Senior Product Leader
I’m an ultra-generalist at heart: a senior product leader with deep product and interaction design experience and strong front-end engineering skills. I move from direction to working software without losing sight of the whole—helping ambitious teams turn ambiguity into coherent, scalable products, from early ideas to experiences used by millions.
Available from December 2026
How I work
The most interesting product problems rarely belong to a single discipline. I move between four perspectives to understand the whole system—and help the people within it work toward the same outcome.
01 / Product
I get up to speed quickly, connect user needs, business goals, and technical reality, and make assumptions visible. I can shape the long-term system while prioritizing the experiments and decisions a team can act on today.
02 / Design
I am an experienced product and interaction designer with strong visual judgment. I use flows, interfaces, and prototypes to make ideas discussable, expose gaps, and discover what a product should become—not decorate decisions already made.
03 / Engineering
I am a strong front-end engineer who can still contribute production code, with broad full-stack understanding. I work across architecture and implementation with specialists—and build when working software is the fastest route to clarity.
04 / AI
I explore how AI changes the boundaries of a product—not merely how it automates what already exists. I look for new interactions, capabilities, and workflows that create meaningful user value, while using AI to sharpen the product process itself.
Selected work
My title has changed over the years. The work often starts in the same place: an opportunity that is not yet clear and something valuable that still needs to be built.
Scribbr
I joined as a product designer, then expanded into front-end engineering and product ownership as the product grew.
Worked across experience, prototyping, implementation, and product direction. Later built and led a cross-functional group, directly managing an average of six engineers and partnering with product management and design.
The product grew to nearly five million monthly users and became one of Scribbr’s most important acquisition channels.
Quillbot
Many valuable tools behaved like separate destinations. We believed they would be more useful as one coherent experience.
Co-shaped the platform strategy and combined staff-level product responsibility with engineering management across core writing products.
Helped bring writing, grammar checking, plagiarism detection, and AI detection into a clearer cross-product experience, creating a stronger foundation for users to move between capabilities.
Luyfel (and beyond)
During my years with Luyfel, I moved between early-stage products, incubators, agencies, and large organizations.
I built the initial front end for SignRequest, later acquired by Box; supported founders through the UtrechtInc incubator; and worked with MakerStreet on innovation bootcamps and interim design engagements. I also contributed to digital product work for organizations including ABN AMRO and KPN—joining KPN as a designer and gradually growing into product ownership.
How to enter an unfamiliar domain, understand its essential dynamics quickly, and help a team decide what matters now—and what needs to be true later.
Applied AI
AI is opening up entirely new kinds of products and interactions—possibilities that were difficult to imagine, let alone build, only a few years ago. It is already reshaping product design, engineering, and the way teams work.
AI is expanding what products can be. Software can now understand context, adapt to individual needs, create alongside people, and carry work forward in ways that were difficult to imagine only a few years ago. This opens an entirely new design space. The challenge is turning that possibility into experiences whose value justifies their cost and complexity—and that requires product, design, and engineering to evolve together.
AI is changing the product role just as profoundly. I use it to uncover opportunities, connect knowledge scattered across an organization, deepen user research, and turn ambiguity into clearer product direction. It accelerates shaping, roadmapping, and the work that prepares teams to build—and, when the foundations are right, can carry well-defined ideas directly into implementation through agentic development.
How I lead
I want teams to understand the problem, context, and outcome—not merely the tasks assigned to them. Once that foundation is shared, I give people room to shape the solution and take real ownership.
I stay close enough to challenge assumptions, remove obstacles, and make decisions when needed. My design and engineering background lets me engage with detail without turning that involvement into micromanagement.
Understand how users, business, experience, and technology influence one another.
Use stories, prototypes, diagrams, and software to replace abstract debate.
Invest in foundations while continuing to experiment and deliver value now.
Create clear outcomes, then let the team bring its expertise to the solution.
About
I have been making things for the web since I was a child—back when FrontPage, table layouts, and inline styles were considered a perfectly respectable tech stack.
I helped my primary-school teacher with a small website, made graphics in Photoshop, experimented with Flash, and eventually discovered CSS—which felt like an entirely new world.
That curiosity took me from interaction design and front-end engineering to running a product studio, freelancing, product ownership, product management, and engineering leadership. I never left the craft behind as my scope grew: I still design, build, and use those skills to make better product decisions. The titles changed; the motivation did not: understand the problem, bring people together, and make something useful.
Built small websites while still at school, occasionally even getting paid for them.
First official job—the first one that came with an employment contract. Surprisingly, it was in transport.
Co-founded Luyfel and began building products with startups, incubators, agencies, and large organizations.
Launched a social game. It did not become the next Wordfeud, but we learned a lot.
Joined KPN as a designer and grew into product ownership.
Started at Scribbr in design, later moving across engineering and product.
Moved into combined staff product and engineering leadership at Quillbot.
Over the years, I have worked with teams at
Beyond these recognizable names are many other companies, teams, and individuals—every bit as important in shaping how I work.
Let’s talk
From December 2026, I will be open to senior product leadership opportunities with teams turning promising ideas or proven products into coherent, scalable experiences. I am based in the Netherlands and open to remote or hybrid work with international scale-ups and larger organizations.
