I’m a senior Software Engineer at Giftomatic, where I try to improve the search engine - from smart algorithms, data processing, to front-end. Previously I worked at Symbaloo.com, where I programmed stuff in Kotlin, Java, Elm, and JavaScript. I also contributed to MooTools, an Open Source JavaScript framework, and I studied Mechanical Engineering and Embedded Systems at the Technical University of Delft.

When I’m not behind a computer screen I like to ride my bike.

You can find me at:

Talks

Elastic Meetup April 2025: Did we improve our search? Stop guessing - measure relevance like an engineer

Your manager says, ‘Our search isn’t working well—make it better.’ So, you try semantic search, and for a few test queries, the results look great. But what does ‘better’ actually mean? And did we really improve search performance at scale with real production traffic? In this talk, I’ll explore different ways to measure search relevance and focus on offline testing from a software engineering perspective—providing practical methods to evaluate and improve search quality without just guessing.

In this session, we’ll share insights into optimizing search and recommendation systems for better user experiences and business outcomes. We’ll explore advanced strategies, including hybrid search techniques like Reciprocal Rank Fusion (RRF), reranking with cosine similarity using embeddings, and leveraging cutting-edge LLMs like Cohere, OpenAI, or Huggingface models. Additionally, we’ll discuss content-based diversification through Maximal Marginal Relevance (MMR) to minimize redundancy and enhance user satisfaction. Join us to see best practices in action, along with key do’s and don’ts for maximizing the impact of these approaches.