About

Strategic Technology Executive with 20+ years of experience building and leading world-class engineering organisations. A practitioner in Platform Engineering and Developer Experience, with a track record of transforming fragmented technical landscapes into high-velocity, centralised ecosystems.

Career

TomTom

2022 – Present · Amsterdam

Director of Engineering — Platform Engineering & Developer Experience

→Leading a 120+ engineer organisation responsible for the global Internal Developer Platform, Cloud Infrastructure, and SDLC standardisation for 1,500+ developers.
→Delivered €5M+ in annual recurring savings on €100M+ cloud spend through FinOps practice and strategic vendor renegotiations.
→Reduced build-and-test cycles from 2 hours to 10 minutes across global CI/CD pipelines.

Booking.com

2016 – 2022 · Amsterdam

Senior Engineering Manager — Developer Experience & Infrastructure

→Led 35+ engineers in a multi-year transformation of company-wide build and release systems — a unified deployment standard for one of the world's largest travel platforms.
→Directed engineering teams within Payments and Infrastructure Security, ensuring 24/7 availability for platforms processing millions of global transactions.

VeriPark

2007 – 2016 · Istanbul

Senior Engineering Manager / Software Architect

→Designed and delivered large-scale digital banking platforms for Tier-1 banks across EMEA, with a focus on scalability, security, and multi-tenant architecture.
→Progressed from senior developer to architect to team lead — building the instincts for what today's industry calls Platform Engineering and Developer Experience.

Education

Executive Leadership & Management

Cambridge Judge Business School · 2025
Master's in Management and Organisation

Marmara University, Istanbul
BSc Mathematical Engineering

Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul

Speaking

Embracing Change for Transformational DX Leadership

Developer Experience Summit · London · October 2024
Navigating Transformation: Change Management in the Modern Software Landscape

Engineering Leadership Summit · Amsterdam · October 2024
Transforming a New Organisation into a High-Performing Team

Engineering Leadership Summit · Istanbul · March 2024
Executive Leadership & Management Programme

Cambridge Judge Business School · Cambridge · 2025

Open to speaking on Platform Engineering, Developer Experience, and Engineering Leadership.

Connect on LinkedIn →

Outside Work

I read about 100 books a year — mostly fantasy and science fiction. I track and write about them at hundredbooksayear.com.

I coach at the local football club where my son plays. There's something about building a team from scratch — the communication, the trust, the culture — that maps surprisingly well to engineering leadership.