Simon Bosschieter
Senior Freelance Product Owner · Locomojo B.V.
Profile
Senior freelance Product Owner with 22+ years of hands-on experience, from self-built startups (from age thirteen, thousands of daily users) to enterprise transformations at Vattenfall, ABN AMRO and Iddink. Works across seven sectors: energy, e-commerce, EdTech, banking, healthcare, real estate and hospitality. Entrepreneurship as the foundation of product ownership. Not advice from the sidelines, but delivering working software.
Work experience
The specialist (2021 – present)
Product Owner Home Energy Management & eMobility B2C
Portfolio: charging stations, energy contracts for EV drivers, smart charging, solar charging and grid-balancing sessions. Available via MyVattenfall and the Vattenfall app.
- Fully new 7-FTE Agile Scrum DevOps team built from scratch, including recruitment and onboarding.
- Greenfield product development: self-service charger configurator on Azure cloud. Customers configure their own charger, order it and plan installation.
- Integrations with customer service, invoicing and installer planning software.
- Smart charging connected to Jedlix and the Kraken white-label SaaS for dynamic charging tariffs. Integrations with chargers, car brands and SaaS platforms.
- Roadmap negotiated across commercial, energy trading and regulatory stakeholders.
- Ownership of product vision and roadmap. SAFe PI Planning, sprint events, backlog management, stakeholder alignment.
Product Owner
A 41-year-old organisation operating 52 orthodontic practices across the Netherlands.
- “Smile” software package rebuilt on the Silicon Low Code platform. Development team: Fenetre (external).
- Agile Scrum introduced and implemented within Orthocenter.
- Smile 2.0 rollout, close collaboration with head office and all practices, daily alignment with the external team.
Co-founder, Shareholder & Product Owner
Guest-friendly e-commerce platform for hospitality with a focus on guest experience. Fully TypeScript, Google Cloud, Adyen for Platforms for payments.
- MT member, responsible for product development and operations.
- Fully new 9-FTE Agile Scrum DevOps team built from scratch.
- Commercial partnerships with Lightspeed POS, Adyen, Lavazza coffee and VHC hospitality wholesaler.
- Budget and contract ownership.
- At launch: sales support, onboarding of restaurants, training, a reseller network set up so third parties could offer and support MyDish.
Product Owner
European leader in last-mile real estate. 380+ employees, 20+ offices in 10 countries. Azure cloud and Microsoft products such as SharePoint.
- Led two Agile DevOps teams: “Knowledge Management” and “Productivity & Collaboration”.
- Apps developed and maintained: document management, intranet, contract management, internal finance, timesheets and other internal tools.
- Agile coaching and mentorship to raise team effectiveness.
- Local requirements from multiple countries translated into central solutions.
- Internal and external sprint demos.
Product Owner SEO
SEO team for the automotive platforms Gaspedaal, AutoTrack and AutoWereld.
- Agile Scrum implemented in an existing 8-FTE DevOps team (4 SEO specialists and 4 developers).
- Tools: Jira and Confluence.
- Active role in setting up the SEO product roadmap and implementing Scrum ceremonies.
- Goal: better organic findability and yield for the platforms.
Service Delivery Squad Leader / First Line Manager
Kyndryl: carve-out from IBM, the largest global provider of IT infrastructure. Application Support management team at ABN AMRO.
- Budget (P&L) and HR ownership for AS DevOps teams.
- Led three Agile DevOps teams: Platform and Technology (P&T), Corporate Information Security Office (CISO) and Chief Architecture Data Management (CADM). 21 Dutch and 15 Indian remote members.
- Steered the IBM-to-Kyndryl carve-out: new domain design, three budget rounds.
- Focus: support and ownership of MainFrame and Midrange banking applications plus migration to Azure Cloud.
- Cloud and Scrum learning programme designed and rolled out for 160+ FTE.
- Team coaching, goal setting and reviews.
The product leader (2015 – 2021)
Software Development Manager & Product Owner
Market leader in educational services in the Netherlands. Brands: Iddink, Eduarte, Magister. Two million daily users.
- MT member Eduarte. Budget (P&L) and HR ownership for the Eduarte Scrum DevOps teams.
- Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) implemented: PI Planning events, PO syncs, system demos, retrospectives.
- Four multidisciplinary Scrum DevOps teams restructured: 27 Dutch and 19 Indian remote members.
- Additional Scrum DevOps team built from a POC: 2 Dutch and 6 Indian remote.
- Ownership of budget, contracts and employment agreements.
- Stakeholders: cross-chain consultations, user groups, training, trade fairs and conferences.
Eduarte – backlog clean-up and team restructure
Backlog of thousands of PBIs and bugs drastically reduced through pressure-cooker sessions. Items classified into four quadrants: regulations, bugs, optimisation and new functionality. Operations and Development Scrum teams redesigned into four fully-fledged DevOps teams with domain ownership.
DUOstubs – independent testing of government messaging
Fully new Azure cloud platform that lets Scrum teams test messaging with Dienst Uitvoering Onderwijs (DUO, the Dutch education executive agency) independently. Result: two-weekly releases, safer and faster hotfixes and patches, teams testing in parallel without blocking one another.
IddinkHub – self-service partner APIs
Fully new cloud-based API platform on Azure API Management, Kubernetes and OAuth. Enabled a self-service partner programme in which partners register their own API key and consent. Iddink Group can manage APIs, inspect data and bill usage to third parties.
Digital Media Consumption Tracker (DMCT / JIT)
Fully new Azure cloud-based procurement platform for educational content licences. First use of a resource triggers authentication, role and permission checks and registration of the licence against the student’s name with chain partners. Horizontally and vertically scalable. Handles daily peaks of tens of millions of requests for 600,000+ students.
Lead Product Owner, MT member
Business unit Bedrijfsondersteuning Zorg (BoZ). Four on-premise products in Cobol and part React: Bomas, DRP, VILA, ProCare.
- Bridge between customer, business and development. Analysis and improvement of product propositions.
- Budget (P&L) ownership. Responsible for the development and content direction of the underlying Product Owners.
- A single DevOps team working on four product lines at once. 1,600 bugs on the backlog at entry, systematically reduced.
- Introduced “Design First”: UX designs and bullet-point functionality presented to customers in advance. Customers contractually commit before development starts, securing revenue up front. A good fit for tenders and SLA requirements.
- Legacy Cobol replaced step by step with web-based user layers on a new API architecture.
- Cross-chain consultations, user groups, training, trade fairs and conferences.
Product Owner
E-commerce revenue of €300M per year. Three own plus hundreds of white-label webshops. From #21 (Twinkle100 2015) to #7 (Twinkle100 2016).
- Content-responsible for three Agile Scrum teams: e-commerce, digital distribution and “specials” propositions.
- Fully new e-commerce platform built in Azure cloud. SSO for students and teachers. Purchase, distribution and access in one environment.
- New architecture for the educational-content chain. GDPR and security essential due to sensitive student data.
- Alignment with chain partners: Kennisnet, publishers, Surf and saMBO-ICT.
- Bundle e-book co-creation with UMCG / University of Groningen.
- Budget and contract ownership across three product lines. SAFe PI Planning.
- External representation at user groups, conferences and seminars. Sales support in contracting, onboarding and training educational institutions.
The entrepreneur (2004 – 2015)
E-commerce / study-book comparison platform for higher-education students. Shareholders: DM Webshops, partner: Bol.com. Software built via Agile Scrum with an external DevOps team. Product development, budget (P&L), closed the commercial partnership with Bol.com. Strong UX in “the language of the customer” (savings expressed in beers at local beer prices). API integrations for data and content. Partner programme in which students upload their educational-content lists and earn commission. SEO and SEA. Amsterdam Student Entrepreneur Prize (2014) and three prizes at the Bol.com Developer Contest (2013).
Radio 538, SLAM!FM, TV 538, SLAM!TV. Introduced e-commerce businesses (the “.nl advertisers”) to radio as a medium. Given a mandate to organise marketing seminars around “the power of sound”. Designed the BACTU framework for lead qualification (Business, Advertising, Competitions, Twelve-month goals, Unique selling point). 4,000 accredited players split across four geographical areas and four seminars.
Kinetic: global leader in connecting and activating “on the move” audiences. 34 countries. Out-of-home advertising and location expertise. Built a new media-asset tool for physical out-of-home advertising (bus shelters, abris, billboards) using the Google Maps API and geo data. Commercial partnerships with JCDecaux, CBS Outdoor and Hillenaar. The tool enabled specific proposals for advertisers with insight into traffic per audience and average cost per ad surface.
Text-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game with micropayments. Built by Simon himself from scratch in PHP and MySQL at age thirteen, with no prior programming experience. By 2005 one of the most-visited websites in the Netherlands, with thousands of daily players. Commercial partnerships with Procter & Gamble, Mollie and the hosting provider. Micropayments via 0900 phone numbers: players received a four-digit PIN redeemable in the game. Ongoing development and maintenance of the core software, external dev team managed. The very first backlog, long before the word existed.
Chair / Founder of IAA Young Professionals Netherlands (Jul 2012 – Nov 2014, youngest chair in IAA Netherlands history). Board member Starterscase (Aug 2014 – Oct 2015). Freelance Online Media Specialist at iBosi Holding (Feb 2011 – Dec 2016) and Media Tsunami (Apr 2004 – Jul 2013). Project lead on the Holland Heineken House campaign (Heineken & Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Jan 2012 – Feb 2012).
Certifications and education
- SAFe 5 Product Owner / Product Manager — Scaled Agile Academy (Mar 2022, SAFe 6 continuously applied in practice at Vattenfall)
- Codeless Q Automation — Mar 2021
- Management: Individuals, Teams & Performance — Krauthammer (Oct 2019 – Feb 2020)
- Advanced Product Owner — Xebia (Nov 2016)
- Product Owner Foundation — Xebia (Oct 2016)
- Agile / Scrum Foundation — Studytube (Dec 2015)
- NRS Media Sales Training — NRS Media (Apr–May 2013)
- BSc Commercial Economics + Minor Entrepreneurship — Hogeschool van Amsterdam (2010–2015)
- Media Management — Mediacollege Amsterdam (2006–2010)
Entrepreneurship awards
- Amsterdam Student Entrepreneur Prize (2014, MyStudyBook.nl)
- 1st Prize, Best Design — Bol.com Developer Contest (2013, MyStudyBook.nl)
- 1st Prize, Audience Award — Bol.com Developer Contest (2013)
- 3rd Prize, Technology — Bol.com Developer Contest (2013)
Methodologies and technical context
Methodology
- SAFe PI Planning
- Scrum
- Kanban
- Agile DevOps
- Design-First
- Pressure-cooker sessions
- Product roadmap
- Backlog management
- Discovery
- Hypothesis validation
- A/B testing
- Prototyping
Cloud and architecture
- Azure cloud
- Google Cloud
- Azure API Management
- Kubernetes
- OAuth
- Microservices
- API design
- Low Code (Silicon)
Integrations and partners
- Adyen for Platforms
- SharePoint
- Lightspeed POS
- Jedlix
- Kraken (Octopus Energy)
Governance and compliance
- GDPR & security
- Stakeholder alignment
- P&L / budget
- Public tenders
- Value-chain coordination
- Cross-cultural (NL & IN)
Tools
- Jira & Confluence
- Codeless Q Automation
- Figma
- Miro
References
More references available on request via simon@locomojo.nl. In addition, 30+ public recommendations on linkedin.com/in/simonbosschieter.
Engagement
Engagement through a B2B agreement between Locomojo B.V. and the client. Clear scope, expected outcome, duration and working arrangement per engagement. Working method aligned with the Dutch Wet DBA: concrete, transparent and assessable by HR, procurement and compliance. Availability: consultancy, review and strategy workshops available now, interim Product Owner engagements from Q1 2027.