Niels Zeilemaker
Global CTO Data & AI
Woerden, Utrecht, Netherlands
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolNiels Zeilemaker is a seasoned data and platform technology leader serving as Global CTO Data & AI at Xebia, with 13+ years of experience building data platforms and architecting distributed systems from startups to enterprises. He combines hands-on engineering—still spending about half his time on client work—with strategic stewardship of technology choices across a global consultancy, and holds a PhD in peer-to-peer and decentralized systems from TU Delft. Niels is an active open-source contributor, with notable backend work in widely used projects like Apache Airflow and dbt-spark, and earlier contributions to privacy-focused P2P client Tribler. His background in encryption, anonymization and decentralized computing informs pragmatic designs for resilient, privacy-aware data infrastructures at scale. Based in the Netherlands, he frequently bridges research rigour and production engineering to help organizations operationalize complex data and AI platforms.
13 years of coding experience
15 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor’s Degree Computer Science, Bachelor’s Degree Computer Science at HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht (Hogeschool Utrecht)Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Parallel and Distributed Systems Peer-to-Peer Systems, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Parallel and Distributed Systems Peer-to-Peer Systems at Delft University of Technology
English, Dutch
Github Skills (28)
apache-airflow10
apache-spark10
sqlite10
python10
jinja210
dbt10
sql10
database-management10
google-bigquery9
data-warehouse9
jinjava9
datamart9
test-automation9
bittorrent9
unit-testing8
Programming languages (11)
Github contributions (5)
Tribler/tribler
Mar 2013 - Nov 2015
Privacy enhanced BitTorrent client with P2P content discovery
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Database Engineer
Back-end Developer & Database EngineerContributions:1408 commits, 28 PRs, 9 pushes in 2 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Niels's contributions primarily focused on enhancing the database functionality and improving the stability of the Tribler client. They made several commits related to database upgrades, test fixes, and optimizations for SQLiteCacheDB, and included changes in the handling of download progress and torrent metadata. The commits also feature improvements to the torrent handling and the process of building.
pythoncontent-discoverytransmissionprivacyp2p
apache/airflow
Apr 2017 - Apr 2019
Apache Airflow - A platform to programmatically author, schedule, and monitor workflows
Role in this project:Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:36 PRs, 89 comments in 1 year 11 months
Contributions summary:Niels primarily contributed to the Apache Airflow codebase by implementing new features and fixing bugs related to Jinja2 templating, FTPHook, and Google BigQuery integration. They also focused on improving the robustness of the system by adding closing methods to all connections and cursors. Furthermore, the user worked on log filename rendering and made updates to support Azure Fileshare and S3 functionality.
monitorpythonschedulerapacheprogrammatically
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