It may not be everyone’s cup of tea to work on intricate computer vision challenges in a fast changing environment, but it’s what technology wizard Bart Verhagen likes best. Add a team of like-minded colleagues and a great working atmosphere to the mix, and you understand why he feels quite at home at Kapernikov.
Embedded systems by day, computer vision by night
Before joining Kapernikov in 2018, Bart had already become quite familiar with life as an IT consultant at other consulting companies, where he had mainly been focussing on embedded systems. As his interest for computer vision grew, he immersed himself in it through his own “pet projects”.
After a while, he started looking for a new opportunity that would make it possible to combine both. At that time, Kapernikov was looking to expand its computer vision team after the first few successful projects and make it into a core business. Through common connections, the match was made – and the rest is history.
A healthy dose of chaos
Today, Bart is one of Kapernikov’s senior computer vision engineers, whose main role is to tackle challenges all the way from architecture to implementation. His focus is never on a specific solution, but always on what will bring the most value to the customer. You could even say that Bart is at his best when there is some level of chaos to deal with.
“What I like most is to start out with an open problem description, with no technical direction fixed yet. I focus on understanding our customers’ business and needs, and then collaborate with them to come up with the best solution – which is not always what they initially expected. I like being part of that journey.”
Crossing barriers as a team
What makes life at Kapernikov even better for Bart is that it offers freedom to all of its members to help improve the company’s way of working. After all, continuous internal improvement contributes to making the team more efficient at what we do for our customers.
“Kapernikov definitely stands out because of its open communication and flat hierarchical structure. We work together in self managing teams with few rules on what we can or cannot do, as long as we focus on creating value. I am a big fan of how the company has implemented Sociocray 3.0 to become more self-organized. If we hit a barrier, we have the possibility to co-create what is needed to cross it.”