Hello Dylan! Shed some light on your life's journey.
I've always known that I wanted to work in IT, even if the path there wasn't completely straightforward.
In high school, I studied Human Sciences because my school didn't offer a dedicated IT track. Looking back, that turned out to be surprisingly valuable. It taught me how to communicate, understand different perspectives, and work with people — all things that are just as important in IT as the technology itself.
After high school, I finally followed the path I had always wanted and started a Bachelor's degree in IT at Erasmus in Brussels.
During my studies, I did my internship at Evolane. That turned out to be an important step in my career. It was my first real experience working in IT, and it was also where I was introduced to Dynatrace and Akamai.
I really enjoyed my time at Evolane, and fortunately, the feeling was mutual. After my internship, they gave me the opportunity to stay, and I decided to take it. What started as an internship somehow turned into a career that has now lasted about eight years. 😄
Since then, I've grown from an IT student into a consultant working mainly with Dynatrace, observability, performance, and security. Evolane has given me the opportunity to work with many different customers, technologies, and challenges, which has helped me keep learning and gradually discover the areas I enjoy most.
So while I always knew I wanted to work in IT, I had no idea where that path would eventually take me. Looking back, my studies, my internship at Evolane, and discovering Dynatrace really shaped the direction of my career.
What is your professional background?
I currently work at Evolane as a consultant and have been with the company for around eight years, starting with an internship during my IT studies.
My role has changed quite a bit over the years. Today, my main focus is on Dynatrace, observability and performance, combined with some security and web performance work. Over time, my focus has gradually shifted more towards Dynatrace.
As a consultant, I work with different customers and environments, so no two days are exactly the same. One day I might be investigating why an application suddenly became slow, and the next I could be working on Kubernetes observability, helping with a Dynatrace migration, improving alerting or building dashboards and SLOs.
I also spend quite a bit of time on the more technical side of Dynatrace, including DQL, automation and integrations with other tools.
That variety is one of the things I enjoy most about working at Evolane. I'm not working in the same environment or solving the same problem every day. Every customer brings a slightly different challenge, which means there's always something new to learn.
There's also a very human side to consulting that I really enjoy. Finding a technical problem is one thing; being able to explain what happened and what it means to someone who doesn't work with Dynatrace every day is another.
That's probably where my Human Sciences background comes in handy. My IT studies gave me the technical foundation, while Human Sciences taught me how to communicate with people. Consulting really requires both.
How does Dynatrace fit into the picture, and what was the biggest challenge Dynatrace helped you overcome?
Dynatrace has been part of my career almost from the very beginning. I first came across it during my internship at Evolane, and over the years it gradually became one of the main technologies I work with.
Today, I use Dynatrace to help customers gain visibility across their applications and infrastructure and, more importantly, understand what is actually happening when something goes wrong.
One investigation that really stuck with me involved an application that had become extremely slow. At first, it wasn't clear whether the issue was in the application itself, the infrastructure or the database.
By correlating the different signals in Dynatrace, we were able to look at thread pools, connection pools and individual requests. Eventually, we traced the issue back to database activity, where one request was spending around 30 seconds waiting on a database statement.
That's exactly the kind of troubleshooting I enjoy. Instead of simply saying, "the application is slow," you can follow the evidence across different layers and gradually narrow down what is actually causing the problem.
Over the years, I've also worked with customers on Dynatrace Managed-to-SaaS migrations, Kubernetes observability, alerting strategies, SLOs, DQL, automation and OpenPipeline.
What I like most about Dynatrace is that troubleshooting becomes a real investigation. You don't just see that something is red on a dashboard. You can follow the evidence and work your way towards understanding why it is happening.
In a way, Dynatrace has grown alongside my career at Evolane. I discovered it as an intern, and eight years later I'm still finding new parts of the platform to explore and learn.
What makes Dynatrace Community important to you?
"When you solve something yourself,
share that solution too — you might save someone else several hours of troubleshooting later on."
I first discovered the Dynatrace Community as I started working more deeply with Dynatrace at Evolane.
As a consultant, I work across many different customer environments, and sooner or later, you run into a problem you've never seen before. In those situations, the Community can be incredibly valuable because there's a good chance someone else has already faced something similar.
What keeps me coming back is the amount of practical knowledge being shared. I really enjoy seeing how other people approach a problem, even if their solution isn't exactly the one I end up using.
The Community is also useful when nothing is broken. It's a great place to discover new features, see how other people are using Dynatrace and pick up ideas that you can apply in your own projects.
My biggest advice to someone who is just getting started with the Community would be: don't be afraid to ask questions.
You don't need to have everything figured out before posting. Explain what you're trying to achieve, share what you've already tried, and provide enough context for others to understand the problem.
Tell us something about you that most people don't know. What is your biggest joy or passion in life?
Outside of work, I'm actually much more of an indoor person. You probably won't find me spending every weekend hiking through the wilderness. 😄
I enjoy games that involve strategy and problem-solving. Besides shogi, I also like chess and different chess variants.
What I enjoy most are games where there isn't always one obvious solution and where you can keep learning and improving over time. Chess, shogi and their different variations all scratch that itch in slightly different ways.
I suppose there's also a connection with what I enjoy about IT. I like figuring things out, understanding how something works, and exploring different ways to approach a problem.
That said, after doing that all day at work, it's also nice to switch off sometimes. At least when I'm playing chess, there usually aren't any Jira tickets waiting for me afterwards. 😄
List a few facts we likely didn't know about you! What's on your bucket list?
My number one bucket-list item is probably not kicking the bucket just yet. 😄
On a more serious note, Lapland has been on my list for quite some time. I've always wanted to experience the landscapes, the snow, and, hopefully, see the Northern Lights in person. I'm actually going there next March, so I'm really looking forward to finally being able to tick that one off the list.
Interestingly, 2027 is already shaping up to be quite a year for travel. I'll also be heading back to Las Vegas in February for Dynatrace Perform, which will be my second time there.
So within just a few weeks, I'll be going from the Mojave Desert to the Arctic. That should be quite a contrast. 😄
After that, I guess I'll have to come up with a few new things to add to the bucket list.
What achievement are you most proud of?
Probably the thing I'm most proud of is that an internship at Evolane turned into an eight-year career.
When I started my internship, I was an IT student getting my first real experience in a professional environment. That was where I was introduced to Dynatrace, started working with customers and gradually discovered that this was an area I genuinely enjoyed.
After my internship, Evolane gave me the opportunity to stay, and I've continued to grow within the company ever since.
Over those eight years, I've gone from being an IT student to working as a consultant and taking responsibility for customer environments and increasingly complex technical challenges.
What I'm particularly proud of is that I've been able to keep developing instead of simply settling into one role. Over the years, I've built experience across applications, infrastructure, Kubernetes, databases, security, performance and observability, while increasingly specializing in Dynatrace.
Some of the most rewarding moments are still the difficult incidents where something is clearly wrong but the cause isn't obvious. Being able to investigate the problem systematically, follow the evidence, and eventually understand what is really happening is something I still enjoy a lot.
So for me, the achievement isn't one specific project or certification. It's the journey itself: starting as an intern at Evolane, discovering Dynatrace along the way, and eight years later, still being excited about learning new things and solving difficult problems.
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