Nathan Bijnens

Introduction

Name: Nathan Bijnens
Address: 9042 Ghent
Belgium
E-mail: nathan@nathan.gs
Telephone: +32 486 15 88 29

Website: nathan.gs
GitHub: github.com/nathan-gs
Twitter: @nathan_gs
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nbijnens

I am Nathan Bijnens, CEO and co-founder of Scrydon, where we are building the Cognitive Enterprise: a sovereign AI OS & Decision Intelligence platform. I set the product vision and go-to-market, and lead the team building an AI operating system that enterprises and public sector organisations actually own — governance, context, process & workflows and integrations, with the humans firmly in control.

Before founding Scrydon, I spent ten years at Microsoft, most recently as Sr Solution Architect Manager, Data & AI, guiding my team, coaching and mentoring my colleagues and setting out the strategy and go-to-market towards our strategic, commercial and public sector customers on data & cloud. I was responsible for nnn M€ revenue and double digit growth on Analytics, Apps+Data, AI/ML.

Earlier at Microsoft I was the Lead Cloud Solution Architect for the European Union Institutions and NATO, helping the European Union and NATO become a Data Driven Government, and I supported the NATO Alliance as a Trusted Advisor, and Data & AI solution sales.

With a successful track record of building innovative systems in highly political and complex environments, I not only help on envisioning what data and AI can do for business, I analyze, give recommendations, design architectures and inspire teams. I build on my background and experience with building Big Data systems and AI solutions.

I enjoy working with clients and partners, from giving advice, talking about the Business and Technological value of AI and Data, to imagining solutions. Working in an entrepreneurial, data driven, innovative environment gives me energy.

As a recognized thought leader, I have delivered keynote presentations on AI, cloud and Data at industry events, influencing public sector leaders and driving solution adoption, including at NATO Tide.

Experience

Since July 2025 I am

CEO

and co-founder of

Scrydon

, where we build the Cognitive Enterprise: a sovereign AI OS and Decision Intelligence platform. We give enterprises and public sector organisations an AI operating system they actually own, governance, context, process & workflows and integrations, with the humans firmly in control. I set the product vision and go-to-market, and lead the team building it.

CEO & Co-founder

July 2025 - ...

Building a sovereign AI OS and Decision Intelligence platform, from product strategy and architecture to fundraising, hiring and customer engagements.

AI Agentic AI AI OS Decision Intelligence Leadership

From February 2016 till February 2026 I worked at

Microsoft

, leading the Data & AI team and business as the

Sr CSA Manager, Data & AI

. I drove Microsoft's initiatives, leveraging Analytics, Data and AI on Azure to solve the biggest and most complex data challenges faced by Microsoft's strategic, commercial and public sector, including EU & NATO, customers. I led, coached, mentored and orchestrated, and set out the strategy and go-to-market, working closely with external and internal stakeholders and partners.

Sr. CSA Manager, Data & AI

June 2021 - February 2026
Solution Sales (ad-interim), Data & AI for NATO

July 2023 - February 2026
Sr. Cloud Solution Architect, Data & AI

July 2019 - May 2021
Cloud Solution Architect, Advanced Analytics + AI

February 2016 - June 2019

From October 2013 till January 2016 I worked for

Virdata

a start-up funded by

Technicolor

, as a

sr. Big Data and IoT Engineer

, previously as a

DevOps Engineer

. Virdata was an Internet of Things Cloud platform, scalable to millions of devices, from tiny sensors to TVs and Cars.

Data Engineer

From January 2014 till January 2016.

As a Big Data Engineer, I worked on our Data Processing and Analytics stack, creating a Lambda and Kappa Architecture. Working with Apache Spark, Spark Streaming, Storm, Cassandra and Kafka. We mostly used Scala and bits of Java. We deployed using Chef on Mesos in the cloud.

IoT Big Data Data Analytics Lamdba Architecture Software Architecture Scala Java Spark Storm Cassandra Mongo Mesos Docker
Spark as a Service Lead

From May 2014 till January 2016.

We created a Spark as a Service exploratory environment for Data Scientists in the Cloud, based around Mesos, Docker, iPython (now Jupyter) and Spark Notebooks.

DevOps Big Data Data Analytics Scala Python Spark Cloud Mesos Amazon AWS Linux Docker Project Management
Cloud & DevOps Engineer

From October 2013 till December 2013.

As a Big Data and DevOps Engineer, I was responsible for the scalability, quality and Operational Intelligence of a new platform. I introduced the Continuous Integration platform, using Jenkins, added unit tests. The platform is build using Chef, tried to be cloud independent (ran on Amazon AWS, Softlayer, ...).

DevOps IoT Big Data Scala Jenkins Unit Testing Storm Spark ElasticSearch Ruby Chef Mesos Amazon AWS Linux Docker

At the end of 2013 I co-founded lambda-architecture.net, a website about the

Lambda Architecture

. The Lambda Architecture is a data-processing architecture designed to handle Big Data by combining both batch- and stream-processing, while attempting to balance latency, throughput, and fault-tolerance. Batch Processing is used to provide comprehensive and accurate (although slightly out of date) views, while simultaneously using real-time stream processing to bridge the gap.

From April 2012 till March 2014 I worked for

DataCrunchers

, as a

Hadoop and Big Data Consultant

. DataCrunchers was the leading Belgian consultancy firm around everything Big Data. I co-presented our Hadoop Ecosystem courses, and I was responsible for our Microsoft Big Data partnership.

Big Data & DevOps Engineer, Technicolor

From October 2013 till March 2014.

As a Big Data and DevOps Engineer, I was responsible for the scalability, quality and Operational Intelligence of a new platform. I introduced the Continuous Integration platform, using Jenkins, added unit tests. The platform is build using Chef, tries to be cloud independent (runs on Amazon AWS, Softlayer, ...).

DevOps IoT Big Data Java Scala Jenkins Unit Testing Storm Spark Ruby Chef Amazon AWS Linux
Project Manager ABBAMelda, Flemish Government (Macq)

From June 2013 till October 2013.

Project Manager and Lead Developer of ABBAMelda, a ticket and maintenance management system, originally developed by Siemens. ABBAMelda consists of a Java EE backend, an Informix database, with a PHP/jQuery frontend. Under my lead, we created an enhanced Tablet intranet site, improved the bulk upload possibilities, additional REST services, introduced unit testing and switched to git. I was responsible for coordinating with different teams within the Flemish Government, as well as the contractor (Macq).

Software Architecture Project Management Agile Scrum Java API PHP jQuery Unit Testing Puppet Linux Mobile Development ETL
A social media startup (2)

From February 2013 till June 2013.

Defining and implementing the architecture for a social media analytics startup. I designed and implemented a Lambda Architecture (in Java), on top of Storm and Hadoop, using Redis, Voldemort as well as Thrift.

Java Storm Hadoop Kafka Redis Unit Testing Puppet> Linux Software Architecture Lambda Architecture
A social media startup (1)

From December 2012 till January 2013.

Java ElasticSearch D3 Data Visualization Software Architecture
Ewals Intermodal

From October 2012 till June 2013.

Developing Oracle database views for integration of Greencat and Crystal Reports.

Oracle Greencat Crystal Reports ETL
Microsoft Big Data Partnership

Responsible for the contact with Microsoft. Speaker at the Microsoft Inspirience Day about Big Data.

Client & Partner Relationships Public Speaking Business Strategy Technology Evangelism Big Data Azure Hadoop
Solution Architect

Discussions, presentations and conversations with partners, discussing potential Business Ideas and architectures. Evangelizing the Belgium market for Big Data.

Client & Partner Relationships Public Speaking Business Strategy Technology Evangelism Big Data IoT
Internal Projects
1. I co-developed on our internal Semantic Analysis Engine on top of Storm and ElasticSearch. The web interface is build around a Java, Jersey backend and a frontend in AngularJS.
2. Setting up an internal Hadoop, ElasticSearch & Storm test cluster using Puppet and Cloudera Manager. I created some Puppet modules to manage Storm, ElasticSearch and Ganglia.
3. I co-developed on IHarvest project. It is a distributed HTTP Fetcher & Parser on top of Storm, written in Java, the results are stored on HDFS for more extensive querying using Hadoop.
Storm ElasticSearch Puppet Hadoop Java

From March 2011 till April 2012 I worked for

iController

, as

Lead Developer

. We build a credit management SaaS application, written in PHP. I managed a small group of developers, took the lead on everything technical and coordinated with the directors, partners and clients.

Lead Developer iController

I developed our credit management web application in PHP, I managed a small group of developers, took the lead on everything technical and coordinated with the directors, partners and clients.

Project Management Requirement Analysis PHP symfony Unit Testing Jenkins git MySQL jQuery XML API
iController Server Automatization

I virtualized and automated the whole iController server setup using Puppet. I created and extended several open-source Puppet modules.

Puppet Linux MySQL PHP DevOps Jenkins git Amazon AWS
Various clients

From July till November 2011.
1. Analyzing the requirements, estimating and taking the lead.
2. Extracting data from various Accounting software to iController, including a complex integration with SAP FI at LeasePlan.
Accounting Software AS400 ETL XML XSchema Oracle MSSQL Navision

From September 2010 till February 2011 I was employed at

Netlog

as a

Big Data Engineer

and

Web Developer

, creating an analytical data warehouse based on Hadoop and Hbase. I deployed the first Hadoop clusters and created large parts of the data processing infrastructure, using Hive and Hadoop Pig. I also advised on new technologies, git migration, best practices & unit tests. Netlog was a social community network, with over 70 million members, mainly active in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Big Data Engineer

Setting up the Hadoop infrastructure, analyzing data with Hadoop Pig and Hive, creating dashboards using Symfony2 and Hbase.

Hadoop Hadoop Pig Linux Hive Hbase Thrift Symfony2 Data Visualization MySQL
Web Developer (Netlog) & Twoo Core Framework Developer

Within the core Netlog framework, I worked on Event collection, Unit Testing and the migration to Git. I also benchmarked various caching and NoSQL technologies (Memcached, Redis, Membase).

As part of the launch of Twoo, I was responsible for the design and development of the Request Routing and the security and access control models. I also advised on Design Patterns and Best Practices.

PHP PHPUnit Unit Testing Linux Event Processing MySQL Design Patterns Best Practices git Memcached Redis Performance testing Membase

From October 2009 to August 2010 I started working at

iController

, a SaaS start-up in Ghent, as

web application developer

. I developed a new, greatly improved debtor & credit management web application. We used PHP and the symfony framework to create a stable and easy to maintain application.

From March 2007 till December 2014 I was the

Consultant, Managing Director and founder

Servs

BVBA; mainly active as a (part-time) IT consultant in the field of Big Data & Spark, Scala, web applications (PHP, sql, scalability, …), Cloud, DevOps & Linux system administration and hosting applications.

For the full details, see nathan.gs/cv.