Darren van den Berg
Project manager and business information manager from Purmerend. I do my best work where technology and organisation overlap. I run a Proxmox homelab and orchestrate multi-agent AI workflows to understand how things actually work.
- Location
- Purmerend, Netherlands
- Field
- Project Management & IT
- Focus
- IT projects, management & infrastructure
Profile
I’m Darren, 30 years old and based in Purmerend. I studied Business IT & Management and feel most at home where technology and organisation come together. I care more about how something actually works than how it looks in a spec.
During my studies I worked a lot with stakeholders, ITIL and governance. The thing that stayed with me: always try to understand what is really going on first. The first question someone asks is rarely the real problem. Once you figure that out, the rest tends to fall into place.
At home I run a Proxmox environment with multiple servers, a 10GbE network, my own backups and self-hosted services. I prefer building it myself rather than using off-the-shelf solutions. I want to understand how things work, and I like being in control of my own data.
I like to game. Persona 5 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 are games I could really lose myself in, and I still go back to older ones like ROSE Online and RuneScape every now and then. Lately Path of Exile 2 has been eating most of those hours. For films: Shutter Island, Interstellar and Parasite are the kind I keep coming back to.
I also try to keep travelling. Japan and Iceland are the two countries I keep wanting to go back to. Japan mainly for the food, the culture and how different everyday life feels. Iceland is a country of natural extremes: in the summer the sun barely sets and daylight lasts forever, while winter days are very short. The winters can be intense, with heavy snowstorms, wind gusts reaching 150 km/h and a raw, dangerous coastline.
Work Experience
Albert Heijn B.V.
Department Manager
- Ran daily store operations, including sales, customer service and cash processing
- Improved workflows based on data, floor observations and feedback from the team
- Led a team of around 30 cashiers and was responsible for onboarding new colleagues
Gemeente Amsterdam
Junior Project Manager / Traineeship
- Work on IT projects within an organisation of 20,000+ employees
- Write planning documents, business cases and progress reports
- Attend stand-ups and sprint planning and keep track of actions, dependencies and progress
Education & Certifications
Business IT & Management
Bachelor of Science (BSc)
Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
Skills
Technical
Soft skills
Languages
- DutchNative
- EnglishFluent
Homelab & infrastructure
Everything below is running at my home right now. It is where I try out what I learn about IT, management and reliability.
Proxmox Virtualisation
Multi-node cluster with VMs and custom scripts. Runs reliably and is easy to manage.
Network & Backbone
VLANs with pfSense and a 10GbE backbone through a MikroTik CRS309.
Storage & Backup
SSD/HDD storage with Proxmox Backup Server, nightly backups and offline copies.
Self-hosted Services
Self-hosted services behind Nginx Proxy Manager and Pangolin, with separate routes for internal and external use.
Identity & SSO
Pocket ID as the OIDC provider for Grafana and other internal applications.
Containers & Workloads
Docker workloads with fixed conventions for permissions, PUID/PGID and ACLs.
AI & Automation
Orchestrated AI workflows with specialised models (Claude, GPT, Gemini) for rapid application development, automated scripts and monitoring.
Monitoring & Security
Grafana and Prometheus for visibility into what is running. Wazuh for security events.
AI in Practice
I do not use AI as a single chat window, but as a small digital team. Each model gets a clear role, distinct instructions, and tasks that play to its strengths.
Dedicated Role Files
For every project, I write simple text files for roles like security, frontend, and testing. This lets each model focus on its own area and challenge assumptions.
The Right Model per Task
Claude manages the big picture and planning. GPT handles heavy programming and deep checks, while Gemini takes care of quick reviews and smaller everyday tasks.
Rental Housing Search
A tool that scans rental websites day and night for new listings within a set budget and area, instantly sending an alert to friends looking for a home.
Intranet Calendar Sync
A secure integration that pulls work schedules from a private corporate intranet and cleanly syncs them to colleagues' smartphones.
Blog
Notes on things I build, break and then try to improve.
Want to connect?
Whether it is about a project, application management or homelab experiments, I would love to hear from you.