Before
Legacy Kubernetes conditions
A high-traffic consumer platform presented systemic runtime failures, opaque production crashes and gaps in scaling and operational visibility.
Marco van Staden · Digital Expedition
I build digital landscapes.
Systems designed to endure, adapt and scale.
Career trail · 01–05
Follow the trail.
Each waypoint marks a shift in scale: from building software, to shaping systems, to helping teams move with clarity.
01Software developmentBuilding the craft foundation through product development, technical consulting, data analysis and self-hosted systems.
2021-present
- Built websites and product interfaces with React, Vue, Next.js and WordPress for startup clients.
- Developed Python services with Flask and FastAPI backed by MongoDB and Redis.
- Automated market-price analysis with SQL, Python and web-scraping workflows.
Field artefacts · Automated COVID-19 statistics platform · Self-hosted Linux web server · Colour-sensing line-following vehicle
02Solutions architectureDesigned cloud, mobile and integration solutions for Principle Choice Consultants and Celbux.
2023-2024
- Built automated CI/CD pipelines that reduced deployment times by 50%.
- Architected a Flutter application and Google Cloud backend that supported 80% of an IoT startup's functional operation.
- Applied cloud infrastructure to high-throughput FinTech systems delivered with Google and Deloitte collaborators.
Field artefacts · Flutter mobile platform · Google Cloud backend
03DevOps engineeringBuilt and secured infrastructure for Draslovka and Blue Cube Technologies across cloud and remote mining environments.
2024-2025
- Designed company-wide VPN infrastructure and centralized secure remote access.
- Implemented automated backups and disaster recovery across source, databases and operational data.
- Built Prometheus, Grafana, Loki and Promtail observability with canary monitoring for early anomaly detection.
Field artefacts · Secure VPN estate · CI/CD delivery pipelines · Full-stack observability platform
04Senior technical leadershipLed stabilization and greenfield re-architecture of Planet Fitness's Kubernetes-based consumer platform.
2025-present
- Resolved systemic runtime failures through scaling, node redundancy and structured observability.
- Re-architected legacy workloads toward elastic, scale-to-zero services on Cloud Run.
- Validated backend and database capacity assumptions through custom load and pressure testing.
Field artefacts · Kubernetes stabilization · Cloud Run architecture · Capacity-planning model
05Software engineering managementLeads software engineering at Planet Fitness across product delivery, platform strategy and engineering operations.
April 2026-present
- Designed secure GitHub and Azure DevOps delivery governance with RBAC and automated build, test and deployment pipelines.
- Automated mobile releases across the Apple App Store, Google Play and Huawei AppGallery with fastlane.
- Introduced AI-assisted pull-request review, code standards and technical knowledge workflows.
Field artefacts · Engineering delivery system · Automated multi-store releases · AI-enabled engineering workflows
Expeditions / Base camp
Planet Fitness digital transformation
Stabilization and greenfield re-architecture of a high-traffic consumer fitness platform across product, delivery, data and infrastructure.
Explore architecture
A layered map from member-facing product surfaces through services, infrastructure, data and operations.
Trace deployment
Source changes move through automated checks and controlled delivery toward observable workloads.
Inspect Kubernetes
Horizontal scaling, Uvicorn and Gunicorn tuning, node redundancy and structured observability stabilized legacy workloads before the serverless re-architecture.
- 01Flutter member app
- 02Firebase authentication and database
- 03API gateway
- 04Asynchronous FastAPI services
- 05Kubernetes workloads
- 06Cloud Run serverless workloads
- 07PostgreSQL services
- 08Google Cloud infrastructure
- 09Structured observability
- 10GitHub and Azure DevOps CI/CD
After
Stabilized and re-architected
Horizontal scaling, Uvicorn and Gunicorn tuning, node redundancy and structured observability stabilized the platform while Cloud Run introduced elastic scale-to-zero services and automated delivery.
Leadership and direction
Clarity at altitude.
Leadership is the work of making direction visible, decisions durable and progress sustainable.
Engineering leadership
Create clarity, strengthen the system around the team and make good work easier to sustain.
Architecture decisions
Make trade-offs explicit and choose structures that can adapt as the landscape changes.
Mentoring
Share context and judgment so capability grows beyond any single decision or person.
Platform strategy
Treat the platform as a product that reduces friction and compounds engineering effectiveness.
AI-enabled engineering
Apply emerging tools deliberately, with strong feedback loops, review and accountable ownership.
Long-term vision
Connect today’s technical choices to the organisation and product they must support tomorrow.
Hidden cabin · Optional detour
Off the main trail.
A quieter collection of what keeps me curious away from delivery plans and architecture diagrams.
Return to the trail →Hiking & mountains
Routes, weather, patience and the reward of a wider view.
Books & ideas
Notes from the ideas that continue to reshape the map.
Technical experiments
Small, practical explorations beyond the production trail.
Homelab
Infrastructure, observability and automation at a personal scale.
Photography & notes
Light, landscapes and observations collected along the way.
Current curiosities
The questions and experiments currently at the edge of the map.
Signal tower · Final waypoint
Establish a connection.
If you’re building a product, platform or engineering team that needs calm, practical technical leadership, send a signal.
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