Backend software engineer in Amsterdam

I specialise in Java and distributed systems, with experience building and operating backend services in logistics and financial services.

View experience ↓ GitHub ↗ LinkedIn ↗
Scott looking over a garden

01 / About

About

I’m a backend software engineer based in Amsterdam, currently working at Picnic. Over the past six years, I’ve built and operated distributed Java systems across logistics and financial services. I’m most interested in the parts of backend engineering that make services dependable and understandable: architecture, reliability, observability, messaging and developer tooling.

I also care about how engineering teams adopt AI tools in practice, particularly how they retain ownership and high standards while changing the way they work. Outside work, I go to the gym and spend a lot of time on music, films, reading and travel.

02 / Experience

Experience

Java Developer

Picnic Technologies · Amsterdam

  • Build supplier-ordering capabilities for Picnic’s logistics platform as part of an inbound systems team that owns roughly eight Java microservices end to end.
  • Led initiatives that reduced operational overhead and the risk of product unavailability and incompleteness.
  • Use Project Reactor, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, Docker, Kubernetes and AWS; take part in on-call rotations and resolve critical production incidents under time pressure.
  • Built agentic developer tooling for centrally published technical documentation, adopted by teams across the company.
  • Drive responsible AI-tooling adoption through practical presentations and a domain-wide AI all-hands; regularly interview engineers and co-host Picnic’s weekly engineering stand-up.

Engineer I

American Express · London / Remote

  • Built and maintained reactive Java services in a distributed landscape of roughly twenty microservices, using Project Reactor and resilient integration patterns.
  • Developed a global gateway for ingesting financial data from upstream legacy systems across event streams and APIs.
  • Decoupled one of the programme’s largest services from a shared SDK, replacing implicit dependencies with intentional service-specific contracts.
  • Mentored a junior engineer, interviewed internship candidates and contributed to onboarding, technical presentations and team knowledge-sharing.

Technology Graduate Engineer

American Express · Burgess Hill

  • Rotated through backend, full-stack and security engineering teams, building Java microservices, React interfaces and internal security-testing automation.

First Foundry Analyst

American Express · Burgess Hill

  • Prototyped a blockchain application in the travel and lifestyle domain and presented the approach and findings to senior engineers.

03 / Toolkit

Skills

Languages & backend

Java, Spring, Project Reactor, reactive programming, Python, TypeScript, Rust and C

Systems & data

Distributed systems, microservices, event-driven architecture, PostgreSQL, MongoDB and Cassandra

Platform & messaging

Kubernetes, Docker, AWS, RabbitMQ, Kafka, CI/CD and production on-call

Observability & tooling

Datadog, Scalyr, Jaeger, Sentry, Claude Code, Codex and Cursor

04 / Projects

Projects

01 / PRODUCT↗

Meal Planner

A full-stack Next.js application for creating personalised weekly meal plans.

 02 / DATA↗

Spotify Stats

An interactive dashboard for exploring personal Spotify listening data.

 03 / BACKEND↗

Podcast Social Platform

A Java and Spring backend exploring podcast discovery, Docker and Kubernetes.

 04 / RUST CLI↗

mdfmt

A formatter for viewing Markdown files in the terminal, written in Rust.

 05 / CLI↗

setlister

A command-line tool that reconstructs DJ set tracklists from YouTube videos.

05 / Education

Education and certifications

BSc (Hons) Computer Science, 2:1

University of St Andrews · Dissertation: MIDI Controller Envelope Editor

Oracle Certified Professional

Java SE 11 Developer

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

Amazon Web Services