Tech lead turned hands-on engineer at Microsoft. Twenty years of shipping software, the side projects it produced, and the writing in between.
I'm a software engineer, but really I'm just someone who can't leave a good puzzle alone. Hand me a problem — ideally a slightly annoying one — and I'll happily disappear into it until it gives up. The best part of the job is that "solved" usually means someone's day just got a little easier.
Twenty-odd years of this, most recently at Microsoft, where I work alongside strategic customers to build production AI and data systems — Microsoft Fabric, Azure AI, Semantic Kernel — and make the case that GenAI ought to make delivery genuinely faster rather than just noisier. Before that came over a decade at RWS, latterly leading the engineering teams behind Tridion, where "large-scale deployment" meant customers like Wells Fargo and Emirates.
The bits I'm quietly pleased about: a Rust SDK for Azure Queues that the Azure Storage product group picked up, and SemanticPluginForge, a Semantic Kernel extension I wrote up on the Microsoft DevBlogs. Same throughline as everything else here — find the annoying problem, refuse to put it down.
Based in the Netherlands. Opinions here are my own.
I'm a DIY tinkerer at heart. If something can be taken apart, improved, or over-engineered just a little, odds are I've already started. I build with Lego too — I'll follow the instructions more often than I'd like to admit, with the occasional MOC when I'm feeling brave.
Fair warning: scope creep and I go way back. "Quick weekend project" is a phrase I use purely for its comedic value.
New things are fun — and it genuinely doesn't matter how trivial. I'll cheerfully vanish down a rabbit hole to learn something I may never use again, mostly because not knowing it was starting to bother me.
When I'm not building something, I'm usually travelling, or being kept happily busy by my wife, kids, and dog — not necessarily in that order.
And honestly, one of my favourite things to do is just watch. Movies and TV to unwind, but mostly hours of YouTube — people building things and picking up skills that I fully intend to use someday, plus the lighter stuff that helps me switch off. Call it research; it's usually just fun.
Curious about something I didn't mention? Just ask.
Written by me, with AI assistance for drafting and editing. The ideas, the arguments, and any mistakes in them are mine. Header images are AI-generated.