Senior engineer and automation consultant

Bob Belderbos

I'm a senior engineer. I help companies with automation, AI adoption and fractional CTO work. The weekly spreadsheet someone updates by hand, the report stitched together from three systems, the tickets triaged by whoever happens to be free. I map the process, decide what is worth automating, and build the smallest system that fixes it, with AI only where it improves the result.

I started on the business side. I studied business economics (BBA, cum laude, with a dissertation on cost control) and worked as a financial analyst at CHEP in Madrid, where I built VBA tools to automate the team's data analysis and reporting. Then I moved into software.

I spent 13 years in critical production environments at Sun Microsystems and Oracle, with around eight years focused on support automation. One team initiative automated the resolution of around 40% of incoming x86 support calls, significantly reducing resolution times, improving customer satisfaction, and delivering substantial cost savings. In 2016, I co-founded Pybites, where I designed and built the Python and Rust coding platforms that have run in production ever since.

Alongside the consulting work I coach developers. Since 2020 I've coached more than 150 of them 1:1, from career changers to senior engineers and SaaS founders. For years that meant deep review of the code they shipped; now that agents write more of it, I teach more architecture, design and system thinking. That keeps me close to how software gets built today, and where it goes wrong.

20 Years building software
13 Years at Sun and Oracle
10 Years co-running Pybites
150+ Developers coached

How I work

Fixed price first

It starts with a call, and you get a fixed price before you commit. You know what we'll do, why, and what it costs.

Plain code first

Most reliable business systems are ordinary code, rules and tests. AI goes where it improves the outcome, not because every workflow needs an agent.

Yours to own

Tested, documented code on your infrastructure. Your team can run it, extend it, or build from the plan without me.

Based in Spain, working remotely with companies across Europe and beyond.

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A developer looking to level up? See the courses and 1:1 and what developers say.