Pieter Dirk Soels

My name is Pieter Dirk Soels. When I joined Xillio as a developer in 2015, I was a third-year computer science student at the University of Utrecht. I had a strong desire to gain practical experience next to my studies. After graduation, I started working full-time at Xillio and eventually started a master in software engineering.

Working as a Java developer during my studies, meant that I could apply the theory I learned immediately. But it also worked the other way around; The experience I gained helped me to better understand the theory.

Even large projects
At Xillio you have a lot of freedom in the projects you do. I work on a lot of different small and large projects. For example, one of these projects has been to speed up current techniques for text extraction from PDF's. Furthermore, I have integrated a template engine with our scripting language Xill.

Flexibility in projects and working hours
When I was still a student, it was very important to have a flexible employer. And Xillio certainly is. I got a lot of freedom in projects, working hours and I can even work from home. But the most important thing is that I gain a lot of working experience. I think it is safe to say that combining work and education has been very useful, because I think I learned more than just during my studies.