Freelance software architect / Developer / Consultant / Coach
Erwin van der Valk
+31 (0) 6 31 78 82 76
Erwin van der Valk is a highly experienced Microsoft software architect, team lead, developer and consultant, with a passion for creating beautiful, high quality software. He has over 12 years of relevant working experience at many well respected companies.
As a former employee of Microsoft patterns & practices, Erwin has a lot of experience in identifying, creating and applying industry best practices in software development, software architecture and development processes. For example, he has contributed significantly to guidance projects such as the Microsoft Application Architecture Guide V2. Erwin still maintains a close relationship with Microsoft patterns & practices. For example, he recently contributed to the Enteprise Library Silverlight Integration Pack and is now contributing to the Enterprise Library Azure Integration Pack.
With excellent communication skills and leadership capabilities, Erwin is a real team player who has experience in leading or participating in large and complex software development projects.
With excellent communication skills and leadership capabilities, Erwin is a real team player who has experience in leading or participating in large and complex software development projects.
Click here to download my resume as a PDF.
Software Architect
Erwin has many years of experience as an architect on several large and complex software development projects. As an architect, he ensures that projects achieve a high quality bar and are executed according to industry best practices. This way, he is able to ensure that projects meet their functional and non-functional requirements and can be completed on time and within budget. With good verbal and written communication skills, Erwin is very effective at communicating with stake holders, end users, team members and IT operations.
Software Developer
In his heart, Erwin is a software developer. He truly enjoys writing code and blogging about software development on his blog ‘Practicing Patterns’ at www.erwinvandervalk.net. He is a very efficient programmer with very high coding standards and is an expert in several programming languages and technologies on the Microsoft Platform. As a former patterns & practices employee, he knows many design patterns and knows when and how to apply them correctly. He is an advocate for agile software development techniques such as Scrum and Test Driven Design. Because Erwin likes a challenge, he typically designs and programs the most complex or critical parts of an application.
Consultant / Coach
Erwin really enjoys sharing his knowledge on software development processes and best practices. He often presents at conventions such as the patterns & practices summit or the Dev Days. As a software development consultant, he has helped many individual developers, projects and organizations to become better at software development. For example, he has helped several organizations with implementing agile development techniques, such as Test Driven Development or Scrum, using Visual Studio Team System.
Also, Erwin is often asked to perform code or design reviews, where he always provides clear, actionable and very constructive feedback.
Working Experience
Freelance Vendor developer @ Microsoft patterns & practices
10-2010 – present, Redmond USA
Microsoft patterns & practices delivers guidance that helps architects and developers to build high quality software which is based on industry best practices.
Description:
Contributed as a subject matter expert, technical writer and software developer to several projects:
• Windows Phone 7 guidance
• Enterprise Library Silverlight Integration Pack
• Enterprise Library Azure Integration Pack
Technologies:
.Net 4 (c#), Windows Phone 7, Silverlight, Windows Azure, Windows Azure Appfabric, SQL Azure
Principal Architect @ Achmea IT
01/2010 – 09/2010, Tilburg NL
Achmea is one of the largest insurance companies in The Netherlands. It has over 200 developers working on the Microsoft platform.
Responsible for providing vision and technical leadership to the Achmea Microsoft developer community. Also responsible for improving the technical quality of software development projects within Achmea. Successfully introduced agile development techniques to Achmea, such as Test Driven Development and Scrum.
.Net 3.5, Office Sharepoint Server 2007 & 2010, Enterprise library, Visual Studio Team System 2010, Silverlight, Asp.net, WCF
Software Development Engineer @
Microsoft patterns & practices
Microsoft patterns & practices
07/2008 – 01/2010, Redmond, USA
Microsoft patterns & practices delivers guidance that helps architects and developers to build high quality software which is based on industry best practices. Contributed as a software developer and development lead to many p&p projects. Practiced agile development techniques such as scrum, extreme programming, test driven design and continuous integration. Worked with many industry leaders to create high quality guidance.
- Contributed significantly to Application Architecture Guide 2.0, as a subject matter expert, writer and reviewer.
- Designed and implemented large parts of Prism 1.0 and 2.0: Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight.
- Designed and implemented most reusable components for ‘Developing Sharepoint Applications 2007’
- Technically responsible for the ‘Claims based Identity and Access Control Guide’.
.Net 3.5, Silverlight, Sharepoint Server, Enterprise library, Prism, WIF, ADFS 2.0, Windows Azure, XUnit, CruiseControl.net, Team Foundation Server, Asp.net MVC., Silverlight, WPF, WCF
01/2007 – 07/2008, Schiphol-Rijk, NL
Microsoft Services Netherlands helps to make Enterprise customers successful on the Microsoft platform.
Worked with customers to improve their software development, by providing architectural guidance, performing code and design reviews, facilitating workshops and through hands on coaching. For example:
- Code and design review of the Centric Smart Client Software Factory
- Implementation of the RDW Software Factory, which included implementing Team Foundation Server, defining the reference architecture for smart clients and creating software development guidelines.
.Net 3.5, SQL Server, Team Foundation Server, Visual Studio 6 – 2008, WCF, WPF, Silverlight
11/2001 – 12/2007, Rijswijk, NL
Qurius is a Microsoft gold partner that specializes in custom software development on the Microsoft platform.
Provided technical leadership and was technically responsible for several large and complex projects that were all very successful, such as:
- An ERP system for BDO, that took 12 developers 2 years to develop.
- Several web applications for Wegener E-Media, such as www.kleintjesmarkt.nl, www.jobtrack.nl. Also an identity provider and payment server called LoginService. Together, these systems formed a large service oriented architecture.
Technologies:
Asp.net, Windows Forms, WCF, ASMX Web Services, SQL Server.
1998 – 2001
Worked as a software developer on various projects and using technologies such as Asp, Com+, C++, SQL Server, Oracle, Visual Basic.
