About me

I help teams turn rough ideas, aging systems, and half-finished plans into web software they can keep working on after launch. That usually means writing code, shaping architecture, asking awkward product questions, and making sure the thing still makes sense to the people who have to use it.

Since 2016 I've worked freelance as a technical lead and consultant. Government agencies, fintech startups, media companies, internal platform teams: the domains change, but the useful part stays the same. Find the real constraint, make a plan people can live with, then ship in small enough steps that nobody has to hold their breath.

Lately a lot of my work sits around event-driven systems, GraphQL, and frontends that need to stay understandable once the happy path runs out. I like projects where the details matter: permissions, retries, accessibility, data shape, deployment, the boring parts that become very expensive when you skip them.

I studied Digital Media Design at Fontys, which was a useful place to start because it treated technology and use as the same problem. A technically sound interface can still be wrong if people can't find their way through it.

The early internships put me near data visualization problems. That taught me, sometimes the annoying way, that the neatest technical answer is not always the answer people need. Government work sharpened that lesson. Accessibility was not a nice extra there. It was part of the job.

When hundreds of thousands of Dutch citizens use your work, small assumptions stop being small. Architecture matters, but so does a form label, a keyboard path, a clear error message, and whether the app works for someone who doesn't spend all day in software.

As JavaScript frameworks changed, I spent more time with React and the state management problems that come with interactive applications. Media companies and startups were good places for that kind of work. One project still sticks with me: turning a mobile app into a progressive web app and trying to make it feel at home in the browser.

Going freelance in 2016 opened a different kind of door. I became the first developer at a fintech startup, where we built a platform that processed thousands of cancellations a day across European markets. Leading the small team around it was partly distributed systems, partly helping other developers grow, and partly learning which decisions become painful six months later.

These days I often work with established companies that want to modernize without pretending they can pause the business for six months. That can mean introducing GraphQL, simplifying a deployment pipeline, replacing a fragile part of a legacy system, or helping a team agree on the next sensible step.

If that sounds like the kind of help your project needs, I'd be happy to talk.

Away from the screen, I run trails. Long, muddy, uphill ones, mostly. I write about that at Ren met Kracht. It is the clearest thinking I do all week.

What I tend to help with

Technical direction for products that need a realistic path from idea to production
Web applications with React, Vue, vanilla JavaScript, and backend APIs that hold up under use
Backend systems in Laravel, Rails, Node.js, and Elixir
Deployment work with Docker, CI/CD, and Kubernetes
Team practices, code review, and mentoring developers without turning it into theatre
Performance work across GraphQL schemas, frontend tooling, and slow application edges
Accessibility work that starts before the audit

I also contribute to open-source projects and share what I learn through writing and the occasional training session.

You can also find an overview of my knowledge and experience on LinkedIn. I'm always open to a good conversation.