Volt Software is the company name I’m freelancing under. My actual name is Michael de Lang. I’m a C++ developer/architect that’s interested in data-driven engineering, which software development is sorerely lacking.

My dual major in Electrical Engineering (Saxion, Enschede) as well as Software Engineering (University of Amsterdam) provide me a unique insight into my main domain of expertise: Embedded Software Engineering. My thesis analysed Worst-Case Execution Time of an academic drone program using a super computer. Knowledge on latency, throughput and optimization are valuable in the Embedded field. However, the real value is in setting up software in maintainable and productive ways.

My second domain of expertise answers that latter part. I’ve worked for big government projects, dealing with petabytes of data and billions of calculations within tight deadlines using Scaled Agile Framework and PRINCE2 methodologies. To be successful in this context requires knowing about scaling horizontally and Bounded Contexts (from Domain Driven Design). These organisations also mean working with multiple teams and breaking up work in such a way that overhead is minimized, lest the project becomes too expensive. Making software that other people can understand, especially if the project lasts multiple decades, requires a completely different approach.

Today’s trend of microservices, multiple languages, geographically distributed teams and a competitive labour pool provides unique challenges. The last 5 years I have operated as a freelancer and have learned how to navigate multiple contexts. From startups struggling to find customers, to Small and Medium Enterprises that want to scale up to big government projects on fixed price deadlines.

One of my joys comes from teaching people to become better at their craft. Seeing people grow over time and be able to overcome novel problems by themselves gives me a satisfaction that code alone never will be able to give.

I am available for coaching, training, code reviews and independent contracting. Please reach out at michael@volt-software.nl if you are interested.

You can also join the Volt Software Discord.