Freelance Technical Consultant & Principal Engineer

I help enterprise organizations scale their technical products through strategic architecture, hands-on engineering, and team leadership.

Architectural Guardrails
Strategic Engineering
Technical Team Leadership
Strategic Impact at:
Transavia // KPMG LLP (UK) // Royal Dutch Shell // CGI

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.

Highlighted roles

An overview of the most relevant professional experience in the last few years.

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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.

Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert
Active Certification

Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert

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