Senior software engineer for systems that can't fail
I help teams, from startups and SMBs to large enterprises, get stalled projects moving again, clean up brittle code and ship reliably, including in highly regulated environments. 15+ years in fintech, aviation, e-commerce and more. Embedded, project-based or advisory.
Three ways to work together
Pick whichever fits where your team is right now.
Join your team
I join as a senior engineer. Working in your repo within a day, shipping alongside everyone else by the first week.
Ship that stalled project
A scoped engagement with a clear deliverable: the legacy refactor that keeps getting pushed, the migration nobody wants to own, the integration that's been blocked for months.
A second opinion on tech decisions
A senior view on architecture, hiring or the roadmap. For founders and tech leads who want someone to poke holes in the plan before they commit to it.
What teams hire me for
Specialist work that's hard to outsource to a generalist.
Tech Lead & Mentoring
Acting as tech lead in product teams: architecture reviews, 1:1 mentoring, interviewing and onboarding new engineers, raising the bar on code review and testing and growing engineers from medior to senior.
Software Architecture
DDD, Hexagonal Architecture, Event Sourcing, distributed systems and 12-factor app methodology. Applied pragmatically based on what the project actually needs, not as a default.
Complex Compliance Environments
Hands-on work in PCI-DSS and ISO27001 regulated platforms. Familiar with auditors, processes and the trade-offs that come with high-compliance environments.
Refactoring
Extracting legacy code into testable, scalable services without production disruptions. Migrations rolled out in safe, reversible steps.
Infrastructure
AWS (EKS, VPC, RDS, SQS, KMS), Terraform and CI/CD. Including K8s autoscaling and zero-downtime migrations of production Kubernetes clusters.
High-Quality Code, AI-Assisted
Clean, well-tested and maintainable code. AI tools like Claude Code used where they help - never at the cost of craft or correctness.
How I work
The same way of working whether I join the team, lead a project or advise.
Intake
Understand the problem, the team, the codebase. Listen first; map dependencies, constraints, and the people who hold the context.
Get moving
Working within a day. Small steps that ship from the first week, so results are visible early rather than promised.
Make it last
Raise the quality bar, write down what only lived in people's heads, mentor the team, and hand over cleanly so things keep working after I leave.
Work style
Up to 2 days on-site, rest remote
Project-based and advisory work starts on-site, then scales to fit
Some of the work I've done
A few highlights from production work in fintech, aviation, e-commerce and more. The kind of thing I can do for you.
Zero-downtime migration of production payment infrastructure
Ten-plus EKS clusters, each running 20-30 applications, were running out of IP addresses and stalling jobs and deployments. Migrated all of them onto larger /22 subnets through infrastructure as code, live and with zero downtime.
Automated a 200-server hosting control panel migration
Migrating ~200 servers from HELM to Plesk hosting control panels leaned on slow, manual labour. Built collectors to pull data from the old, highly customized HELM panel, automating the work and accelerating the migration.
CI/CD pipelines that speed up reviews and catch issues early
Set up and tuned CI/CD pipelines with automated QA checks and vulnerability scanning on every change, cutting review time while giving developers fast, reliable feedback before code reaches production.
Well-tested, maintainable code in multiple languages
Years of production code across multiple languages, written to be well tested and maintainable, applying patterns where they earned their keep rather than for their own sake. Curious how that looks in practice? Happy to walk you through it.
What people I’ve worked with say
From CTOs and product leads who’ve shipped with me.
Ben is a valuable team player who has interviewed candidates, onboarded new team members, and advised on architectural decisions to improve platform scalability and future-proofing.
Ben is a highly skilled developer with a lot of payments and e-commerce knowledge. He is pro-active, always willing to help and easy to work with.
Resourceful, committed and passionate in his field. These traits allowed him to grow from a junior developer to a full fledged developer capable of handling most complex assignments.
Tell me about your project
A short paragraph about your stack, the problem and rough timeline is enough. I’ll get back to you within 24 hours on whether I’m the right fit - and if I’m not, who is.
contact@ben-developer.nl · reply within 24h