gbrits

Location: Netherlands / GMT+2

Remote: Yes. Experienced with UK and US clients; open to timezone overlap.

Willing to relocate: No. Occasional travel is fine.

Technologies: Node.js/TypeScript, ClickHouse, PostgreSQL, Redis, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, DuckDB, Vue, Tailwind, event-driven systems, low-latency data pipelines, analytics infrastructure, and hybrid search/retrieval. Also comfortable with Python and Rust.

Résumé/CV: Available upon request

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geert-brits/

Email: gbrits<at>gmail<dot>com

Hands-on Staff/Principal engineer and architect with 20+ years of experience building backend systems, data-intensive products, search and retrieval infrastructure, internal tools, and applied-AI workflows.

I’m most useful when the business goal is understood but the product and technical shape are not. I help clarify what should be built, make tradeoffs explicit, shape the architecture, and build the critical parts myself. Backend is where I’m most at home, but I regularly work across APIs, data, frontend applications, analytics interfaces, and production operations. I bring strong product and UX judgment without moving away from implementation.

Selected work:

- Principal engineer and architect on a ground-up KPI and analytics platform rewrite with a five-person team, including its data models, self-service dashboards, and drill-down workflows. The company later exited for approximately €10M.

- Technical founder of a market-intelligence SaaS matching more than one million dynamic segments against continuous on-chain and off-chain streams, backed by ClickHouse pipelines processing billions of rows per day.

- Rebuilt a live B2B marketplace using Node.js, Vue, and Elasticsearch, including saved-search matching and notification infrastructure. Currently improving its search quality using hybrid retrieval, sparse-vector signals, reciprocal rank fusion, and reranking.

I prefer freelance and contract work as a hands-on senior IC at Staff or Principal level. Founding Engineer roles are also a strong fit. I’m open to full-time opportunities when the product, team, and role are an exceptional match.

Best fit: backend-heavy products, applied AI and workflow automation, analytics infrastructure, search and retrieval systems, complex internal tools, or early-stage teams that need architecture, product judgment, and implementation depth. My preferred leadership track is through product shaping, technical direction, mentoring, and hands-on engineering rather than people management.

Location: Netherlands / GMT+2 Remote: Yes. Experienced with UK and US clients; open to timezone overlap. Willing to relocate: No. Occasional travel is fine.

Technologies: Node.js/TypeScript, ClickHouse, PostgreSQL, Redis, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, DuckDB, Vue, Tailwind, event-driven systems, low-latency data pipelines, analytics infrastructure, and hybrid search/retrieval. Also comfortable with Python and Rust.

Résumé/CV: Available upon request LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geert-brits/ Email: gbrits<at>gmail<dot>com

Hands-on Staff/Principal engineer and architect with 20+ years of experience building backend systems, data-intensive products, search and retrieval infrastructure, internal tools, and applied-AI workflows.

I’m most useful when the business goal is understood but the product and technical shape are not. I help clarify what should be built, make tradeoffs explicit, shape the architecture, and build the critical parts myself. Backend is where I’m most at home, but I regularly work across APIs, data, frontend applications, analytics interfaces, and production operations. I bring strong product and UX judgment without moving away from implementation.

Selected work:

- Principal engineer and architect on a ground-up KPI and analytics platform rewrite with a five-person team, including its data models, self-service dashboards, and drill-down workflows. The company later exited for approximately €10M.

- Technical founder of a market-intelligence SaaS matching more than one million dynamic segments against continuous on-chain and off-chain streams, backed by ClickHouse pipelines processing billions of rows per day.

- Rebuilt a live B2B marketplace using Node.js, Vue, and Elasticsearch, including saved-search matching and notification infrastructure. Currently improving its search quality using hybrid retrieval, sparse-vector signals, reciprocal rank fusion, and reranking.

I prefer freelance and contract work as a hands-on senior IC at Staff or Principal level. Founding Engineer roles are also a strong fit. I’m open to full-time opportunities when the product, team, and role are an exceptional match.

Best fit: backend-heavy products, applied AI and workflow automation, analytics infrastructure, search and retrieval systems, complex internal tools, or early-stage teams that need architecture, product judgment, and implementation depth. My preferred leadership track is through product shaping, technical direction, mentoring, and hands-on engineering rather than people management.

Indeed. Or shorter: “auto”

Location: Netherlands / GMT+2

Remote: Yes. Experienced with US / UK clients; open to timezone overlap.

Willing to relocate: No, occasional travel OK.

Technologies: Backend architecture, data-intensive product systems, event-driven systems, low-latency pipelines, analytics infrastructure, search/retrieval, AI, Node.js/TypeScript, ClickHouse, DuckDB, PostgreSQL, Redis, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, Vue, Tailwind; also comfortable with Python and Rust, and quick to become productive in unfamiliar stacks.

Résumé/CV: Available upon request

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geert-brits/

Email: gbrits<at>gmail<dot>com

Hands-on principal engineer with 20+ years across backend systems, data-heavy products, search/retrieval, internal tools, and founder-led product work. Technical co-founder, CTO/CPO, architect, fractional technical lead, and engineering owner.

I work best where the business goal is clear but the technical shape still needs senior ownership: unclear requirements, fragmented tools and data, API boundaries, retrieval quality, and architecture that has to stay understandable as the product grows. I can own the technical architecture and system shape where needed, and I stay close enough to implementation to keep latency, operability, failure modes, and tradeoffs grounded in reality.

I work across the whole product system: internal tools, backend services, data/retrieval layers, API contracts, observability, and production behavior.

Selected work: Fractional principal engineer / architect for ground-up KPI/analytics platform rewrite (5-person team); company later exited for ~€10M. Technical founder / CTO / CPO for market-intelligence SaaS: live matching of 1M+ dynamic segments against continuous on-chain/off-chain streams; ClickHouse-backed pipelines processing billions of rows/day with near-real-time downstream availability. Marketplace search/matching rewrite (Elasticsearch, percolator-style saved searches, high-volume notification infrastructure) while keeping the live platform in production.

Looking for freelance, contract, fractional CTO, principal engineer, or technical lead roles where one senior person needs to hold the whole system in their head. Also open to full-time opportunities for an exceptional fit. Best fit: backend-heavy products, analytics/data infrastructure, complex internal tools, search/retrieval systems, or early-stage teams that need architecture + implementation depth without a large engineering org.

Location: Netherlands / GMT+2

Remote: Yes. Experienced with US / UK clients; open to timezone overlap.

Willing to relocate: No, occasional travel OK.

Technologies: Data engineering, backend architecture, event-driven systems, low-latency pipelines, analytics infrastructure, product engineering, Node.js, ClickHouse, DuckDB, PostgreSQL, Redis, SQLite, Vue, Tailwind

Résumé/CV: Available upon request

Email: gbrits<at>gmail<dot>com

Hands-on CTO / principal engineer with 20+ years in software engineering. Technical co-founder, CTO/CPO, architect, fractional product owner, and engineering lead.

I work best at the intersection of architecture and implementation: designing data-heavy systems well, then staying close enough to the engineering to keep latency, operability, failure modes, and tradeoffs grounded in reality.

Selected work: fractional lead/architect for ground-up KPI platform rewrite; 5-person FTE team; company later exited for €10M. CTO/CPO for crypto/data product; live matching of 1M+ complex dynamic slices against continuous on-chain/off-chain metric streams; high-throughput, near-real-time latency suitable for trading workflows. ClickHouse-backed worker pipelines processing billions of rows/day while preserving near-real-time downstream availability.

Looking for freelance, contract, fractional CTO, principal engineer, technical lead, or data engineering work.

Best fit: backend-heavy products, analytics/data infrastructure, complex internal tools, low-latency pipelines, or early-stage teams that need one senior person with both breadth and depth.

Location: Netherlands / GMT+2

Remote: Yes. Experienced with US / UK clients; open to timezone overlap.

Willing to relocate: No, occasional travel OK.

Technologies: Data engineering, backend architecture, event-driven systems, low-latency pipelines, analytics infrastructure, product engineering, Node.js, ClickHouse, DuckDB, PostgreSQL, Redis, SQLite, Vue, Tailwind

Résumé/CV: Available upon request

Email: [email protected]

Hands-on CTO / principal engineer with 20+ years in software engineering. Technical co-founder, CTO/CPO, architect, fractional product owner, and engineering lead.

I work best at the intersection of architecture and implementation: designing data-heavy systems well, then staying close enough to the engineering to keep latency, operability, failure modes, and tradeoffs grounded in reality.

Selected work: fractional lead/architect for ground-up KPI platform rewrite; 5-person FTE team; company later exited for €10M. CTO/CPO for crypto/data product; live matching of 1M+ complex dynamic slices against continuous on-chain/off-chain metric streams; high-throughput, near-real-time latency suitable for trading workflows. ClickHouse-backed worker pipelines processing billions of rows/day while preserving near-real-time downstream availability.

Looking for freelance, contract, fractional CTO, principal engineer, technical lead, or data engineering work. Best fit: backend-heavy products, analytics/data infrastructure, complex internal tools, low-latency pipelines, or early-stage teams that need one senior person with both breadth and depth.

Indeed. Extending idempotency to the response not merely the action wherever possible

Fwiw at least xtc and coke can be legally tested in the Netherlands. https://www.drugs-test.nl/en/testlocations/

Imagine iPhones with Geiger counters. Nicely aggregated in bite sized daily stats through Apple health

Congrats with the launch. This looks great. Inferring schemas on the fly is awesome to get started quickly, but are there ways to explicitly define a schema if I wanted to? For example, thinking of setting column specific compression

Yep. Lora's are the easiest way to go. Loads of tutorials on Youtube. This is a good one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70H03cv57-o

Isn't the Angolia backend just one of the possible 'sources' as they put it? You can easily add your own backend as a source I imagine

Awesome! Going to check it out

Slightly tangent, but it would be really powerful to be able to train a model (through LoRa probably) on your datawarehouse, having table structures of facts and dimensions.

Self service BI would be a solved problem. No more building tedious widgets, but simply ask ChatGPT or similar for 'last 5 yours pNl by business unit'. Bonus points if based on cardinality, etc. it will properly choose the correct chart type (e.g.: stacked bar).

Q: But what if all signs in the building are in mirror writing? A: If all signs in the building are in mirror writing, it would be a consistent theme throughout the building. In this case, the "push" sign written in mirror writing on the glass door should also be interpreted in the context of the building's theme. As a result, you should still push the door as the sign indicates, even though it's written in mirror writing.

I for one would welcome a second blogpost with the stateful example. I’ve been doing running totals (basically balances based on adding financial tx per account) but had to do it in some client code because I couldn’t figure out how to do a stateful resume in Sql

Clickhouse support for Tableplus landed 2 months ago. https://github.com/TablePlus/TablePlus/issues/670

mea culpa

DAI did not loose peg. This story is completely fabricated. There's a tendency on HN to hate on everything crypto, but come on. Please just look at the data.

In fact, along side USDC and BUSD, DAI is (or at least has been) trading at a slight premium the last couple of days.

If you can spare the $200 or something and you need a solid base to work from, Tailwind UI is the best money can buy.

So short vol?

check 12

Same here. The semi-realistic backdrops is what's most off-putting to me. Part cartoon / part realistic messes with my suspension of disbelief or something

This seems comparable to redis streams. How is it different?

So this is the ‘semantic web’ from ~15 years ago?

Also check out Dremio with parquet files stored on S3

To be complete something along the lines of: ‘if the answer is “maybe yes” a more computationally expensive is used to definitely decide yes or no’ should me added imo

Yes it surely is

The deception works because the sandwich-traders are generalizing their code to 'work' for all kinds of contracts. This with the intent to just about frontrun anything that matches their pretty broad criteria. Since there's likely multiple predators operating, only the fastest one wins. This doesn't leave time to test individual contracts out locally. Or so the rationale most likely goes

Exciting! Does this already have the concept of backfilling as mentioned by GP. Interested to know as well