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Eelco Wesemann

Platform Engineer • SRE

Infrastructure as Craft

Barendrecht, Netherlands • linkedin.com/in/eelcowesemann/

Summary

I build calm, reliable platforms that teams can trust. I turn messy infrastructure into reproducible systems that stay predictable under pressure. I lead by example, automate repetitive work, and set thoughtful defaults so the right way becomes the easy way. The result: less noise, clearer ownership, and engineers freed to focus on real work.

Core strengths

Platform Engineering, SRE, Infrastructure as Code
Automation: Ansible for ops automation, GitLab CI/CD, Python for data analysis and reporting (Pandas/Polars)
Elastic Stack: Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana (ELK), Elastic Cloud Enterprise (ECE)
Systems: Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Containers, KVM, ZFS
Ways of working: Reliability thinking, alerting hygiene, coaching, documentation, SAFe/Scrum

Highlights

  • Cut ansible-lint violations by 90% after moving from permissive to enforced checks in Dec 2024
  • Reworked review flow; -70% SecOps ticket volume, -70% waiting time for Platform Engineers, ~1 hour/day saved
  • Designed, deployed, and operated a central ECE platform now serving 14 teams; provisioning time dropped from months to hours, unified support behind one platform
  • Built a Flask-based infra insight tool; saved team leads ~1 day/fortnight; avoided ≥€20k vendor licence spend
  • Earlier career scale: ran redundant mail and antispam setup for 60k+ domains; led a zero-downtime FreeBSD to RHEL migration in a 600+ server estate

Experience

Platform Engineer, Logius

The Hague • Apr 2024 - Present

  • Own platform health across multiple Elasticsearch/ELK environments supporting national services; drive operational consistency
  • Codify deployment and run patterns in Ansible used across teams; reproducible and sensible defaults
  • Advocate reliability targets with product teams; align alerting to priorities and tune rules accordingly
  • Prepare for Elastic Cross-Cluster Replication (CCR) and multi-tenancy to broaden platform reach
  • Reduce toil and alert fatigue via targeted automation and cleaner observability signals
  • Unblock teammates and sister teams; keep delivery flow smooth

Key impacts:

  • Introduced ansible-lint in pipeline, permissive September 2024, enforced December 2024: -90% ansible-lint rule violations in merges
  • Redesigned the review process to optimise ticket flow: -70% SecOps ticket volume (~1 hour saved daily) and -70% waiting time for Platform Engineers

Senior Linux Specialist, Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK)

Zoetermeer • Apr 2019 - Mar 2024

  • Designed, deployed, and operated a central Elastic Cloud Enterprise platform serving 14 teams
  • Built a Flask-based infra insight tool (MongoDB, Pandas, Pydantic, Celery, RabbitMQ) aggregating TOPdesk, Ansible, and Grafana; automated reporting and reduced errors
  • Re-architected a monolithic Ansible repo into a modular Galaxy structure
  • Authored and maintained a broad Ansible role library; automated deployments and reduced manual ops
  • Acting Tech Lead for 6 months: coordinated delivery, represented the team in ART/SI/PI ceremonies, coached engineers; documented recommendations and handed over cleanly
  • Managed and improved production Elasticsearch environments; stability, uptime, predictability

Key impacts:

  • Reduced cluster provisioning time from months to hours
  • Onboarded 14 teams (Feb 2024), consolidated support into a single platform
  • Automated reporting saved team leads ~1 day per fortnight via the Flask-based insight tool
  • Avoided ≥€20k in licence spend by replacing vendor reporting with internal tooling
  • Improved maintainability and reusability of the Ansible codebase, lowering maintenance burden

Senior Linux Specialist, Nationaal Cyber Security Centrum (NCSC-NL)

The Hague • Mar 2018 - Mar 2019

  • Operated and refreshed secure SINA infrastructure including PKI; delivered next-gen rollout with minimal disruption
  • Managed a mixed physical and virtual infrastructure footprint in a high-trust environment

DevOps Engineer, Hoppinger

Rotterdam • Oct 2014 - Feb 2018

  • Transformed Puppet 2.7 legacy into modular Puppet 5 (r10k/Hiera); enabled multi-dev workflows and cleaner environments
  • Standardised change with Git Flow and GitLab CI/CD; enforced quality gates
  • Designed a Docker-based hosting platform deployable on OpenStack or bare metal; abstracted infra differences
  • Built ZFS-backed Ubuntu building blocks (KVM, Docker, central backup) to lower hosting TCO
  • Modernised the network stack with MikroTik CCR/CRS, VLAN segmentation, and CAPsMAN Wi-Fi

Selected personal projects

Homelab Engineer, Home.arpa Enterprises

Barendrecht • 1997 - Present

  • Arch Linux KVM host with rotating OpenBSD/FreeBSD guests; OpenBSD DNS for private zones
  • Container services via Portainer: Nextcloud, Vaultwarden, Ghost CMS, static sites
  • Raspberry Pi fleet offering LDAP, NTP, privacy-filtered DNS, CalDAV
  • Off-site OpenBSD guest via WireGuard to expose public projects safely
  • Segmented networks across Private, Generic Services, IoT, DMZ VLANs
  • Off-site incremental ZFS + Restic backups protecting ~35 TB
  • Patterns proven here later applied to ELK and ECE platforms in production

Founder, Loeniks

Capelle aan den IJssel • Jul 2009 - Jun 2014 (part-time, concurrent with Snow)

  • Bootstrapped and operated a lean VPS platform: XenServer virtualisation, Bacula backups, sensible defaults; automated provisioning and base images; handled comms and incidents

Older experience

Senior UNIX/Linux Consultant, Snow BV (selected engagements)

Geldermalsen • Oct 2007 - Sep 2014

  • Deltares: kept national flood-forecasting platforms running; introduced maintenance windows; designed scalable FreeBSD + ZFS storage (20+ TB starting point)
  • Mirabeau: automated ov-chipkaart.nl infrastructure with Puppet
  • ASML: extended Perl tooling to consume the RHEV API

Senior UNIX & Linux Systems Administrator, ProServe

Alblasserdam • Apr 2006 - Sep 2007

  • Designed and implemented HA server environments with 99.9% SLAs; led zero-downtime FreeBSD 4.11 to CentOS/RHEL migration
  • Built internal automation for updates, backups, and backup-health visualisation; third-line escalation point across a 600+ server landscape

Linux Systems Administrator, Netnation Europe

Rotterdam • Apr 2004 - Mar 2006

  • Designed and operated redundant mail and DNS clusters for 60k+ domains; standardised automation for backups and quotas across ~900 servers

Support Engineer, Sitecom

Rotterdam • Apr 2003 - Mar 2004

  • Technical support for consumer networking products

Junior Systems Administrator, Wirehub! Internet

Rotterdam • Dec 2000 - Aug 2002

  • Managed Apache virtual hosts across FreeBSD, Linux, and Windows NT; built internal tools in PHP/Perl/Bash; supported web and DB ops

Skilled Frontdesk Operative, Wirehub! Internet

Rotterdam • Jul 2000 - Dec 2000

  • Provided technical support by phone and email for business customers

Certifications

  • Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)
  • Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA)
  • PCEP Certified Entry-Level Python Programmer
  • SNIA Certified Storage Professional
  • Puppet Certified Professional
  • Sun Certified System Administrator for Solaris 10
  • LPIC-2, LPIC-1
  • Novell Certified Linux Administrator
  • Novell Data Center Technical Specialist
  • ITIL v3 Foundations

Recent courses

  • Enterprise Python
  • Data Analysis with Kibana
  • Advanced Python
  • Red Hat Enterprise Performance Tuning (RH442)

Education

Hogeschool Rotterdam: Computer Science
Thomas More: PABO
St. Montfort College: HAVO

Languages

Dutch: Native
English: Native or bilingual proficiency