Co-developing Express Me, an app that assists people with speech impairments, using a React Native front-end and a Spring Boot back-end, deployed in an AWS cloud environment. I'm excited to share more about this project in person! ExpressMe
I am currently spending much of my spare time on a project converting a second hand Yamaha XJR 1300 into an electic motorcycle.
For this project, one of the biggest challenges is building the battery pack. Mounting everything properly. And doing everything safely.
Progress of this project is ongoing, and I will be posting updates on the endless-sphere forum.
"I have worked together with Niek for one and a half year.
In this period, I came to know Niek as a skillful and creative developer and person. Both at work and privately, he enjoys tackling difficult problems and loves to discover and learn about new tools, technologies and methods. He does this on his own or in close cooperation with colleagues or team members, depending on what the situation asks for.
As a friendly, hard working and authentic person, next to his skill, he is a great addition to any team."
"I had the pleasure of working with Niek for 1.5 years in an agile software development team, where he consistently demonstrated his expertise as a full-stack developer. Niek is an enthusiastic and curious individual who dives head-first into unknown territory, mastering new technologies and solving complex problems with ease.
He is an excellent team player, always open to discussing complex issues and minor details, such as code styling, ensuring the best practices are followed. I have witnessed his remarkable growth from a heavy medior to a senior developer. In his senior role, Niek has shown exceptional leadership skills, capable of taking the lead, coaching team members, and sharing his extensive knowledge.
His dependability and ability to handle any task thrown his way make him a valuable asset to any team. It has been a privilege to work alongside Niek, and I am confident that he will continue to excel in his career."
At Alliander, together with a new team, I worked as a full-stack developer on an application which aids the registration and management of problems in the power grid. It was my responsibility to develop and maintain a custom front-end (Angular) and backend (Node.js/NestJS/Postgres).
Initially, this software was deployed on an Openshift. For technical reasons related to an upcoming database migration, I took the lead in researching, planning and executing the migration of our deployment away from Openshift, to an AWS EKS cluster.
Besides usual software feature implementations, one of the main challenges in this project, team and organisation in general, was a migration from a data architecture based on SAP HANA, to an architecture based on AWS-hosted databases. I take responsibility for technically leading the project and the team on a path forwards, away from SAP HANA, towards an architecture build around AWS.
I worked closely with the product owner, key-users, solution architects and other developers. To find technical solutions and specific workable plans of action for the development of new features and software solutions more generally.
Video of this project (Youtube), Link to the game (itch.io)
This is my winning submission of the Back to School Multiplayer Game Jam 2022, under the category "Best competitive Gameplay".
After SyncVR, I started working on a multiplayer e-sports game in Unity as a technical challenge for myself. I planned to finish and release this game on Steam, but never actually got around to finishing it.. maybe someday ;) It is playable though! This game is made in Unity using C# and the Photon Fusion service for the multiplayer component. I used machine learning (Unity ML-Agents) to train AI opponents for the game.
During development of this game, performance/framerate has always been one of the highest priorities next to optimizing the architecture of the project for a high scalability/flexibility.
Unity UI Toolkit was during the development of this proejct a relatively new feature introduced by Unity. In many ways it is similar to HTML/CSS/JS. However with many features still missing. Such as a good native support for component based UI work. So I managed to create a very minimalist Angular-like framework within my own project, which allows me to still work with a sort of UXML/USS/C# web-component system for my Unity project. This taught me even more about the internal workings of existing web frameworks like Angular and React.
"I really enjoyed working intensively with Niek for almost seven months. Niek is a highly knowledgeable, solution focused and outside-the-box creative thinker and a very productive software developer. In his communication he's extremely honest about estimations, his skills and his expectations which makes him very reliable to work with. He contributed in all kinds of ways to our startup during his years with us which makes it sad to see him leave. Besides being a high potential young professional, he's also very surprising in his private projects (ask him about this!) which demonstrates his passion for using technology in a fun and functional way. An authentic human being whose smile in the daily standup I will miss!"
"Had the chance to do some software development with Niek during his time at SyncVR Medical. Beside being a great guy to be around he is an incredibly productive developer, able to build from scratch, get things out very fast and owning a new piece of stack very quickly.
You don't come around a real Full Stack Dev that often."
At SyncVR, I was the lead web-developer. Here it was my main responsibility to develop and maintain a custom platform front-end (Angular) and backend (Node.js/Express) on Google Cloud Platform. Initially, this platform was used as an internal tool to manage healthcare institutions, leased VR devices and their available VR applications.
Over time, this system transformed into a platform where healthcare professionals can log in to manage devices from a distance (mobile device management features). While app developers can log in to manage their apps and app versions/releases (app store features). This is a platform which I developed from scratch mostly on my own in the beginning. In the last half year, other developers joined the team to support the project.
During my last period at SyncVR, I spent most of my time on refactoring the architecture of the platform to accommodate a switch from a NoSQL document database (Firestore) to a relational database (MySQL). With all the hurdles you can imagine for such a task. I took the responsibility upon myself to learn how to create a beautiful GraphQL implementation which could facilitate this complex migration. I must say, this turned me into a real GraphQL fanboy.
Over the years at SyncVR, I worked closely with business developers, clients, designers and other developers. To specify functional and technical requirements for the platform. I also mentored several students to help make their VR applications performant, and delivered within the given deadline.
Video of this project (Youtube)
In between Targomo and SyncVR, I spent some months learning about embedded software and hardware development. I developed a custom gaming table from scratch. All details about those months are documented in this blog post (Medium).
Results from this projects are ongoing in my spare time (although, admittedly, have not been able to give this project the commitment it deserves), and can be seen on this repository (Github)
I designed a simple custom PCB using KiCad. Wrote a programming language (ArcadableScript) from scratch which can be executed as an interpreted language on a Teensy MCU. Or the ArcadableScript can be emulated on the development environment in a custom vsCode extension.
The big (and fun) challenge about this project is the extremely low level performance optimization. Using 2 teensy MCU controllers in parallel to drive the custom built 42x42 led display, while also outputting audio and executing game logic without any hiccups.
Copy available on request
“I've had the pleasure of working with Niek as the Product Manager of his software development work at Targomo. He has been responsible for developing several customer solutions for different use cases within the retail and public sector industry. In all projects, Niek showed strong ownership, critical-thinking and creativity. He is very self-motivated, hardworking and fun to work with. Niek is a valuable contributor you want to have on your team.”
I had my graduation internship during my first half year at Targomo. During this internship, I researched, and set up online documentation for the API's provided by the company.
After my internship at this company, I was hired to continue updating and maintaining the API documentation website build with HUGO static site generation.
I also did maintenance work on the Account Management App for Targomo API users. More specifically, implementing a custom front-end (Angular) and backend (Node.js/Express) services that are necessary for managing SCA-compliant recurring payments with the Stripe payment processor.
Finally, I developed and maintained two separate customized client applications (Angular). For these projects I was the lead developer, working closely with the product owners and clients in order to specify technical requirements and functional requirements.
At Social Brothers, I worked as an on-call developer to help the team build Virtual Reality applications for the Oculus Rift using Unity/C#. This was a part-time job while being a student.
At Bricks & Goggles, I did an internship. During this internship, I helped developing Virtual Reality applications for the Oculus Rift. I also developed Unity plugins which allowed the team to make more accurate time estimations, and reduced the time required to import and prepare/optimize architectural models to be used for VR. I did research on performance optimizations for VR in Unity/C#.
Together with one other developer, we created a system which allowed the company to monitor deployed hardware solutions from a distance. We developed a native Android app, REST API and ASP.NET Web app.