Rijk Van Zanten
CTO & Co-Founder at Directus
New York, New York, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolRijk Van Zanten is a seasoned CTO and co-founder with 11 years of experience building full-stack web platforms and leading engineering teams from Amsterdam to New York. As lead maintainer of Directus, he bridges product vision and implementation, contributing to API tooling, documentation, and UX refinements that make database-driven content accessible via REST/GraphQL. He combines hands-on engineering—moving and refactoring core extensions and setting up documentation infrastructure—with strategic leadership in a fast-growing open-source business. In parallel he teaches design and digital media at Parsons and previously at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, bringing a strong design-driven perspective to developer tooling. Known for pragmatic problem-solving, he often focuses on the subtle improvements (like event fixes and UI display tweaks) that noticeably raise product quality.
11 years of coding experience
3 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science - BSc Communication and Multimedia Design, Bachelor of Science - BSc Communication and Multimedia Design at Amsterdam University of Applied SciencesVWO EM, VWO EM at Almere College KampenMPS Communication Design Digital Communication and Media/Multimedia, MPS Communication Design Digital Communication and Media/Multimedia at The New School
Stackoverflow
1reputation
0reached
0answers
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Github Skills (15)
javascript10
api10
vue10
apidoc10
vue-jsx10
documentation10
rest-api9
cms9
wrapper8
vuepress7
css6
php4
graphql4
wpgraphql4
wordpress-graphql4
Programming languages (22)
Github contributions (5)
directus/v8-archive
Mar 2018 - Apr 2021
Directus Database API — Wraps Custom SQL Databases with a REST/GraphQL API
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:52 releases, 5 reviews, 556 commits in 3 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Rijk primarily contributed to the documentation and configuration of the Directus API project. They established the VuePress configuration, including navigation and repository links, to prepare for the API documentation. Furthermore, they moved code from an extensions repository into the API project and made various modifications to the codebase, including event name fixes and adding the "no-wrap" class to specific display components.
cmsdatabase-apivuevuejsdirectus
directus/app
Feb 2018 - Nov 2020
Directus Admin Application — An Intuitive WebApp for Managing Database Content
Contributions:51 releases, 1223 PRs, 4928 pushes in 2 years 9 months
managing-databaseadmindirectusintuitivedatabase
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