devchild▌
Nederlandse versieMario Vanhecke
Freelance .NET developer & technical leader
Twenty years of .NET in industrial and enterprise software. These days that includes bringing AI into the development process. Available as developer, team lead, scrum master or technical leader.
Get in touchOstend, Belgium
About
I wrote my first professional code in 2005, for handheld scanners running Windows Mobile. Since 2012 I work through my own company, Devchild BV, registered in Ostend. One man, no subcontractors.
Most of my career happened where software meets the physical world: ticket devices for train conductors, contactless cards in Brussels, steel leaving a mill, CNC saws cutting floorboards. That kind of software has to keep working for years, so I build it that way.
Depending on what a client needs I write the code, lead the team, or do both at once. The Scrum Master certificate came in 2016 because somebody had to run the meetings properly. Lately a good part of the job is figuring out where AI genuinely helps a development team, and where it just makes noise.
What I do
.NET development
C#, ASP.NET Core, WebAPI, gRPC, Entity Framework. Angular on the front when needed, SQL Server or Oracle underneath. I also take on the legacy codebases nobody else wants to touch.
AI in development
Where does AI fit in a development team? I set up standards for AI-assisted coding, review what it produces, and say no when it does not help.
Team lead
Planning, code review, mentoring. I have led teams of four to seven developers and kept my own commits going at the same time.
Scrum master
Certified since 2016. I keep the sprints short, the retrospectives honest and the meetings few.
Technical leadership
Architecture decisions, code standards, CI/CD pipelines. Explaining to management why the rewrite is, or is not, worth it.
Work
Federale Verzekeringcurrent
Technical leader · 2025 – present
Defining development standards and reviewing code, mostly .NET. Investigating what AI can do for the development process. My job is making sure projects get built efficiently.
devchild
Cyberlink Architect (own product) · 2024 – 2025
A WPF tool that turns ERD diagrams into working .NET code through a template engine. My own product, built between engagements.
Unilin
Backend developer · 2020 – 2024
CNC machine control with computer vision: OpenCV, gRPC, and software that talks to saws, cameras and conveyor belts.
Novasoft
Full-stack lead developer · 2019 – 2020
Order management, finance and planning platform. Angular in front, .NET Core WebAPI behind.
ArcelorMittal
Full-stack developer · 2018 – 2019
Logistics software managing transport for European steel mills.
MIVB (Brussels public transport)
Scrum master & DevOps engineer · 2016 – 2018
Brought CI/CD to multiple development teams, ran the scrum for one of them, and kept doing hardware integration work on the side.
STIB-MIVB
Team leader · 2011 – 2015
Production and sales systems for the MOBIB contactless card. Started as developer, ended up leading a team of seven.
Early years
Developer to senior developer · 2005 – 2011
Handheld devices for NMBS train conductors (IBIS), HR and planning software for 16,000 employees at Delhaize and Attentia, healthcare search at Zorgzoeker.be, and cloud deployments on Amazon EC2 before that was normal.
Skills
Development
DevOps & cloud
Leadership & process
Domains
Languages
Contact
No contact form. Just email: mario@devchild.com