Meet the team: Merlijn🚀
Meet Merlijn
Merlijn has already spent more than two decades in IT, first as a consultant in the Microsoft device and identity management stack, more recently building with generative AI. Outside of work he holds a CPL(H) - a commercial helicopter pilot licence - rides motorbikes and shares his home with his wife Tamara, their husky Mina and at times up to 6 extra dogs in their dog hotel.
We asked Merlijn some thoughtful questions:
Merlijn, how did you discover your passion for data?
AI is what pulled me out of a situation where I felt stuck in a changing IT landscape, and it made everything interesting again. I’ve never been a career software engineer, but for years I’ve been building and contributing to community tools in my niche of IT. That was without AI - just googling and stack-overflowing until I got it to work. Now, AI takes care of the development side, and frees me up to do the part I am good at: getting into someone else's domain, say a sales team that needs a better way to communicate and figure out what margins they can offer, and working out what would actually help, and turning that into a working tool.
The moment it clicked was when AI-generated code got good enough that I could ship the kind of end-to-end tools I’d always wanted to. One of those is a community tool that doesn’t just use AI under the hood, it puts AI in the hands of the Intune admins using it. The community has plenty of blogs and scripts; what’s usually missing is someone stitching it into something A-to-Z, and AI is what lets me be that someone.
But what gives it weight is people. AI is changing jobs already, and people are right to feel uncertain about it. The way through isn’t to fear the tool but to use your own expertise with it. My favourite part of this job is helping someone realise the knowledge they already have just with a serious amplifier attached to it.
Why did you specifically choose Plainsight?
Community, mostly. I’ve always been a speaker and contributor in the wider IT community, and Plainsight sponsors, hosts and shows up at events in the AI and data space, online and offline. That kind of fit doesn’t come up often.
It almost didn’t happen, though. The first time Plainsight reached out, it was for a role neither of us could quite make work. The next morning the phone rang again, and this time it was about a broader role. That’s how I ended up as AI Engineer and in-house AI evangelist.
I came from a small company, and joining another one where you actually know everyone you work with felt right. Two months in, that’s exactly what’s happening. (Turns out I’m not the only one around here with a dream to fly.)
What was your first month at Plainsight like?
Honestly? I’m recalibrating. The pace here is a step up from what I’m used to, and over the years I’d drifted from the keep-it-simple approach this kind of work often needs.
What made the difference was how the team handled it. Constructive feedback, pointed me in the right direction, stood by me while I adjusted. The trust has been real from day one. No babysitting, just go for it. In the first weeks I’ve already hosted an expert class, run a webinar, and been trusted to architect AI-adoption projects for customers. A few of those are now ours to deliver. Time to prove myself.
There’s a team-building weekend coming up too, which I’m very much looking forward to. Activities, dinner, drinks, a couple of days seeing what my new colleagues are actually like off the clock. We’re doing this together, and the work feels better when you know the people you’re doing it with.
What’s the most adventurous thing you’ve ever done?
Moving to Australia at age 29 to chase a boyhood dream of flying helicopters. One suitcase, one backpack, a room on the Sunshine Coast, and a flight school I’d been talking to but hadn’t fully committed to yet. I'd been daydreaming and planning this out in my head with so much detail, it almost felt like it was no big deal when I made the decision to go. Of course it was, when I announced it to family and friends. I ended a relationship, left my job, took out a sizeable loan, and worked on the side to keep funding the dream.
Two years out there. Long days, punishing theory, and the kind of brotherhood you only get with people going through the same thing at the same time. I still go back Down Under now and then, and I’m still in touch with people from those days.
I never flew commercially in the end, but achieving the licence and spending a chunk of my life on the other side of the world beats the value of the licence itself. It was life-changing.
What’s the most adventurous thing you’ve ever done?
Travel and aviation. These days most of my flying happens in VR with Microsoft Flight Simulator. Not the real thing, but closer than most people realise. Bonus: the only thing I can crash is my framerate.
