Kubernetes isn’t magic, but with the right platform, it can feel like it.
I’m a freelance Platform Engineer building Internal Developer Platforms that let teams ship fast without thinking about infrastructure. Enterprise clients bring me in when they need someone who can design, build, operate, and teach, not just close tickets. Engagements often include knowledge transfer: I’ve trained platform teams from zero to operational independence, and that’s frequently what clients find most valuable.
What I do:
- Design and operate production-grade Kubernetes clusters (AKS)
- Build self-service IDPs with Crossplane, GitOps, and developer portals
- Harden platforms for security and compliance (ISO-27001, CKS-level hardening)
- Automate end-to-end: IaC, CI/CD pipelines, cost optimisation, observability
- Provide training and expertise in Kubernetes, AKS and the CNCF ecosystem to platform teams undergoing cloud-native transitions.
The problems change. The fundamentals don’t: make it secure, observable, and self-service. Use abstractions and compositions to reduce cognitive load. Let your teams move fast without stepping on each other.
I’m technology-agnostic and restless. If a better solution exists, I want to find it.
📝 I write about Kubernetes, cloud-native architecture, and certification deep-dives at toon.consulting.
🐕 Based in Lier, Belgium. Off the clock: bouldering, tinkering with my café racer, and hiking with my Australian Shepherd, Islay. You’ll find me at lots of meetups, conferences and events.
Let’s connect if you’re building a platform team, scaling Kubernetes in production, or want to bring in someone who can both build and teach.
Skills
My current focus is Kubernetes and the Cloud-Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) landscape, Azure Cloud and Platform Engineering. I specialise in Crossplane-based IDP architecture: using Crossplane as the internal infrastructure API, composing self-service abstractions for development teams, and resolving performance issues at the source level when standard tooling runs out.
Containerisation: Kubernetes · Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) · Azure Container Apps
Cloud: Microsoft Azure
Control Plane: Crossplane · KCL
Infrastructure Provisioning: Bicep · Terraform
CI/CD & Automation: GitHub · Azure DevOps
Observability: Prometheus · Grafana · DataDog
Security: ISO-27001 · Kubernetes security hardening
Certifications
CNCF Kubestronaut, all five Kubernetes certifications. Approximately 3,500 people globally hold this title. I’m among a handful in Belgium. The certs represent study depth, not checkboxes. The same instinct sends me to source code when documentation runs out. When I go deep on something new, I write about it publicly, because someone once did that for me.
Kubernetes
Kubestronaut
CKS
CKAD
CKA
KCSA
KCNA
Azure
AZ-104
Experience
Platform Engineer — Kubernetes & Azure
Liantis · Jul 2025 – Present · Bruges, Belgium
Building the Internal Developer Platform that will accommodate all present and future applications at Liantis. With the deprecation of Azure Spring Apps, the team took the opportunity to build a proper IDP from scratch. My focus is the resource provisioning layer: a set of Kubernetes clusters that orchestrates both Azure cloud resources and workload-centric clusters, with Crossplane serving as the internal infrastructure API — extending Kubernetes with custom resources and leveraging native reconciliation and self-healing.
Key contributions:
- Designed a type-safe configuration validation and promotion system using KCL as a programmatic rendering engine, eliminating a class of configuration drift errors across environments
- Built a local development environment (K3s + Azure Arc) so the team could develop and test platform changes locally, cutting feedback loops from cloud deployment cycles to minutes
- Implemented Crossplane compositions to provision Azure cloud resources through the self-service developer portal, transforming infrastructure from modules to self-service
- Resolved Crossplane performance bottlenecks through source-level analysis, improving throughput for the provisioning layer
- Implemented AKS Node Auto Provisioner (Karpenter-based) for intelligent node autoscaling across the cluster fleet
- Deployed DataDog observability across the platform, providing unified metrics, logs, and traces for operational visibility
- Implemented Kubernetes security hardening to ISO-27001 standard
Platform Engineer — Kubernetes & Azure Trainer
Colruyt Group (Consultant under Kapuani) · Jul 2024 – Jul 2025 · Belgium
Colruyt Group was in-sourcing a production platform serving millions of end users, with a hard deadline and a team that needed to acquire Kubernetes expertise from scratch. Embedded as Platform Engineer and trainer, I delivered hands-on Kubernetes and AKS training while bridging operational gaps in real-time, closing the distance between what the team could do on day one and what the platform required. The team completed the in-sourcing transition on schedule and reached independent operational capability within 12 months.
Cloud & DevOps Engineer
Narato (Kapuani) · Jan 2022 – Jul 2025 · Belgium
Worked across multiple client engagements as a consultant:
- Flanders Investment & Trade
- Lead Kubernetes maintaining multiple enterprise AKS clusters. Built CI/CD pipelines and Helm Charts for automated multi-cluster deployments. Provided ongoing consultancy to application teams.
- Departement Financiën en Begroting
- Co-led the on-premise to Azure migration. Introduced Azure Landing Zone and a Hub-Spoke setup. Configured Azure DevOps pipelines and migrated data analysis workloads to the cloud.
- Kapelli (internal product)
- Lead DevOps Engineer on an enterprise Data Orchestrator. Rewrote the full installation process as a modular, automated system using Azure Container Apps Jobs. Designed a Hub-Spoke cloud architecture and built an internal portal for non-technical tenant provisioning. Clients included:
- ArcelorMittal Logistics
- Cevora
- Flanders Investment & Trade
- Federale Overheidsdienst Mobiliteit
- Lead DevOps Engineer on an enterprise Data Orchestrator. Rewrote the full installation process as a modular, automated system using Azure Container Apps Jobs. Designed a Hub-Spoke cloud architecture and built an internal portal for non-technical tenant provisioning. Clients included:
- Bridgestone EMEA — Urgent Kubernetes security engagement. Analysed AKS vulnerabilities with Azure Defender for Cloud and resolved all blockers to unblock their production release.
Software Engineer — Junior Consultant
FrontForce (a Ferranti company) · Oct 2020 – Jan 2022 · Antwerp, Belgium
Started as a backend API developer on the VREG V-Test platform vtest.be, then expanded into DevOps: Kubernetes application development and CI/CD pipelines in a microservice architecture. This was my first time interacting with Kubernetes and guided my team through the steep learning curve.
Publications
I write about Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies. You can find these blogs here. Follow me on my LinkedIn page to get notified when I publish new articles.
Education
Karel de Grote-Hogeschool
Professionele Bachelor, Informatica - Application Development & Software Engineering · 2016–2020