Rick van Hek

Rick van Hek has progressive work experience in software engineering, with a focus on back-end development. Rick started their career as a Freelance Software Engineer, working directly with clients on custom development, improvements, bug fixing, and maintenance.

Rick then joined Realdolmen as a Software Engineer, where they worked on various projects. Rick also participated in the AcADDemICT Track, a training program designed to enhance their skills as a Java software engineer.

Rick later worked at Toyota Motor Europe as a Software Engineer, contributing to the development of customer portal projects for Lexus and Toyota. Rick'sachievements included validating notifications between clients and end-users and creating aggregation services.

Subsequently, Rick joined Tradeling as a Senior Software Engineer, where they focused on back-end development using Node.js (NestJS). Rick successfully revamped and improved features to increase the number of RFQs by 50%. Rick utilized PostgreSQL, NestJS, and Kafka for seamless integration with other microservices.

Currently, Rick is working at Tenderd as an Engineering Manager, starting in 2023.

During their education, Rick pursued a Master's degree at KU Leuven. Rick completed a Master Thesis project focused on extracting logical facts from a dataset and building an architecture to answer natural language questions. Rick also worked on a mobile game app as part of a team, applying test-driven development and optimizing user satisfaction.

Before their software engineering career, Rick had freelance experience as a photographer, capturing events and handling post-editing tasks. Additionally, they worked as a bartender at Eetcafé Thalia during their vacations.

Rick van Hek completed their education in a chronological order, starting in 2009 and ending in 2019. From 2009 to 2014, they attended Campus Harlindes en Relindis Maaseik, where they obtained a Middelbaar degree in Wiskunde wetenschappen (mathematical sciences). Rick then pursued a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science at KU Leuven from 2014 to 2017. Following that, they continued their education at KU Leuven and obtained a Master's degree in Computer Science from 2017 to 2019.

In addition to their formal education, Rick van Hek has also obtained several certifications from Adobe. In September and October of 2021, they obtained certifications in Adobe Experience Manager Back-End Developer, Adobe Experience Manager Dev/Ops, Adobe Experience Manager Front-End Developer, and Adobe Experience Manager Sites Business Practitioner from Adobe.