Niek van Raaij

Reliability Expert

Amsterdam Area

About

Niek is an expert in managing secure, high-performance IT operations for mission-critical workloads. He specializes in DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering, working closely with leaders and engineers in finance, trading, and digital-native companies to build resilient, secure, and scalable platforms, processes, and teams. Niek’s practical, no-nonsense style and engaging delivery help technical leaders effectively navigate the complex balance between reliability, security, and delivering business value.

Experience

  • Founder at Reliability Engineering Lab
    Apr 2026 - Present · 4 mos

    Bringing enterprise-grade Site Reliability Engineering and DevOps to Dutch SMBs at pricing that actually fits an SME budget. Growing companies often inherit infrastructure that's brittle, expensive, or both, but can't justify a full SRE team or enterprise consulting engagements. RLL closes that gap with focused, fixed-fee assessments and courses: the same technical rigor you'd find in enterprise environments, scaled for SME reality. Focus areas: reliability practice, observability, incident response maturity, (cloud) cost discipline, and the DevOps fundamentals that quietly determine whether a platform scales or stalls.

  • Mission Critical Engineer | Tech lead at Schuberg Philis
    May 2024 - Present · 2 yrs 3 mos

    Working as Tech Lead and Mission Critical Engineer within a dedicated customer team for a global commodities trading organization. Responsible for the technical vision, quality, and long-term direction of their IT platform, ensuring business-critical systems remain secure, available, and performant. What I do: - Guide the technical direction for a mission-critical Azure environment supporting commodities trading operations, balancing resilience, security, compliance, and cost - Act as the technical point of contact within the account team, translating complex cloud infrastructure decisions into clear business language for stakeholders - Design, build, and run business-critical cloud systems following a plan-build-run model where one team owns the full lifecycle - Drive automation, CI/CD, observability, and security best practices across the platform - Mentor and coach fellow engineers, support aspiring Tech Leads, and contribute to Schuberg Philis's company-wide Tech Lead community - Participate in presales and sales activities, assessing scope, complexity, and team composition for new engagements About Schuberg Philis: A Dutch IT services company specializing in mission-critical IT. Engineers work in self-steering, cross-functional customer teams with full ownership.

  • Founder at Junglux
    Jan 2024 - Dec 2024 · 1 yr

    Through Junglux, I help customers to build happy, healthy, and high-performing teams. I focus on helping you to get the most out of technical initatives such as DevOps, SRE, and Cloud transformations.

  • Cloud Engineer & Architect (Through Junglux) at Lukkien
    Feb 2024 - Aug 2024 · 7 mos

  • SRE Consultant at Xebia
    Dec 2018 - Dec 2023 · 5 yrs 1 mo

    At Xebia, Niek helped customers adopt new working methods like DevOps, Agile, and Lean. Niek also drove innovation projects for both Xebia and its clients. Niek held a combination position containing client work, work as a trainer, and commercial responsibility within the Xebia DevOps and IT Architecture practice. Some of Niek's engagements: - Ad interim product manager for an SD wan implementation at a large television organization - Designed and delivered an award-winning SRE training program for a major container shipping organization - DevOps coach leadership and teams at multiple companies across different industries, including railway, banking, and insurance - Engineering and infra-architect on large-scale Kubernetes project - Led both technically and commercially in the Development of Xebia's Serious gaming and gamification products