Curriculum Vitae
Hidde Baggelaar
Solution Architect / Software Architect
Hilversum, North Holland, Netherlands
Business needs, system boundaries, integration, delivery, and long-term maintainability.
Profile
I design software solutions that connect business needs, product goals, technical constraints, and delivery reality. My strongest work sits where architecture has to become practical: understanding the problem, shaping the solution, defining boundaries, choosing technology that fits the context, and helping teams deliver without losing sight of maintainability, reliability, and future change.
My background combines solution architecture, software architecture, technical leadership, and deep hands-on engineering. I have worked across e-learning platforms, backend systems, web platforms, cloud infrastructure, game technology, and interactive products. That range helps me approach architecture from both sides: I can reason about the larger solution landscape, and I can still understand the implementation details that make or break delivery.
In recent years, I have created and implemented a microservices-based e-learning platform, translating product and customer needs into scalable technical solutions. I also work with AI-assisted productivity workflows, especially where they reduce repetitive work, improve content handling, or help users find the right learning path faster. I lead a small team of developers responsible for day-to-day customer requirements, balancing architectural direction with hands-on delivery and operational reliability.
Strengths
- Business-to-technology translation: I turn customer, product, and operational needs into concrete solution structures, implementation direction, and delivery priorities.
- Platform decomposition: I break monolithic systems into smaller services with clearer ownership, reusable capabilities, and lower maintenance overhead.
- Integration architecture: I connect platforms, portals, analytics systems, persistence providers, and learning standards while keeping vendor-specific concerns out of core product logic.
- Event-driven architecture: I use Kafka-based event flows to let services be added, replaced, scaled, or specialized without forcing changes through the whole platform.
- AI-assisted productivity: I apply AI where it reduces repetitive work, improves discovery, speeds up content handling, or helps users and teams make better use of existing information.
- Cloud solution design: I design Azure-based infrastructure using Docker-based services, Azure Bicep deployments, and virtual machine scale sets when legacy constraints need to coexist with scalable services.
- Non-functional requirements: I pay attention to scalability, maintainability, reliability, security, performance, deployment control, and operational impact when shaping solutions.
How I Approach Solution Design
I prefer architecture that is understandable to the people who need to build, operate, and evolve it. I look for the smallest solution that still respects the important constraints: business value, delivery risk, data ownership, integration boundaries, operational support, security, and future change.
I am comfortable working with stakeholders to clarify the problem, with developers to make the implementation realistic, and with operational constraints to keep the solution deployable and supportable. I do not see architecture as a document that sits apart from delivery; I see it as a set of decisions that should help the team move with more confidence.
Representative Architecture Work
E-learning Platform Architecture
I have designed and evolved e-learning platforms across NodeJS, PHP, Java, Haxe, and web technologies, with support for SCORM and LTI functionality so learner progress can be tracked, reviewed, and integrated into broader educational workflows.
- I designed a microservices-based architecture to reduce the maintenance burden of monolithic applications and create shareable service capabilities.
- I designed a Kafka-based event bus architecture that allows services to take on load, enhance behaviour, or be swapped without tightly coupling the wider platform.
- I designed Azure-based platform infrastructure using Docker-based Azure services, Azure Bicep deployment definitions, and virtual machine scale sets where legacy database constraints still had to be respected.
- I designed a data-driven database architecture to support deployments with changing data requirements while retaining production-level control where needed.
Solution themes: service boundaries, event-driven design, cloud deployment, legacy coexistence, data governance, operational scalability.
AI-Assisted Productivity Workflows
I use AI most deliberately where it can remove repetitive work, improve content discovery, or make existing knowledge easier to act on. In e-learning and productivity contexts, that means treating AI as part of a practical workflow rather than as a standalone experiment.
- I applied AI workflows to e-learning material categorisation, helping reduce manual classification effort and making learning content easier to organise and reuse.
- I worked with personalised learning path suggestions so users could move through available material with more guidance and less manual searching.
- I added AI-driven productivity workflows to everyday tasks, focusing on faster user output, better information handling, and reduced friction in repeated work.
- I look at AI features through an architectural lens: data quality, human review, integration boundaries, operational fit, and whether the workflow genuinely saves time.
Solution themes: productivity automation, content categorisation, knowledge discovery, personalised guidance, practical AI adoption.
Data, Security, and Persistence
I have designed systems where data had to remain portable, inspectable, secure, or independent from a specific storage provider.
- I designed encryption-based architecture for sensitive database data, placing encryption and decryption behind a dedicated layer to reduce exposure risk in the event of a breach.
- I built serialization and encryption frameworks supporting XML, JSON, ByteArray, BA64, and AES-based value protection.
- I designed a multi-platform persistence layer for Carnage, allowing game data to be saved through multiple storage providers without changing game logic.
Solution themes: data abstraction, provider independence, encryption boundaries, runtime diagnostics, serialization contracts.
Runtime, Tooling, and Performance
Earlier in my career, I designed reusable runtime systems for commercial games. Although these were game systems, the architectural concerns were familiar: shared foundations, strict platform limits, performance constraints, tool support, and clean separation between product logic and technical infrastructure.
- I built an AS3 game engine containing a physics and collision world, game world, blit renderer, audio system, level editor, cinematics manager, and serialization/encryption framework.
- I designed high-performance rendering, animation, and collision systems that kept shipped games stable with many thousands of objects.
- I built data-driven state machines, level editors, instanced object tooling, motion sensor arrays, and touch manipulation components to reduce rebuild friction and improve workflows.
Solution themes: reusable technical foundations, performance pipelines, cache strategy, workflow design, runtime configurability.
Integration and Distributed Systems
I have worked on systems where timing, latency, and external platform integration had to be designed explicitly.
- I designed lag-based network prediction for an AS3 SmartFoxServer prototype, keeping gameplay usable up to 200ms latency.
- I integrated games with Facebook, MeinVZ, Hyves, Netlog, Disney XD, Mochi, Kongregate, and Google Analytics while preserving core game behaviour across platform-specific requirements.
Solution themes: latency tolerance, integration boundaries, backend design, platform interoperability, platform-specific constraints.
Experience Timeline
BeOne Development
Software Architect
Architectural direction and hands-on delivery for e-learning platforms, customer requirements, platform evolution, microservices, AI-assisted workflows, and operational reliability.
Enite Games
Owner
- Unity and JavaScript-based games, serious games, and e-learning applications.
- Work for hire focused on practical interactive experiences and learning products.
Boon Software - e-learning technology
Co-Owner
Created custom e-learning systems across Java, Flash, Flex, ActionScript, HTML, Haxe, jQuery, CSS, and JavaScript.
Mijnkassabon
Partner and Software Architect
Social Developers.nl
Partner and Technical Director
Technical direction and delivery for Facebook applications and campaign-driven web products.
Qest Creative Studios
Studio Manager / Technical Director
Responsible for technical aspects ranging from software architecture to hardware requirements.
WeirdBeard
Software Engineer / Senior Programmer
Built reusable engine, rendering, collision, animation, serialization, persistence, level editing, and platform integration systems for shipped commercial games.
Playlogic Game Factory
Programmer
Worked on EyePet for PS3 Move, contributing gameplay systems, data-driven state machines, and motion sensor accuracy improvements.
Spellborn Works
Encounter Designer / Scripter
Created UnrealScript scripts, refactored old systems, converted scripted functions to C++ where needed, and redesigned boss encounters.
Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica
Master Student / Trainee
Researched how visualisations can improve understanding of large software metric datasets and software evolution data.
CiderHouse
Trainee
Worked on an online community and profiling site.
T-Systems
Intern
- Created a customer and order database in Java and MSSQL.
- Created a web portal using OSS as a test case to promote OSS within T-Systems.
Selected Technical Domains
Cloud, Backend, and Platform
- Microservices architecture
- Kafka-based event-driven systems
- Azure services and Azure Bicep
- Docker-based services
- Virtual machine scale sets
- SCORM and LTI e-learning functionality
- NodeJS, PHP, Java, Haxe, C#, ASP.NET, C++, JavaScript
- MySQL and MSSQL
Data and Integration
- Data-driven database architecture
- Encryption and decryption layers for sensitive data
- Serialization frameworks for XML, JSON, ByteArray, and BA64
- Persistence provider abstraction
- Social platform and game portal integration
- Google Analytics integration
AI and Productivity
- AI-assisted productivity workflows
- E-learning material categorisation
- Personalised learning path suggestions
- Knowledge discovery and content reuse
- Human-review workflow design
Runtime and Performance
- AS3 engine architecture
- Blit rendering pipelines
- Animation caching
- Quad Tree AABB collision prediction
- Impulse-based collision solving
- Quaternion-based movement and rotation systems
- Network prediction and latency compensation
- Unreal Engine, Unity, Flash, EyeToy, PS3 Move
Tools and Workflow Systems
- Level editors
- Property inspectors
- Multi-select editing workflows
- Instanced object tooling
- Data-driven state machines
- Motion sensor arrays
- Touch manipulation components
Education and Research
University of Amsterdam
Master, Software Engineering | 2007 - 2008
Avans Hogeschool Den Bosch
Bachelor, Computer Science | 2003 - 2007
Research: Evaluating Programmer Performance, a master's thesis on using visualisation tools to analyse large collections of software metrics from a student project.