Skills & Background

I’ve been working with the web professionally for over fifteen years. Initially a front-end engineer I’m now interested in backend systems, JavaScript tooling and product development.

I’m good at considering problems from multiple angles, including the non-technical ones. I frequently work at different levels of abstraction, e.g. implementing a feature across service boundaries. I’m diligent and care about the work I deliver.

I’ve been writing JavaScript for roughly twenty years now. For personal projects it’s the language I move fastest with. I’m happy to express code in other languages though. I’ve written and maintained Go, Ruby, Python and Java programs. I tend to have little difficulties with new languages or frameworks.

I’m also experienced with AWS, Google Cloud containers and Kubernetes.

I’m accustomed to contributing to open-source projects, for instance I’m the lead mantainer of AVA.

Background

Way back when in 2004 / 2005 I helped develop sIFR, which used Flash to render headers in custom fonts. I kept up maintenance until 2008. This was before web fonts, of course.

I’m a former contributor to the Dojo Toolkit. I wrote the dojo/promise implementation that shipped in Dojo 1.8 back in 2012. Subsequently I’ve been involved in the Promises/A+ effort, and have written some more promise implementations.

From 2005 through 2008 I worked for Q42 and Xopus (which was spun off from Q42 and later acquired by SDL). Xopus provided a browser-based WYSIWYG XML editor for which I implemented caret navigation in pure JavaScript. This replaced an earlier contentEditable implementation.

Prior to their acquisition by Google in 2006 I was a summer intern with JotSpot, in Palo Alto, California.

I’ve participated in multiple creative hacker camp events with Mediamatic and I’ve spoken at conferences like JSConf EU as well as local meet-ups.

State

From late 2008 through 2015 I worked with Mark and Alex Asseily, on what became State. Initially remote from Copenhagen, Denmark, then from 2011 in London, England.

I grew to be one of the lead engineers and took charge of the front-end architecture. The site was always able to render server-side, first through Rails and later Node.js. An internal framework was developed to render reactive pages in 2011. (This was replaced by a React architecture in 2015.)

Early on the front-end was separated by the back-end through an API layer, which grew to power Android & iOS clients. I was in charge of the API server and its OAuth implementation, contributing to RFC 7009.

Consulting

I’ve done consulting work for SitePen on Dojo 2, Digital Catapult on blockchain projects and Monolith on app security, authentication, GraphQL and integration with a third-party Visa card program.

Monolith

I’ve worked with Monolith on an employment basis since 2019 after moving back to the Netherlands.

Minutia

I’m a dual Dutch and British citizen. I hold a Bachelor’s degree from University of Twente. I’m fluent in Dutch and English and fairly decent at comprehending German.