Marcel Houtzager
Senior CTO | Technology Strategy & Innovation
Salary / Daily rate
Groningen, Netherlands
Freelance, open to permanent contract
Can come onsite
Skills
Languages
About me
Intro
Innovative PO/CTO with 20+ years in tech leadership, specializing in startup acceleration and emerging technologies. Built IT departments from zero to 20+ engineers and guided companies through 10x growth transformations. Expert in AI, e-commerce platforms, and scaling tech operations for rapid European expansion.
Work experience
Winparts
Jan 2023 - Present
3 years 10 months
Groningen, Netherlands
Innovator - emerging technologies
Jun 2025 - Present
1 year 5 months
Groningen, Netherlands
Past two years, from zero, I created an IT department of now 20+ and made technological and architectural choices for the replatforming of all things legacy. What started as innovation become operation and there was not much attention to new initiatives. Letting loose what's already running I pickup innovation again to challenge the company - and myself - in what's possible and what's positive for the future of Winparts. Come up with brand new functionalities and technologies the speed up the already rapid growth of Winparts in Europe. As a creative conceptual & analytical thinker this is what energises me greatly.
Chief Technology Officer
Apr 2023 - Jul 2025
2 years 4 months
Groningen, Netherlands
Winparts is the #1 e-commerce club for car parts in NL and has a steep ambition. Laying out a path towards 10x growth in EU by setting up a team, a process, steering on numbers and strategy. Responsible for software and development, for storefront, backoffice and robotics.
sr Technisch Product Owner
Jan 2023 - Jul 2025
2 years 7 months
Groningen, Netherlands
Helping the e-commerce company get their software future proof, ready for 10x growth
senior technical Product Owner
Frits
Apr 2022 - Dec 2022
9 months
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Let's Get Digital
Jun 2021 - May 2022
1 year
Groningen, Netherlands
CTO
Jun 2021 - May 2022
1 year
Groningen, Netherlands
Getting Event software ready for a bright future
CTO
Jun 2021 - May 2022
1 year
Groningen, Netherlands
Getting the Events to the future.
Manager Research and Development
RW Retail Solutions
Apr 2016 - May 2021
5 years 2 months
Leusden, Netherlands
RWRetail provides solutions for retailers. As lead developer I develop new techniques and roadmaps for the software and coach other developers in their growth. Also I guide the company into Agile workflows.
lead developer
Cruise Travel
Aug 2011 - Mar 2016
4 years 8 months
Putten, Netherlands
As Scrummaster and architect, working with techniques like Symfony, Solr, Varnish, Doctrine, Rest to get Cruisetravel ten years ahead.
senior developer PHP/JS
ReveNew
Dec 2009 - Oct 2011
1 year 11 months
development of web applications using Zend Framework, Magento, Silverstripe, Extjs
senior developer
KnowMany
Mar 2009 - Dec 2009
10 months
senior webdeveloper
Accepté BV
Sep 2008 - Mar 2009
7 months
web developer
Ultraware BV
Sep 2004 - Aug 2008
4 years
owner/developer
dioneo.net
Jan 1999 - Jan 2004
5 years 1 month
webdevelopment company, created CMS for Flash
webdeveloper
hz/cca
Jan 1999 - Jan 2000
1 year 1 month
assistant producer
pavlov medialab
Jan 1997 - Jan 1999
2 years 1 month
Education
Het Van Hall Instituut
Environmental Science
1990 - 1997
7 years 1 month
vanhall
Portfolio
replatform
Mortgage advice bot
