>_ kamaradski.com

$ whoami

Willem
Visscher

Director of Technical Operations | TechOps, DevOps, FinOps, Service Delivery, and Team Leadership

Dutch technical operations leader based in Germany with a background spanning hands-on engineering, operational design, outsourcing, financial services, cloud infrastructure, internal tooling, and people management.

  • 17years technical hands-on
  • 14years people management
  • 13years outsourcing business
  • 10years financial services

01 // whoami

Professional profile

Summary

I have spent my career operating at the point where technology, service reliability, people leadership, and business delivery meet. My background ranges from classic system administration and infrastructure to operational tooling, monitoring, process design, incident management, and organizational scaling.

I am strongest in environments where things need to be built, stabilized, redesigned, or scaled with a pragmatic engineering mindset and direct operational ownership.

Since 2026, I have also been operating my own Kleingewerbe under the name Willem Visscher - IT Services.

Personal details

Name
Willem Visscher
Nickname
Kamaradski
Nationality
Dutch
Residence
Germany

Personal keywords

Ideasconcept creatorfree-thinkerhard-working dedicatedsharingcreativefun precisefamilydo-ertogether do rightlearningpersistentoutgoing musiccarshands-onmechanics gardenautodidacticmetal detectingreading gaming

Recognition

  • IBM Employee of the Month, April 2008

Languages

Language Read Write Spoken
DutchNativeNativeNative
EnglishFluentFluentFluent
GermanFluentProficientFluent
BulgarianInsufficientInsufficientConversational

02 // experience

Career timeline

Feb 2022 - Present

Xolvis GmbH, Germany

Director of Technical Operations

SaaS and payments solutions in the automotive industry

Responsible for complete technical operations outside development: DevOps, TechOps, IT Service Desk, and Business Operations. Built and redesigned departments, structures, tooling, and operational foundations to support future hyper-scalability.

Oct 2013 - Jan 2022

PPRO Financial Ltd, Germany

Head of (Technical) Operations

Digital financial services, payment service provider

Owned technical operations, SLA and KPI tracking, internal tool development, monitoring, on-call and incident management, change management, partner operations, 3rd-level support, and FinOps. Also led the tooling and monitoring engineering team as principal engineer during the final period.

Aug 2012 - Sep 2013

ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, Germany

Digital Content Manager for Maxdome.de

Digital content delivery, B2C

Managed digital content delivery, transcoding, DRM-based streaming workflows, metadata, content uploads, and troubleshooting of content delivery tooling and CMS processes.

Jul 2011 - Mar 2012

William Hill Online Casino, Bulgaria

VIP Manager

Global service desk, B2C

Identified and managed high-value customers in the Dutch and Belgian market through gameplay and spending analysis, with direct account management responsibility.

Oct 2009 - Oct 2011

Sutherland Global Services EOOD, Bulgaria

Team Manager / Team Manager Collections

Technical support, customer care, finance and accounting outsourcing

Led delivery, client communication, recruitment, process design, training, escalations, WFM scheduling, reporting, quality systems, and startup transitions for teams supporting brands including Jamba, McAfee, and Dell.

Oct 2007 - Oct 2009

IBM, Scotland

Global Technical Mentor Lead

Technical support centre, B2B and B2C

Negotiated KPIs, analyzed performance and training needs, created knowledge materials, maintained technical QA, ran train-the-trainer programs, and managed the test lab across three geographies.

2007

KPN Contact B.V., the Netherlands

CSR 2nd line and Crisis Control Team Agent

Technical support centre ISP, B2C

Handled VOIP support, second-line troubleshooting, and crisis-team work for nationwide product implementation issues and service solution development.

2005 - 2007

Borkes Computers and Office Centre, the Netherlands

Technical Service and Solution Engineer

Computer solutions and retail, B2B and B2C

Designed and maintained SMB network and server solutions, repaired and installed systems, and led field operations while translating business needs into practical hardware and software solutions.

2003 - 2005

Combatel B.V., the Netherlands

General Branch Manager

Computer store, B2B and B2C

Held end-to-end responsibility for branch operations, technical repair, stock, purchasing, sales, hiring, and daily people management.

03 // skills

Technical and operational skill set

Operating systems

mac windows linux ubuntu xubuntu debian slackware Server2003 Server2008

Virtualization and servers

proxmox docker docker swarm/compose lxc ecs virtualbox nginx apache postfix dovecot sieve

Networking and infrastructure

pfsense opnsense SES VPC subnetting VLAN VPN openVPN WireGuard

Programming

python bash powershell basic assembler php html lua lsl

Tooling and platforms

trac phabricator xwiki wiki.js jira confluence sphinx git gitlab big query OTRS DocuShare Sharepoint

Monitoring and delivery

elasticsearch prometheus loki grafana influxDB ci/cd check_mk nagios icinga munin

Business operations

techops finops devops process documentation process management process visualization six-sigma lean KPI/SLA/SLI management

Hardware

basic component level electronic repair

Courses

Internal Sutherland Global Services training
  • LEAD initiative
  • Six Sigma - Yellow belt
  • Execution excellence - Bronze belt
Internal IBM / Xerox education
  • Xerox technical mentor training
  • Advanced networking
  • Subnetting
  • Supernetting
  • Introduction to Macintosh
  • Working on a commercial account
  • Call monitoring feedback
  • Coaching
  • Performance management
  • Root cause analysis
  • Action planning
  • Windows NT 4.0 basic training
  • Introducing Windows XP
  • Installing Windows XP
  • Windows XP fundamentals
  • Backup and security settings in Microsoft XP
  • Up and running with Microsoft Windows
Internal KPN education
  • KPN VOIP and advanced telephony training
  • KPN call centre VOIP technical training
  • KPN call centre communication training

Education

When What Where
2000Asbestos safety trainingHoogeveen, Netherlands
2000Basic safety on the work floor VCA-1Hoogeveen, Netherlands
1996ARBOUW safety courseAssen, Netherlands
1996 - 1998ROC Construction vocational collegeRuinen, Netherlands
1992 - 1996LTS Construction techniquesAssen, Netherlands

04 // extracurricular

Reading, community work, and self-study projects

Reading study list

Networking
  • Oskar Andreasson - Iptables Tutorial 1.1.19 (2003)
  • Charles M. Kozierok - The TCP/IP Guide (2005)
  • Ralph Becker - IP Address Subnetting Tutorial (2007)
  • Manuel Kasper and Chris Buechler - M0n0wall Handbook (2008)
Cloud architect, engineering, and IaC
  • Yevgeniy Brikman - Terraform: Up and Running (2019)
  • Gojko Adzic - Specification by Example (2011)
  • Irakli Nadareishvili, Ronnie Mitra, Matt McLarty and Mike Amundsen - Microservice Architecture (2016)
Developer
  • Mark Summerfield - Programming in Python 3 (2010)
  • Michael Dawson - Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner (2010)
  • Caleb Doxsey - Introducing Go (2016)
Classic system administration
  • Duane Wessels - Web Caching (2001)
  • International Technology Solutions Inc - Windows Integration with Samba (2001)
  • Jay Ts, Robert Eckstein and David Collier-Brown - Using Samba (2003)
  • Christopher Hertel - Implementing CIFS (2003)
  • Duane Wessels - Squid The Definitive Guide (2004)
  • Christopher Smith - Linux NFS-HOWTO Revision 4.0 (2006)
Operating systems, business, and other
  • Slackware Linux Essentials (The Slackbook)
  • FreeNAS 8.0.1 Users Guide
  • Seth Godin - Purple Cow
  • Seth Godin - The Big Moo
  • Kate Fox - Watching the English
  • E. L. James - Shades of Grey I, II, III
  • Jean M. Auel - The Clan of the Cave Bear I-VI

Online community management

At Ahoyworld I served as a core staff member in a gaming community with more than 1000 members, contributing across administration, server operations, project tooling, automation, and game add-on development.

  • Core-staff member with leadership responsibilities
  • Server administration and maintenance
  • Project management and administration tool implementation
  • Gameserver automation development, mostly in PowerShell
  • Game add-on development for Arma 3

Archive reference: Ahoyworld snapshot

Completed self-study projects

Jira ticketing system

Designed and set up a Jira workflow for a 1000+ member community, including employee and member groups, multiple project types, access structures, and workflow design for coding, moderation, and project tracking use cases.

Squid caching proxy

Built a lightweight home-network proxy and cache server on recycled hardware using Slackware and Squid, running continuously for roughly 1.5 years with filtering and acceleration benefits.

FreeBSD router

Built a FreeBSD-based gateway and routing setup focused on network control, learning, and long-running operational use in a home environment.

Personal FTP repository and mirror platform

Built and operated a Linux-based multi-drive repository server for personal and community distribution workflows, serving both admin users and a large online community over a period of years.

05 // team principles

Management and operating principles

These principles are ideas and operating habits developed through years of people management. The titles matter as much as the descriptions: they are meant to shape team culture, execution quality, and the way people think about ownership, systems, and responsibility.

Want to put these on a TV or office screen? Open the fullscreen presentation version and run through the principles one by one.

Open Fullscreen Principles Presentation

06 // contact

Online presence