gbrits

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geert-brits/

Email: gbrits<at>gmail<dot>com

Hands-on Staff/Principal engineer and architect with 20+ years of experience building backend systems, data-intensive products, search and retrieval infrastructure, internal tools, and applied-AI workflows.

I’m most useful when the business goal is understood but the product and technical shape are not. I help clarify what should be built, make tradeoffs explicit, shape the architecture, and build the critical parts myself. Backend is where I’m most at home, but I regularly work across APIs, data, frontend applications, analytics interfaces, and production operations. I bring strong product and UX judgment without moving away from implementation.

Selected work:

- Principal engineer and architect on a ground-up KPI and analytics platform rewrite with a five-person team, including its data models, self-service dashboards, and drill-down workflows. The company later exited for approximately €10M.

- Technical founder of a market-intelligence SaaS matching more than one million dynamic segments against continuous on-chain and off-chain streams, backed by ClickHouse pipelines processing billions of rows per day.

- Rebuilt a live B2B marketplace using Node.js, Vue, and Elasticsearch, including saved-search matching and notification infrastructure. Currently improving its search quality using hybrid retrieval, sparse-vector signals, reciprocal rank fusion, and reranking.

I prefer freelance and contract work as a hands-on senior IC at Staff or Principal level. Founding Engineer roles are also a strong fit. I’m open to full-time opportunities when the product, team, and role are an exceptional match.

Best fit: backend-heavy products, applied AI and workflow automation, analytics infrastructure, search and retrieval systems, complex internal tools, or early-stage teams that need architecture, product judgment, and implementation depth. My preferred leadership track is through product shaping, technical direction, mentoring, and hands-on engineering rather than people management.

Résumé/CV: Available upon request LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geert-brits/ Email: gbrits<at>gmail<dot>com

Hands-on Staff/Principal engineer and architect with 20+ years of experience building backend systems, data-intensive products, search and retrieval infrastructure, internal tools, and applied-AI workflows.

I’m most useful when the business goal is understood but the product and technical shape are not. I help clarify what should be built, make tradeoffs explicit, shape the architecture, and build the critical parts myself. Backend is where I’m most at home, but I regularly work across APIs, data, frontend applications, analytics interfaces, and production operations. I bring strong product and UX judgment without moving away from implementation.

Selected work:

- Principal engineer and architect on a ground-up KPI and analytics platform rewrite with a five-person team, including its data models, self-service dashboards, and drill-down workflows. The company later exited for approximately €10M.

- Technical founder of a market-intelligence SaaS matching more than one million dynamic segments against continuous on-chain and off-chain streams, backed by ClickHouse pipelines processing billions of rows per day.

- Rebuilt a live B2B marketplace using Node.js, Vue, and Elasticsearch, including saved-search matching and notification infrastructure. Currently improving its search quality using hybrid retrieval, sparse-vector signals, reciprocal rank fusion, and reranking.

I prefer freelance and contract work as a hands-on senior IC at Staff or Principal level. Founding Engineer roles are also a strong fit. I’m open to full-time opportunities when the product, team, and role are an exceptional match.

Best fit: backend-heavy products, applied AI and workflow automation, analytics infrastructure, search and retrieval systems, complex internal tools, or early-stage teams that need architecture, product judgment, and implementation depth. My preferred leadership track is through product shaping, technical direction, mentoring, and hands-on engineering rather than people management.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geert-brits/

Email: gbrits<at>gmail<dot>com

Hands-on principal engineer with 20+ years across backend systems, data-heavy products, search/retrieval, internal tools, and founder-led product work. Technical co-founder, CTO/CPO, architect, fractional technical lead, and engineering owner.

I work best where the business goal is clear but the technical shape still needs senior ownership: unclear requirements, fragmented tools and data, API boundaries, retrieval quality, and architecture that has to stay understandable as the product grows. I can own the technical architecture and system shape where needed, and I stay close enough to implementation to keep latency, operability, failure modes, and tradeoffs grounded in reality.

I work across the whole product system: internal tools, backend services, data/retrieval layers, API contracts, observability, and production behavior.

Selected work: Fractional principal engineer / architect for ground-up KPI/analytics platform rewrite (5-person team); company later exited for ~€10M. Technical founder / CTO / CPO for market-intelligence SaaS: live matching of 1M+ dynamic segments against continuous on-chain/off-chain streams; ClickHouse-backed pipelines processing billions of rows/day with near-real-time downstream availability. Marketplace search/matching rewrite (Elasticsearch, percolator-style saved searches, high-volume notification infrastructure) while keeping the live platform in production.

Looking for freelance, contract, fractional CTO, principal engineer, or technical lead roles where one senior person needs to hold the whole system in their head. Also open to full-time opportunities for an exceptional fit. Best fit: backend-heavy products, analytics/data infrastructure, complex internal tools, search/retrieval systems, or early-stage teams that need architecture + implementation depth without a large engineering org.

Résumé/CV: Available upon request LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geert-brits/ Email: gbrits<at>gmail<dot>com

Hands-on principal engineer with 20+ years across backend systems, data-heavy products, search/retrieval, internal tools, and founder-led product work. Technical co-founder, CTO/CPO, architect, fractional technical lead, and engineering owner.

I work best where the business goal is clear but the technical shape still needs senior ownership: unclear requirements, fragmented tools and data, API boundaries, retrieval quality, and architecture that has to stay understandable as the product grows. I can own the technical architecture and system shape where needed, and I stay close enough to implementation to keep latency, operability, failure modes, and tradeoffs grounded in reality.

I work across the whole product system: internal tools, backend services, data/retrieval layers, API contracts, observability, and production behavior.

Selected work: Fractional principal engineer / architect for ground-up KPI/analytics platform rewrite (5-person team); company later exited for ~€10M. Technical founder / CTO / CPO for market-intelligence SaaS: live matching of 1M+ dynamic segments against continuous on-chain/off-chain streams; ClickHouse-backed pipelines processing billions of rows/day with near-real-time downstream availability. Marketplace search/matching rewrite (Elasticsearch, percolator-style saved searches, high-volume notification infrastructure) while keeping the live platform in production.

Looking for freelance, contract, fractional CTO, principal engineer, or technical lead roles where one senior person needs to hold the whole system in their head. Also open to full-time opportunities for an exceptional fit. Best fit: backend-heavy products, analytics/data infrastructure, complex internal tools, search/retrieval systems, or early-stage teams that need architecture + implementation depth without a large engineering org.