Kees Postma

This is me

With a degree in Investment and Financial Risk Management, experience as a business analyst for a leading banking software provider, several years in high-performance offshore yacht racing, and hands-on experience with web development, I have a unique set of skills ideally suited to understanding and managing the development of web products, both from a business as well as a technological point of view.

I have a proven track record of rapidly gaining proficiency regardless of environment or job setting, and I'm always thinking of the human side of products by understanding what the customer wants, what the business goals are, and what the team needs.

Below is a detailed version of my professional profile. If you're interested in working together, give me a call or shoot me an email and let's grab a coffee!

+44 (0)74 0772 1911
kk.postma@gmail.com

Experience

Teaching Assistant

Le Wagon

Supported the successful training of students in Europe's #1 immersive full-stack Ruby on Rails program.

  • Discussed, analyzed and strategized MVP requirements, database schema design, and MVC methodology with multiple teams building marketplace applications.
  • Mentored students through pair-programming and solved tickets raised by students on a variety of questions in Ruby on Rails, SQL, HTML/CSS, Bootstrap, and JavaScript.
July - October 2017 London, UK

Lead Developer

www.brainpowered.me

Designed, implemented and shipped the final project of Le Wagon’s bootcamp with two classmates.

  • Developed the web app from planning and design in Sketch into a working MVP two weeks later.
  • Introduced Trello task management, GitHub code reviews, and set up Heroku for production.
  • Built with Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, HTML, SCSS, and jQuery.
June 2017 London, UK

Professional Sailor

Kees Postma Yacht Racing

Specialised in offshore yacht racing with various high-performance teams.

  • Improvised solutions to serious damage to achieve a class win in a race across the Atlantic Ocean.
  • Managed unexpected situations, including serious medical emergency and coordinating evacuation.
September 2014 - Present Global

Global Brand Ambassador

Garmin

Represented the global leader in satellite navigation and official supplier of the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race.

  • Wrote blogs and gathered digital content featuring Garmin's marine products.
  • Hosted corporate relations on sailing days in various places around the world.
September 2013 - July 2014 Global

Circumnavigator & Watch Captain

Clipper Round the World Yacht Race

Completed an eleven-month sailing race around the world having never sailed before.

  • Learnt how to sail and rapidly became watch captain and second-in-command to the skipper.
  • Rallied the team to turn a last place into a podium finish in a race from the US to Ireland.
September 2013 - July 2014 Global

Business Analyst

Ohpen

Worked on the development of Ohpen’s cloud-based core-banking platform.

  • Interpreted and translated US tax law ‘FATCA’ into functional and operational specifications.
  • Co-wrote procedure that migrated Robeco into the AWS cloud, the first bank in the world to do so.
  • Designed user flows, wireframes, and UX with Axure RP and evaluated these with the engineers.
June 2012 - July 2013 Amsterdam, NL

Trainee Junior Consultant

Coresta

Returned for a second summer internship to support the real estate finance team.

  • Pitched real estate investment funds to potential investors.
  • Achieved a significant improvement in operational efficiency by streamlining Excel spreadsheets using VBA.
July - September 2011 Eindhoven, NL

Summer Intern

Ohpen

Supported the company for a summer as an all-round intern.

  • Carried out KYC checks and processed transactions for the operations team.
  • Wrote functional specifications of improvements and new features for the company’s cloud-based core-banking platform.
May - July 2011 Amsterdam, NL

Trainee Junior Consultant

Coresta

Supported the real estate finance team.

  • Executed cash flow analysis for new real estate investment funds.
  • Conducted market and financial analysis on clients’ prospective developments.
June - September 2010 Eindhoven, NL

Technologies I've used

Languages

Ruby

RSpec

SQL

HTML

CSS

Sass

Javascript

Frameworks

Rails

Node.js

Database Systems

PostgreSQL

Libraries

React (Native)

Redux

Bootstrap

jQuery

Material UI

Tools

Git

GitHub

Postman

DbDesigner

Heroku

Trello

Figma

Sketch

Expo XDE

Side Projects

Passage Logger

Even in 2017, sailors usually keep track of their sailing experience either in a paper logbook or in an Excel spreadsheet. Paper logbooks get lost and excel spreadsheets are forgotten about. Enter Passage Logger! A simple app I'm building that allows sailors to keep track of their trips, miles, and time at sea.

My first goal is to ship an MVP web-app to start getting user feedback. After that I will consider whether I want to also work on a native iOS/Android app, or whether a web-app is enough. To give myself flexibility for this decision (and because I wanted to learn more about API development and React with Redux) I decided to build the app as a RESTful Rails API with a Postgres database serving data to a separate React and Redux front-end.

Brainpowered

Final project at the Le Wagon Coding Bootcamp, built with a team of three over the course of 10 working days. The idea arose from mutual frustrations with UK higher education: A) Coursework that students put a lot of effort into never gets looked at again once they graduate and B) The 'chicken and the egg' situation of needing work experience to get a job, but also needing a job to get work experience. Brainpowered allows students to complete real projects for real companies, allowing students to work on real-world issues and boost their professional profile and allowing companies to determine talent and motivation.

We designed the app in Sketch and implemented task management using a simple Trello board. The product is built in Ruby on Rails, with a PostgreSQL database and a Bootstrapped front-end built with HTML, SCSS, and jQuery. Version control was handled with git and GitHub and the product is hosted on Heroku.

Education

Full-stack web development bootcamp

Le Wagon

Completed the nine-week intensive bootcamp on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, git, GitHub, Heroku and Ruby on Rails at the #1 Coding Bootcamp in Europe. Designed and shipped a complete web-app within 10 working days.
April - June 2017 London, UK

BSc Investment and Financial Risk Management

Cass Business School

Graduated with 1st Class degree with Honours from one of the leading schools for business, finance, and accounting in Europe.
2009 - 2012 London, UK

International Baccalaureate Diploma

Antwerp International School

Obtained the IB Diploma scoring 42 out of 45 points (98th percentile worldwide)
2007 - 2009 Antwerp, BE