Principal Software Engineer & Solution Architect · AI Engineering
Tech Lead at UWV · Amstelveen, NL · open to AI architecture & technical-leadership roles
I've been building things my whole life — first music, then software, now AI systems. Along the way the roles kept stacking: engineer, architect, founder, CTO. I never dropped one to pick up the next, and that range is what I bring to a team: I write the code, make the architecture decisions that have to hold for years, lead the people, and speak the language of the boardroom.
I grew up in Aruba, raised on a simple philosophy: whatever you do, be the best at it. My first real product wasn't software — it was a rock band. As a teenager I spotted the talent, recruited the members, learned guitar, wrote and produced the music, booked the gigs, and organised our own concerts until we were one of the island's best-known bands. Building something from nothing, leading people, shipping to a live audience: I've been doing the same thing with software since 2010.
The career followed that pattern. I started as a mobile developer and founded my first two companies before I turned thirty; the third, my consultancy, came later. Along the way I led a retail app to an Oracle award. At Deloitte I built the infrastructure-automation platform that European member firms deploy on. As a CTO I scaled an engineering organisation from 5 to 20 developers across three countries in 15 months. Today I work as an IT consultant via FreshMinds, moving between companies to solve their IT challenges — building products, leading teams, and improving how their engineers deliver. Every step ran on the same belief: there's a difference between not knowing something and not being able to do it. If I don't know it, I learn it.
There's a difference between not knowing something and not being able to do it. If I don't know it, I learn it.
AI is where all of it converges. Fifteen years of architecture judgement, team leadership, and shipping discipline don't get replaced by this wave — they're exactly what it's missing. I've re-engineered how I deliver software around AI: agentic workflows, local and cloud LLMs in production, review gates that keep generated code honest. Not a pivot, a compounding — the new age needs people who've built the old one.
Amstelveen is home. I speak Dutch, English, and Papiamento natively, and basic Spanish and Portuguese.
Everything I've worked with across 15+ years, and where it proved itself in production.
since 2023 · daily practice
Re-engineered my delivery workflow around AI — local and cloud LLMs, agentic tooling built and used daily for development and prototyping.
15+ yrs · deepest expertise
The backbone of every role since 2010 — from event-driven SaaS at M-Wise to the dagloon calculation APIs for the Dutch government.
10+ yrs · expert
Multi-account AWS organisations in Terraform, Europe-wide Azure automation at Deloitte, government OpenShift at UWV, on-prem-to-cloud migrations.
10+ yrs · expert
CI/CD as a craft: halved release time at Overstappen; built the GitOps foundation adopted across every UWV environment.
8+ yrs · advanced
Six consumer web apps at Overstappen; full platforms built solo at Pacoradius — architecture through pixel.
2010–2016 · foundation years
Where I started: an Oracle-award-winning retail app, BLE sensor SDKs adopted by partner apps, apps for banking and healthcare.
throughout · advanced
Modelled, scaled, and operated across every product above — relational, document, and event-driven.
throughout · differentiator
Test automation at every level since M-Wise; rebuilt the testing strategy of Stater's integration team where coverage had been uneven.
10+ yrs leading
The decisions that have to hold for years — and the teams that carry them: up to 20 engineers across three countries.
Dutch government programme rebuilding the dagloon calculator — software that legally determines the benefit amounts citizens receive. Progressed from backend developer to Tech Lead of one of two delivery teams; architected the core calculation API and built the GitOps foundation (ArgoCD, Kustomize) adopted by all applications across every environment.
Platform Integration Team at the Netherlands' largest mortgage servicer — €300B+ across the Benelux and Germany. Built C#/ASP.NET integration microservices on Kubernetes, rebuilt the team's testing strategy, implemented Grafana/Helm observability, and mentored junior developers.
Drove modernisation of an established Dutch HR & payroll SaaS (~3,000 customers): led the OAuth2/JWT identity migration, produced the phased refactoring roadmap, and cut developer onboarding friction with a fully containerised local environment.
Solution architecture, fractional CTO, and end-to-end builds alongside contract work: a car-rental SaaS on multi-account AWS/Terraform, a training platform live in production — delivered end-to-end with Claude Code and Cursor — and Paco Money, personal finance with on-device LLM inference.
Owned all technology for a leading Dutch insurance-comparison platform: six web apps serving hundreds of thousands of customers annually. Scaled engineering from 5 to 20 developers across three countries in 15 months, migrated three on-premises applications to multi-account AWS, and cut release time in half.
Digital@Deloitte, serving 6,000+ employees. Led design and build of the self-service Azure infrastructure-automation platform that replaced ticket-based provisioning across all European member firms, and set the Infrastructure-as-Code standards used Europe-wide.
Product Manager & Senior Engineer at M-Wise: architected an event-driven microservices loyalty SaaS, cut new-client onboarding ~75%, secured €150K+ in WBSO tax benefit. Lead Developer at Butiqs: product won the Oracle Retail Shopper Marketing Award 2017. Before that: two founded startups (Proxible, Movative) and mobile roots at Yucat and Touchwonders.
Dedication, professionalism, and attention to detail I've never experienced with anyone else. I learned best practices, architectural approaches, and how to get things done with an extreme level of quality, testability, maintainability.
More recommendations on LinkedIn.
Open to AI architecture and technical-leadership roles, and to a good conversation about where AI belongs in your system.