Tjakoen Stolk

Dev manager and tech lead by day, part-time software engineering teacher by evening. Most of my nine years have gone into two things: growing engineers, and shipping platforms from nothing. What each of those roles actually taught me is below.

I mentor and support the people first, then deliver the goals through them. The team is the thing I am really building; the features are what falls out of it.

• Mentoring is the job, not the overhead. A junior I actually grow is worth more than any single feature I could have written myself.
• Direction is something you repeat, not something you announce once. I say the same why in standup, in review, and in the doc, until it is boring.
• I ship the small internal tool that unblocks five people before the feature that demos well.
• The honest version of a status is the one that ages well. I would rather write down what is blocked and why than hand up a green square that turns red next week.

Notes from this work →

I own the architecture, hold the quality bar, and keep the direction legible to whoever opens the file next. Fewer decisions, made in the open, held in review.

• Fewer moving parts beats a clever abstraction almost every time. I have deleted more code than I was ever proud of writing.
• The design that survives is the one the next person can read. I write for the stranger who opens the file at two in the morning.
• Standards live in review, not in a document nobody reopens. I would rather hold the bar in a pull request than in a wiki.
• A build step you can delete is a decision you get to keep making. This whole site runs with no build, on purpose.

Notes from this work →

I teach the way I wish I had been taught: straight at the hard parts, adults treated as adults, the mechanical work automated so the time goes back to the students.

• Treat adults like adults and most of the fluff falls away. My students get the real thing, limits included.
• Automate the mechanical grading so the time goes back to students. I built a GitHub-native platform to buy back the hours I was drowning in.
• Go straight at the hard parts. Nobody signs up for a semester to be kept away from the difficult idea.
• You end up teaching the way you wish you had been taught. I nearly quit before I found a way to make it sustainable.

Notes from this work →

Software engineering lead and part-time computer science teacher. I build production software and AI-first interfaces, lead engineers as a manager and tech lead, and teach the next batch of developers on the side.

1. Technical Team Lead

   Career Team Sep 2025 to Present

   United States, remote

   Both people-manager and technical lead for the team, working AI-first.

   • Worked as both people-manager and technical lead, a scope usually split across two roles, connecting day-to-day engineering with longer-term architecture.
   • Manage and mentor a team of engineers and product specialists, working AI-first to ship faster.
   • Build full-stack solutions (Next, Nest, MongoDB) on AWS microservices.
   • Made key architectural calls on the architecture team and ran code reviews across engineering to hold a consistent bar for quality and maintainability.
   • Built solutions for US government and education clients aimed at lowering barriers to employment.
   • Turned social-impact goals into concrete technical specs, working with product, design, and leadership.

   • Gave a talk

2. College Instructor

   Holy Angel University Jun 2025 to Present

   Angeles, Philippines, on-site

   Teach software engineering to 150 to 300 students a term.

   • Teach and mentor 150 to 300 students a term on software engineering, modern frameworks, design systems, and architecture.
   • Teach three subjects this term: Application and System Integration (APSI), front-end work in JavaScript and React; Introduction to Web Development (INTROWEB), first code in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript; and Application Development and Emerging Technologies (ADET), Dart through Flutter.
   • Built full-stack web and mobile curricula: Dart, Flutter, Web, React, Vue on the frontend; Node, Express, PHP, MySQL on the backend.
   • Previously taught Software Engineering Implementation and Management, connecting theory to real agile practice.

   • Coached a hackathon team
   • A student project worth showing

3. Chief Technology Officer

   PH Live Music Oct 2024 to Jun 2025

   Remote, hybrid

   Built a new platform from zero with the CEO and grew the founding team.

   • Set the technology roadmap and built a new platform from zero, working directly with the CEO.
   • Ran the product from idea to launch, hands-on to unblock engineering and ship.
   • Recruited, scaled, and mentored the founding engineering and leadership team.

4. Director of Information Technology

   Broadheader IT Solutions Oct 2024 to Jan 2025

   Angeles, Philippines

   Co-founded and built the agency's engineering arm.

   • Co-founded and built the agency's engineering arm; the team was later acquired by PH Live Music.
   • Designed technical strategy and system design for greenfield client applications.
   • Set the initial engineering culture and standards: git-flow workflows and agile tracking.

5. Operations Manager

   Vers Architecture Aug 2023 to Oct 2024

   Angeles, Philippines

   Built operations from scratch and scaled to onboard a large BPO client.

   • Built operations from scratch and scaled infrastructure to onboard and support a large BPO client.
   • Designed business-process systems that cut operational bottlenecks.
   • Directed procurement, resource allocation, and cross-functional leadership against client SLAs.
   • Led go-to-market and marketing during growth phases, connecting operations to business development.

6. Sales and Marketing Lead

   Taskforce Outsourcing Jan 2023 to Aug 2023

   Angeles, Philippines

   Built the first sales and marketing setup and a repeatable pipeline.

   • Built the company's first sales and marketing setup from scratch, with a client-acquisition system that gave the business a steady, predictable pipeline.
   • Started the company's social presence and paid-ads strategy, running the first campaigns to find and convert enterprise leads.
   • Standardized the sales lifecycle: the sales process, client proposals, and service contracts.
   • Ran the corporate WordPress site to bring in inbound traffic and leads.
   • Recruited, trained, and managed a small sales and marketing team, aligned to the company's growth targets.

7. Sales and Marketing Manager, Co-owner

   Small Anawangin Beach Apr 2018 to Jan 2023

   Zambales, Philippines

   Co-ran a family resort's operations and its whole digital footprint.

   • Co-managed resort operations and commercial strategy with family stakeholders, growing bookings and the guest experience across the seasons.
   • Built the resort's digital footprint from scratch: the official website and a strong organic social presence.
   • Ran the resort's paid-ads strategy, with campaigns that turned social engagement into steady bookings.
   • Set up and integrated a central booking system across Airbnb, OTA platforms, and direct channels.

8. Associate Software Engineer

   Torocloud Apr 2017 to Apr 2018

   Clark, Philippines

   First job, recruited before graduation onto an enterprise software team.

   • Recruited in my third university year, before graduation, onto a fast-paced enterprise software team.
   • Learned production practice: version control, clean architecture, and agile methods.
   • Worked on core software components and took part in rigorous code review.
   • Balanced a full course load with the job before shifting to a family business.

1. BS Computer Science

   Holy Angel University 2014 to 2018

   • President of LOOP, the official Computer Science student organization.
   • Top 3rd-year student for academic and technical performance.
   • Best Thesis award for research, architecture, and implementation.

• AI-first development
• No-build hypermedia
• Next
• Nest
• Design systems
• Team leadership

English (native) · Filipino (fluent) · Dutch (conversational)

• Developing on AWS (EnterOne), Oct 2025

The one live control on this site is the mail panel: one compose form, one send path, addressed to me. Send a message and it hands off to your own mail app.

What's on the desk right now, dated, so it goes stale honestly instead of quietly.

• Jul 14. About became a small app: profile, résumé, contact, and this list (this pass).
• Jul 13. Mail: a compose panel dressed as an inbox, one real send path.
• Jul 12. Calendar: a Feed of real note dates, shipped posts, and events, with a Month view over the same.
• Jul 11. PROOF went live: the plan board streams over server-sent events instead of rendering a snapshot.
• Jul 6. PANTRY's whole-codebase mindmap shipped, AI-legible not AI-powered.