i. Where I am now
I’m a Senior Software Engineer who’s been moving deeper into AI for the last few years. Most recently I led LLM fine-tuning for Dutch B1-level government communication, and rebuilt a production training platform with Claude Code as a daily collaborator. The second one is genuinely the most fun I’ve had since the first reconciliation report I wrote in 1995.
EU passport (Irish), based in Amsterdam, speak Dutch. Available for contract or permanent roles from one month after you hire me. The fastest way to reach me is spencerpj@gmail.com.
ii. How it started
I wasn’t meant to be a programmer. In my early twenties, I was working in the IT department of a stockbroker — doing support, small projects, nothing glamorous. Then our programmer left, and someone had to pick up the slack.
A colleague — my earliest mentor — showed me the basics of a reporting language called Recall. Corporate actions needed a reconciliation report. I had no idea what I was doing, but I gave it a go anyway, puzzling it out line by line.
When the person who requested it came back and said “this is exactly what I wanted,” something clicked. I’d taken something from inside my head, put it through a computer, and it came out exactly as I’d hoped. I got such a kick out of it. That moment changed my trajectory forever.
iii. The long arc
That was over thirty years ago. Since then I’ve deliberately sought out roles that stretched me — moving through PICK, VB, .NET, Java, Kotlin and Python, building systems across finance, oil and gas, healthcare, and government. I mentor developers and run workshops, because I’ve found that teaching others multiplies what I know.
In 2019 I went back to university to do my Master’s in Software Engineering at the University of Amsterdam — while working full-time. It was brutal. I couldn’t take the pay cut, so I made the decision to do both. It cost me a year of running at full throttle, but determination got me through.
iv. Still the same kick
Thirty years on, I still get the same kick. Last year I fine-tuned a large language model to write B1-level Dutch, so it could turn government letters into something 80% of the population could actually understand. The year before that, I built an application that uses AI to turn podcasts into TikTok videos. And before that, an app for mental health nurses to manage patients under compulsory care laws.
The excitement of building something I wasn’t sure was possible feels exactly the same as that first reconciliation report.
v. Away from the compiler
For the record, I do have interests that don’t require a compiler. I’m a supporter of Brighton and Hove Albion, who I first saw play when I was eleven years old and have followed ever since, including, very unexpectedly, around Europe.
