Curriculum Vitae of Rommert Zijlstra

Full-stack development on the Netherlands' leading gift card exchange—a two-sided marketplace where consumers sell unused gift cards for cash or buy discounted cards across 100+ brands.

• Built exchange and sales dashboards in Rails, backed by PostgreSQL queries, to track revenue per brand.
• Built back-end integrations with exchange APIs to automate card issuance and activation.
• Transitioned our customer-facing exchange flow from bespoke CSS to a Tailwind architecture supporting multiple entrypoints and reducing CSS bundle sizes by 35%.
• Improved accessibility, notably enabling keyboard and screen-reader support for gift card exchange flows.
• Integrated external PSP data into the back end to surface payment breakdowns and improve payment tracing.
• Implemented E2E testing for critical paths.

Front End technical lead for multiple real-time financial transaction products in the Web3 ecosystem, including NFT and token-based platforms.

• Designed and implemented multiple real-time financial transaction architectures: NFT rentals, token-creation & trading, staking systems, and in-game assets.
• Led front-end technical direction, onboarding, mentorship, and hiring of engineers on a 5-person team.
• Responsible for project/sprint breakdowns, planning and retrospectives to keep the team aligned.
• Updated SDKs and other developer tooling; provided developer and user support.
• Introduced forked chain E2E testing, guarding against buggy releases.
• Refined the reNFT v2 peer-to-peer lending web application. At peak we handled 1,500 rental transactions a day.

Pro4All creates software facilitating project management processes in construction: from document management to on-site quality control.

• Co-responsible for front-end technical direction of the core product, ProStream.
• Established front-end architecture practices, testing methodologies, and code review guidelines in RFCs, raising code quality and reducing bug instances across the team.
• Started and chaired the front-end guild—a cross-team, 8-member forum for sharing knowledge and aligning on standards.
• Aligned product owners, designers, and users on feature direction.
• Implemented and optimized Azure CI/CD pipelines.

IN60SECONDS engineers understanding by creating stunning explanimations and gripping interactive experiences.

• Implemented an in-house production and delivery pipeline for interactive productions in 6 months.
• Advised and directed clients and 10+ colleagues on accessibility, interaction design, and tech.
• Responsible for estimation, budgeting and managing delivery.
• Set up devops architecture: a self-hosted GitLab with CI/CD pipelines provisioning staging and production environments.
• Delivered a range of WCAG 2.1 compliant projects for government and businesses.
• Maintained websites and projects; optimized server-side and front-end performance.

Digital product and web agency for clear strategy and crisp interaction. Worked for clients like Elsevier, Alcon, Edenspiekermann, International Card Services, Van Herwerden, de Volkskrant, Sony Music NL and Querido publishers.

• Responsible for technical direction across the full stack—UX, front end, back end, operations, and infrastructure.
• Grew the agency to a team of five, handling hiring, client acquisition, and project delivery.
• Designed, implemented, and scaled full-stack web applications of varying complexity across many industries.
• Provided technical consultancy, UX & accessibility strategy, and performance optimization.
• Highlights: Designed & developed an interactive longreads platform and publisher tooling for Querido in Laravel—a complex UX and technical challenge spanning content authoring, responsive typography, and reader experience. Designed and built the webshop for Van Herwerden, the largest bike retailer in the Netherlands, on Craft Commerce. Architected CSS systems, optimized critical rendering paths, and implemented WCAG 2.1 compliance for Elsevier Reaxys.

I started my professional journey as a freelance web designer & developer. I designed and built websites and e-commerce solutions.

Studied the interplay between technology, culture, and human experience—how media shapes what people need, want, and feel. Completed coursework; did not finish the degree.

Communication & strategy, project management, system architecture, interaction design, UX design and usability.

Open Source

• I developed my own Vim theme called FANSI. Initially in VimScript, later ported to Lua for NeoVim. Still being maintained.
• Minor contributions to different tools and toolchains I’ve used over the years, ranging from Vim plugins, shell tools, PHP libraries, Blockchain SDKs, etc.

Languages

Fluent English in speech and writing. Fluent Dutch in speech and writing. Can talk to computers.

Interest & Leisure

I love learning new tech. Currently: local LLMs and agent harnesses. Supporting a Human 1.0 LTS deployment (i.e. daughter) with my wife and feline. Reading: technology, history & society, some philosophy, sci-fi. Music: a force of human nature! I sing and play guitar. Sports: bouldering and skateboarding. Friends & family, a bit of gaming—hit me up for some Factorio, Minecraft or Rocket League!