive web client for search, booking, and dashboards
Database	MongoDB	Flexible schema for users, geo queries, and booking documents
Testing	Jest	Regression coverage for critical UI and integration paths
Hosting	Windows IIS	Deployment target aligned with client infrastructure
Design & delivery	REST APIs, GitHub, Figma	Standard collaboration across design and engineering

Approach in practice: We treated v2 as a product reset parallel web/mobile delivery, explicit modules for scheduler/chat/maps, and database tuning early so marketplace growth would not outpace query performance. Real-time features were isolated on Node so the core booking API could stay transactional and auditable.

Who It's For

Driving students looking for nearby instructors or schools
Freelance driving instructors building a digital client base
Driving schools that need shared scheduling and communication tools
Product owners modernizing regulated education marketplaces