Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
As a Software Engineering Manager and Leader with over a decade experience in the technology sector, I successfully built and led high-performing engineering teams at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and various tech startups. My expertise lies in technical program management, system design and architecture, as well as managing the operations and incident responses of cloud-based microservices teams. With a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology, complemented by a Coaching Certification, I am a team-oriented people-person who loves efficiency and delivering outstanding results. My approach centres around empowering and nurturing growth within my team and the individuals around me, ensuring success without compromising personal well-being. My strong background in people management, leadership, communication, conflict resolution, and professional development helped me to create a supportive and productive environment for everyone involved. Today, as a Professional Executive Coach and Technology Leadership Consultant, I partner with ambitious tech leaders to succeed from a space of authenticity, integrity, passion & energy. By empowering them to refine their leadership approach, think strategically, challenge their thought processes, and define success, I help them lead a more fulfilling and authentic life, both professionally and personally. Career highlights: • Built a successful coaching and consulting business from scratch in under nine months. • Led program management for AWS Cloud9, resulting in a substantial financial impact exceeding $100 million. • Managed technological operations at Pondering Panda, generating tens of millions in revenue from market research projects. • Mentored four team members through technical promotions, including one engineer from junior to senior level twice, and three mid-level engineers to senior positions. Key skills: Engineering Management, Technical Program Management, Technology Leadership Coaching, Cloud-Based Microservices, Operations, System Design, and System Architecture, Agile/Scrum Methodologies, Business Development and Growth Technical skills: Java, Ruby, Python, Haskell, Bash, Visual Basic, HTML, CSS, Javascript
📍As a Professional Leadership Coach, I help founders and leaders of technology startups and scale-up companies in reaching their full potential. By leveraging my 10+ years of experience in engineering, management, psychology, and coaching, I guide my clients towards becoming effective, authentic, and impactful leaders and maximise their professional and personal growth. Key achievements: • Successfully built a coaching and consulting business from scratch in under nine months. • Utilised program management skills to create comprehensive plans for all business components and strategies, as well as execute those rapidly and effectively. • Executed strategies for business development, client acquisition, and sales, leading to quick business growth. • Applied expertise gained from launching multiple programs and services at AWS to ensure efficient and strategic execution.
📍As a Technical Program Manager at Amazon Web Services, I led program management for the entire AWS Cloud9 organisation and oversaw the security and compliance programs, including GDPR and five other compliance programs required for the team to onboard top government and medical clientele onto the platform. Key achievements: • Managed AWS Cloud9 organization's security and compliance programs delivery, including GDPR, SOC, CPI, ISO, and HIPAA, as well as various confidential government certifications. • Successfully delivered the security and compliance certification program for AWS Cloud9, allowing the organization to onboard our targeted top five clients, and generated financial impact exceeding $100 million. • Improved transparency, visibility, and clarity across various teams and organisations. • Delivered key initiatives in risk, compliance, security, and product features.
📍During my time as a Software Development Manager at Amazon Web Services, I built and grew the core back-end microservices team for AWS Cloud9 and led the team to successfully launch Cloud9 as an AWS service after its acquisition by Amazon. Key achievements: • Led and grew a team of up to 12 software development engineers. • Played a key role in the public launch of AWS Cloud9, allowing the product to rapidly onboard 100k+ users within a few months. • Created and set up efficient on-call and ticket handling processes which allowed the team to triage and respond to customer issues and requests within a one-day SLA - up from over a week before while reducing distraction and increasing team per-IC feature velocity by 50%. • Supported and guided four team members through technical promotions, one engineer twice from junior through senior, and three mid-level engineers to senior engineers.
📍Joined AWS as one of the core back-end software engineers for the AWS EC2 Reserved Instances team. I was responsible for building, maintaining, and running the core back-end API service, as well as all the operational tooling and monthly invoicing software. Key achievements: • Streamlined an operational tooling suite, and reduced response time to incidents from over 60 minutes to under 10 minutes while enhancing incident data accessibility. • Secured buy-in and collaborated on core functionality delivery, decreasing operational load and enabling a focus on customer features. • Developed and engineered software in Enterprise Java, AWS, and SOA within the EC2 Reserved Instances space, introducing automated instances, resulting in customer savings of over $100,000 in some cases. • Designed, developed, and maintained reliable technical product solutions, ensuring service availability.
📍Working as a Software Development Engineer at Mira Networks, I employed Erlang, PHP, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build and maintain a microservices-based network of APIs for processing bulk and real-time subscriptions as well as operational and metrics-and-monitoring requirements for the API network. Key achievements: • Led a core database migration project end-to-end including program design. • Established and monitored key KPIs, security, availability, and fail-over plan, created real-time monitoring and alarming as well as dashboard visualisations for the migration of terabytes of data from MySQL to Riak.
📍As a Software Development Manager & Software Engineer at FireID, I managed project teams and provided overall technological direction and strategy. I helped establish and was chiefly responsible for the technological operations, including hiring, establishing and developing a team of engineers, developing the core research platform, project and team management, and overall technological direction of a digital market research startup named Pondering Panda. Key Achievements: • Established and managed the technological operations, driving the company’s core technology resources to generate multimillion-dollar revenue through market research projects in the South African market. • Developed and maintained the core research platform, primarily utilising Ruby on Rails and Microsoft C#. • Led seamless integration of cloud-based services (AWS and Heroku) and local hosting. • Collaborated on other FireID startup ventures and contributed to software engineering tasks in high-performance front-end CSS and JavaScript.