Principal Engineer & Strategic Technology Consultant

I bridge business strategy and technical execution, helping enterprise organizations make complex technology decisions, modernize critical platforms, and scale engineering teams.

Strategic Technology
Enterprise Architecture
Engineering Leadership
Strategic Impact at:
Transavia // KPMG LLP (UK) // Royal Dutch Shell // CGI
  • 17+ Years in the trenches Engineering and leading enterprise systems since 2009
  • £150M+ Contracts secured Multi-year UK government deals won on solutions I engineered at KPMG
  • 40+ Engineers led Across DevOps, Data, QA and Software, coaching juniors to senior and tech leads to agentic coding
  • 5 Industries served Aviation, energy, finance, government and professional services

Areas of Expertise

Where I deliver the most value for enterprise organizations.

Architectural Guardrails

Strategic governance for high-stakes environments.

Implementation of security-first architectures and governance models designed to protect enterprise assets. Utilizing proven standards that supported products securing £150M+ in contracts at KPMG, I establish the technical blueprints and automated guardrails like Fortify and SonarQube to prevent technical debt and ensure global compliance.

Strategic Engineering

Mission-critical implementation and legacy modernization.

Surgical engineering focused on solving the complex technical hurdles that block product roadmaps. This includes the orchestration of cloud-native transformations, such as the successful supplanting of legacy AS-400 systems at Transavia, and the delivery of high-performance prototypes that ensure long-term operational excellence.

Technical Team Leadership

Scaling organizations through engineering enablement.

Bridging the gap between business vision and technical execution for enterprise-scale organizations. Experience directing large-scale, globally distributed teams (including over 40 engineers at KPMG) across DevOps, Data, and QA to align engineering culture with strategic organizational goals.

AI-Accelerated Engineering

Driving GenAI and agentic workflows into real delivery.

Hands-on with the modern AI toolchain: GitHub Copilot and the Copilot CLI, Claude Code, and the Model Context Protocol (MCP). I apply context engineering, authoring reusable Claude skills and repository instructions so AI agents work to a team's standards, and bring AI-assisted coding into everyday delivery. At Transavia I drove Copilot adoption through live demonstrations and upskilled engineers in agentic workflows, turning AI from novelty into measurable delivery velocity.

Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert
Active Certification

Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert

Verified via Microsoft Learn

Career at a glance

Seventeen years across regulated, high-stakes industries, from oil & gas to aviation and government.

  • Aviation
  • Energy
  • Finance
  • Government
  • Professional Services
  • 2023 Present
    Freelance Senior ICT Consultant Freelance Embedded technical adviser at Transavia, the engineer other teams and the business turn to for connectivity, critical-role cover, and high-priority incidents Technical Advisory Partner Connectivity Azure Modernization Cross-team Delivery Aviation & Travel Transavia Schiphol, The Netherlands 3 yrs 6 mo Read the case study
  • 2018 2022
    Principal Software Engineer Scaling a learning platform to a flagship product, leading 40+ engineers Strategy / vision Force multiplier Mentor Professional Services & Enterprise Advisory KPMG - Learning Solutions Canary Wharf, London, United Kingdom 3 yrs 7 mo Read the case study
  • 2016 2018
    Staff Engineer Realigning and accelerating delivery of an enterprise learning platform Design Dev User Testing Professional Services & Enterprise Advisory KPMG - Learning Solutions Canary Wharf, London, United Kingdom 2 yrs 8 mo
    Key impact
    • Concept to launch
    • Bias for action
    • Distributed systems
    • Performance manager
  • 2015 2017
    Senior Software Engineer → Technical Lead Leading delivery of the pension information platform for UK enterprise clients Technical Leadership C#/.NET Enterprise Clients Professional Services & Enterprise Advisory KPMG - Digital Mobile Solutions Canary Wharf, London, United Kingdom 1 yr 4 mo
  • 2015 2015
    Freelance Software Consultant Freelance Sole delivery of a complete custom system for a medium-sized business, owning design through to delivery End-to-End Delivery Software Consulting Stakeholder Management IT Systems Integration Kelderro The Hague Area, The Netherlands 9 mo
    Key impact
    • Owned the full lifecycle: design, build, delivery and end responsibility
    • Sole engineer on the engagement, from client kick-off to final handover
    • Worked directly with non-technical stakeholders to shape requirements and expectations
  • 2012 2014
    Consultant: Technical Lead Modernizing market-sensitive financial systems, cutting release cycles from a full day to minutes Team Lead .NET SOX Energy & Utilities CGI, Royal Dutch Shell The Hague, The Netherlands 2 yrs
    Key impact
    • Significant decrease in the estate's operating costs
    • Collaboration with consultants and internal personnel
    • Creating a highly confidential application from idea to launch
    • Deliver a .NET application combined with Python (IronPython)
  • 2011 2012
    Consultant: Senior Software Engineer Modernizing the global reservoir management system tracking worldwide oil reserves Design Dev User Testing Energy & Utilities CGI, Royal Dutch Shell The Hague Area, The Netherlands 1 yr 3 mo
  • 2009 2011
    Consultant: Software Engineer Automating system-to-system communication between government systems at UWV, removing the manual steps from the process System Integration Process Automation Government Government & Public CGI (Logica), UWV Amstelveen, The Netherlands 2 yrs 4 mo

About Rob op den Kelder

I've spent 17+ years in the trenches, from leading 40+ globally distributed engineers at KPMG to modernizing legacy financial systems for Transavia.

As a Strategic Technical Leader, I focus on the high-leverage decisions that prevent technical debt and ensure long-term scalability. While I still code to keep my saw sharp, my primary value lies in ensuring your architecture supports your business goals with the same rigor I used to help secure £150M+ in enterprise contracts.

My approach is built on three pillars of experience:

Enterprise Architecture

Designing scalable, event-driven microservice architectures for global firms like KPMG.

Legacy Modernization

Orchestrating cloud-native transformations to replace aging infrastructure, such as the AS-400 migration at Transavia.

Engineering Enablement

Scaling team maturity and delivery quality across DevOps, Data, and QA disciplines.

Outside client work, I'm a pro bono IT strategy advisor to non-technical leaders at local non-profits and small businesses, from translating vendor proposals into clear business guidance to leading IT procurement for an animal shelter.

Kelder is Dutch for cellar: the foundation everything else is built on. Fitting, since that's what I build.

Technical Toolkit

Languages, platforms, and tools I use to deliver enterprise-grade solutions.

AI-Assisted Engineering

  • GitHub Copilot
  • Copilot CLI
  • Claude Code
  • Claude Skills
  • Context Engineering
  • MCP
  • Agentic Workflows

Languages & Frameworks

  • C# / .NET
  • .NET Aspire
  • TypeScript
  • React
  • PowerShell
  • SQL

Cloud & Infrastructure

  • Azure
  • Azure Functions
  • Service Bus
  • Cosmos DB
  • Bicep
  • Terraform
  • Docker

Architecture

  • Microservices
  • Event-Driven
  • Domain-Driven Design
  • Cloud-Native
  • Enterprise Integration
  • REST & gRPC APIs
  • Legacy Modernization

Delivery & Quality

  • GitHub Actions
  • Azure DevOps
  • TeamCity
  • Octopus Deploy
  • SonarQube
  • Fortify

Open To

  • Go
  • Rust
  • Kubernetes