Portfolio
Here are some highlights of the last decade.
Zerocopter, a Security Scaleup
I was initially brought on to help with a small DevOps project, and ended up staying a few years to professionalize infrastructure and security.
- Built a Docker-based infrastructure for running security scanners
- Assessed, centralized and enhanced logging/monitoring of all infrastructure to improve reliability and security
- Designed and implemented a highly customized VPN solution
- Built a hack test platform: a web app that has various types of simulated vulnerabilities where potential researchers can demonstrate their skills. One of the challenges was simulating vulnerabilities without actually being vulnerable
- Conducted security audit, code reviews, security awareness training, and application security training
AVG Programma, a GDPR Compliance Scaleup
After an acquisition, I worked with the new CEO to completely overhaul the platform and IT activities.
- Built a much more secure, robust new backend system to replace the legacy platform
- Worked with all stakeholders to plan and execute the migration to the new system
- Consulted with CEO on hiring, outsourcing, IT management, security
Snooty Software, my Development Tooling Startup
I started Snooty Software with Joachim Nolten to build products that automate the repetitive parts of programming.
- Prototyped the core technology, most of which is on Github now. Monocle and erb2builder in particular are novel ways of juggling ASTs
- Wrote a few blog posts about what goes on under the hood
- Monocle: bidirectional code generation (this made it to the Hacker News front page, see thread)
- erb2builder: convert erb templates into builder templates and back (this made it into the Ruby Weekly newsletter)
- Using XPath to rewrite Ruby code with ease (this one is a bit older but made it into the Ruby Weekly newsletter and Ruby Inside)
- Learned a ton about copywriting, market research, marketing and sales
- Made some product demo videos together with Joachim Nolten
- Snooty builder, a prototype of a bidirectional low-code platform
- Textractor, a tool to automatically prepare your ERB templates for internationalization
Silk, a Data Visualization Startup
I joined as the first full-time DevOps person, primarily to improve reliability, performance, and security.
- Professionalized ops: introduced a number of processes such as backup recovery tests, capacity planning, security checks and more
- Greatly improved reliability. Resolved various recurring production issues, including complex cascading failures. At the same time I tweaked monitoring to eliminate false-positives, and anything not actionable, so that alerts were no longer ignored
- Made large performance improvements: including the addition of profiling instrumentation to all microservices to pinpoint bottlenecks, and optimizing the Varnish configuration to strongly improve the cache hit-ratio
Blendle, a Journalism Startup
I joined the initial development team right at the start along two others.
- Grew backend/ops team to fifteen people
- Designed and built micropayments system, including double entry book-keeping and much more
- Built custom profiler, pipelining proxy, CDN config simulator, newspaper processing monitoring system, and more
- Was responsible for reliability, performance, and AppSec
Open Embassy, a Social Enterprise
Open Embassy is an online helpdesk that enables status holders (refugees with a permit) to ask questions about their integration process in a private and secure chatroom.
- Consulted on various privacy, security, and infrastructure problems
- Conducted security awareness training
- Performed code reviews
Confidential
Some gigs have strict confidentiality requirements, so I can’t go into details. But I have experience with:
- Technical due diligence for small and large acquisitions
- Incident response
- Security assessments