Joshua Thijssen
Software Engineer & Consultant
Freelance developer, consultant and trainer with over 25 years of experience building complex internet systems. Based in the Netherlands, working worldwide.
What I do
Development
Building high-performance backends, compilers, cryptographic tooling, and systems software in Go, Rust, PHP and C.
Consultancy
Advising teams on architecture, scalability, security and code quality. Helping organisations raise their engineering standards.
Training
Teaching advanced PHP, security, and systems topics. Regular speaker at international conferences and meetups.
System Administration
Linux infrastructure, performance tuning, MySQL optimisation, and server hardening for high-traffic systems.
Background
Joshua’s passion lies in high-end and complex internet systems — scalability, security, and the low-level mechanics that make software fast and correct. His programming work spans assembly, C, C++, Go, Rust, Java, Python and PHP, across a wide range of operating systems and environments.
He is the author of several published books, including Mastering the SPL Library and the Symfony Deepdive Rainbow Series. Outside of software, he is a certified technical scuba instructor with a particular love for deep wreck dives, technical diving, and underwater photography.