About

I work best where systems depth and real-world pressure overlap.

I do my best work where technical ambiguity, operational pressure, and customer trust all overlap. I like turning messy incidents into evidence-backed diagnosis, calmer communication, and durable improvements.

Professional Summary

Sebastian Van Hemelrijck

Senior Support Engineer / Bay Area, CA

I have spent most of my career in support engineering roles where the real job is bigger than answering tickets. It is about reading systems carefully, staying calm when incidents escalate, and creating enough clarity that the right people can move quickly for the right reasons.

That has led me into root-cause analysis, observability, cloud tooling, automation, and cross-functional problem solving. I enjoy being close to the technical details, but I care just as much about the quality of the handoff, the precision of the communication, and whether the fix actually holds up after the urgency is gone.

At Unily, I support Fortune 100 clients through production issues, incident coordination, and full-stack debugging. Earlier roles at Direct Commerce, Jotform, and Ritam Technologies gave me range across APIs, front-end troubleshooting, automation, SQL, reporting, and release support. I am now leaning further into cloud, reliability, advanced support, and long-term technical leadership.

I want the site and future support surfaces to expand into multilingual presentation over time, starting with Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese for Hong Kong audiences so the experience can feel more accessible across different contexts.

Direction

I am moving deeper into cloud systems, SRE-oriented support, and technical leadership while staying grounded in hands-on troubleshooting, root-cause analysis, and the kind of cross-functional execution that keeps technical work practical under real pressure. That path also includes multilingual site support over time and selective consulting or 1099 work where clear ownership and operational depth are genuinely valued.

Outside Work

Outside of work, 35mm photography and vintage restoration keep me close to craft, structure, and detail. I am drawn to quieter frames from places like Japan and the Oregon Coast, and to older machines like the Mercedes W124, Land Cruiser FJ80, and vintage motorcycles for the engineering behind them.

Current Focus

The through-line is consistent: stay close to the system, understand the failure mode clearly, and leave behind something more reliable than what was there before.

Critical Incident Response

Leading high-severity issue handling with calm communication, strong evidence gathering, and disciplined execution.

Cloud and Observability

Deepening practical range across Azure, AWS, Datadog, Kibana, and related infrastructure tooling.

Automation and Reliability

Using scripting, dashboards, and better workflows to reduce escalation recurrence and improve operational efficiency.

Experience Highlights

Where that mindset has shown up in practice.

Unily

Senior Support Engineer

September 2021 - Present

Resolved 200+ P1 incidents for Fortune 100 clients with 95% SLA compliance.
Reduced escalation recurrence by 20% using Datadog anomaly detection and proactive playbooks.
Cut engineering handoff time by 15% through stronger Azure DevOps bug reports and full-stack debugging.
Mentored 5+ junior engineers and authored 50+ knowledge base articles.

Direct Commerce

Support Engineer

March 2020 - September 2021

Implemented automated ticket triage scripts that reduced L1 workload by 30%.
Built Power BI dashboards for SLA reporting and executive visibility.
Partnered with engineering to integrate API error monitoring into CI/CD workflows.

Jotform

Support Engineer

October 2019 - April 2020

Solved 25+ complex front-end issues weekly across HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Introduced front-end performance profiling to catch regressions before release.
Helped containerize QA test environments, cutting setup time by 50%.

Skills

Hands-on range across support, cloud, automation, and observability.

Languages and Automation

PythonJavaScriptC++SQLPowerShellBash

Cloud and Containers

AzureAWSDockerKubernetesOctopus Deploy

CI/CD and DevOps

Azure DevOpsGitHub ActionsJenkinsGitLab CI

Observability

DatadogKibanaGrafanaELKPrometheus

Education & Certifications

Formal study paired with practical production experience.

Education

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science

Oregon State University

Expected 2026 / GPA 3.8 / Dean's List / SHPE Scholarship

Bachelor of Science in Economics

University of California, Santa Cruz

2019 / GPA 3.7

Certifications

Programming Fundamentals

Oregon State University

Issued Dec 2025

Credential ID: 6bbb793f-48a1-4428-80a1-c9a36a46f8da

Skills: Object-Oriented Programming, Data Structures, and related core software engineering fundamentals.

Diagnose Code Performance Issues with Continuous Profiler

Datadog

Issued Nov 2024

Credential ID: vrovoz7xjr

APM Monitors and Alerting

Datadog

Issued Nov 2024

Credential ID: phus83rwnv

Introduction to Application Performance Monitoring

Datadog

Issued Nov 2024

Credential ID: ekbupziqy2

ITIL v4 Foundation

AXELOS Global Best Practice

Issued Dec 2023 / Expires Dec 2026

Credential ID: GR671602980SV

Unily Certified Professional

Unily

Issued Jun 2023 / Expires Jun 2028

Personal Layer

The technical work is serious, but it is not the whole picture.

Photography, restoration, and a bias toward deliberate design all feed back into how I think about systems: structure matters, details matter, and restraint usually beats noise.

Personal 01

Photography

35mm photography is the main creative thread: atmosphere, architecture, transit, and quieter travel studies from places like Japan and the Oregon Coast.

Personal 02

Vintage Restoration

Restoring and rebuilding vintage motorcycles and vehicles like the Mercedes W124 and Land Cruiser FJ80 as a hands-on way to study mechanical engineering, reliability, and systems thinking.

Personal 03

Design Restraint

A bias toward clear, premium, minimal interfaces and products that feel deliberate rather than ornamental.

Sebastian Van Hemelrijck

Senior Support Engineer focused on technical troubleshooting, root-cause analysis, and cross-functional problem solving.

Copyright 2026 Sebastian Van Hemelrijck