About

I'm Lars. I've spent the last decade building backends — first at a fintech in Utrecht, then for a logistics platform, and the past four years as a senior engineer on a payments team you've probably never heard of. I left in early 2024 to take on selective independent work.

What I care about is operational quality: services that don't wake people up at 3 a.m., schemas that don't paint future-you into a corner, and dashboards that tell you something useful instead of looking impressive. I'm a careful and somewhat slow engineer, which I've found cheaper in the long run.

Stack

Go for most application code. PostgreSQL for the data that matters. Redis for the data that doesn't. NATS or Kafka when there's a real reason. Linux, Terraform, and as little YAML as I can get away with.

How I work

I prefer engagements of three to six months — long enough to understand the codebase and ship something real, short enough not to get stuck. I'm comfortable joining as a senior engineer, a tech lead, or a one-person rescue team. I write design docs, I review PRs, and I try not to introduce three new tools per quarter.

Outside of work

Cycling, mostly. Reading non-fiction at a pace I can't quite keep up with. Cooking things I learned from my Limburg grandmother. Off the laptop on Sundays, which is a recent and ongoing project.