2015 – 2017
Westhaven University
MSc, distributed systems
Thesis on crash consistency in log-structured storage. Graduated cum laude.
RESULTCum laude
NKESSLING@TERMINALRTM 17:28:52 · UTC 15:28
CV ~/cv
Staff engineer on a payments ledger, platform engineer on CI, backend engineer on queues. Now independent.
- YEARS
- 9 in production
- ROLES
- 5 + independent
- TALKS
- 4
- BASED
- Rotterdam, CET
CV CURRICULUM · PLAIN TEXT1 PAGE
The one-page version.
Roles, talks and skills in plain text. Print it or save it as a PDF.
EXPERIENCE
2025–Now
Systems engineerIndependent
Durability audits, build caches and queues for payments and health companies. Maintainer of tidewater and kiln.
2022–2025
Staff engineer, ledgerNorrvik Pay
Led the move of the payments ledger to an append-only log. Zero reconciliation breaks in 30 months.
2020–2022
Senior engineer, platformHarbourmeal
Built the internal build cache that became kiln. Owned CI for 40 engineers.
2018–2020
Backend engineerPostquill
Queues and delivery for 60 million emails a month. Wrote the fair scheduler.
2017–2018
Software engineerQuaymark Health
On-call and reliability for patient messaging. Cut pages from eleven a week to one.
2015–2017
MSc, distributed systemsWesthaven University
Thesis on crash consistency in log-structured storage. Graduated cum laude.
TALKS
2026
You also have to fsync the directoryStorage Systems Meetup, Amsterdam
2025
Cache keys are inputs, not branch namesBuild Tools Day, Berlin
2025
Fair queues in PostgresQueue Conf, Ghent
2024
Crash testing on a laptopSystems Lunch, Utrecht
SKILLS
Storage
write-ahead logs, crash consistency, recovery, fsync semantics
Build
content-addressed caches, remote execution, CI design
Queues
Postgres queues, idempotency, fair scheduling, backpressure
Ops
OpenTelemetry, on-call design, incident reviews
Languages
Rust, Go, TypeScript, Zig, SQL
HIST CAREER · 2015–NOWSCOPE INDEX 0–10
Career, as a price history.
The line is scope: systems I owned, people who depended on them, and what broke if I got it wrong. Scroll to move through the years.
SCOPE · NOW9.4▲ 0.8 vs last role
2017 – 2018
Quaymark Health
Software engineer
On-call and reliability for patient messaging. Cut pages from eleven a week to one.
RESULT11 → 1 pages / wk
2018 – 2020
Postquill
Backend engineer
Queues and delivery for 60 million emails a month. Wrote the fair scheduler.
RESULT60M emails / mo
2020 – 2022
Harbourmeal
Senior engineer, platform
Built the internal build cache that became kiln. Owned CI for 40 engineers.
RESULTCI 6x faster
2022 – 2025
Norrvik Pay
Staff engineer, ledger
Led the move of the payments ledger to an append-only log. Zero reconciliation breaks in 30 months.
RESULT€4.1B settled / yr
2025 – Now
Independent
Systems engineer
Durability audits, build caches and queues for payments and health companies. Maintainer of tidewater and kiln.
RESULT6 clients
RATE CLIENTS · ANALYST NOTES6 NOTES
What clients wrote afterwards.
Filed like analyst notes: the rating, the result it was based on, and who wrote it.
CONSENSUS6 OF 6 · HIRE AGAIN0 HOLD · 0 PASS
RATING · HIRE AGAIN0 lost writes since
“Noa found the durability bug we had been blaming on hardware for a year, fixed it, and left us a crash test so it stays fixed.”
RATING · HIRE AGAINCI 18 m → 3 m
“Our CI went from a coffee break to a sip. The sizing guide alone saved us a quarter of platform work.”
RATING · HIRE AGAINHandover in 2 days
“Clear writing, clear pull requests, and no surprises. The handover doc read like a good README.”
RATING · HIRE AGAINp95 41 s → 38 ms
“The fair queue change was eight lines and it ended a year of support tickets about slow emails.”
RATING · HIRE AGAIN−48% code shipped
“Noa asks the question that makes the design smaller. We shipped half the code we planned and it was faster.”
RATING · HIRE AGAIN11 → 1 pages/week
“Pages went from eleven a week to one. The team finally took real holidays.”