Career Profile
I helped build DuckDB from a research prototype at CWI Amsterdam into one of the most widely adopted analytical databases in the world, with 36k+ GitHub stars, 28M+ monthly downloads, and embedded across the modern data stack. As one of the earliest contributors, I served as Chief Operating Officer (COO) of DuckDB Labs from 2021 to 2023, helping scale the company from a small research spinoff into a leading open-source database company. I now lead core infrastructure as Principal Engineer, helping drive the core of DuckDB and DuckLake. Previously a research intern at Microsoft Research, one of the most selective research programs in industry. Published at VLDB and ICDE, the top peer-reviewed venues in database research. PhD from CWI/Leiden University.
Experiences
Built and maintained core DuckDB subsystems including the parallel CSV Reader & Sniffer, ART Persistent Storage, Arrow & ADBC integration (~38x faster than ODBC), Enum/Dictionary encoding, BIGNUM implementation, Python client, index joins, and zone maps.
Helped grow DuckDB Labs during its early phase, from a small research spinoff at CWI into a leading open-source database company. Contributed to core DuckDB development including the Arrow integration, Enum/Dictionary encoding, ART Persistent Storage, BIGNUM, Python client, index joins, and zone maps.
Database Architectures group. Research on progressive indexing and analytical database systems. Early DuckDB development alongside the core research team that created the project.
DMX group (4-month internship). Designed and implemented an experimental JIT-compiled execution engine for analytical query processing in SQL Server, working directly with the SQL Server team on next-generation query execution. Microsoft Research is one of the most selective research internship programs in the world.
Talks & Media
Speaker at FOSDEM, EuroPython, and international data conferences.
2025
2024
2023
Open Source Projects
Selected Publications
Published at VLDB, ICDE, and SIGMOD — the leading peer-reviewed venues in database systems research.