Summary
Jan-willem Van Der Meer is a Lead Software Developer with 15 years of experience building robust Ruby on Rails backends and cloud-native systems, currently driving architecture and engineering practices at Ixly. He specializes in pragmatic, test-driven development, refactoring large codebases to "boring Rails," and introducing modern front-end stacks (Hotwire, Stimulus, Tailwind) alongside legacy systems. Deeply experienced with Kubernetes and Google Cloud, he also led migrations from MySQL to Postgres and implemented CI pipelines and API architectures (OAuth2/JSON/Swagger). Known for raising team standards through code reviews, linters, and documentation, he combines hands-on coding with developer coaching. His career includes improving performance at scale (notable speedups and operational tooling) and a long-running freelance practice focused on Rails craftsmanship. Based in Gelderland, Netherlands, he pairs a Unix-centric toolset with a collaborative developer network to solve hard problems with simple, maintainable solutions.
15 years of coding experience
14 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor, Digital communcations, Bachelor, Digital communcations at HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht (Hogeschool Utrecht)
Technische informatica, MBO, Technische informatica, MBO at ROC A12