As of early 2026, Jan_Wilmake is conducting an active job search from Groningen, Netherlands. Following the end of his Parallel_AI contract (November 2025) and a recovery period over December 2025, he entered 2026 seeking stable employment that combines technical depth with AI/LLM work.
The 2026 job search comes after a year in which Wilmake declined a notable number of inbound offers and partnership opportunities, preferring to maintain independence:
| Opportunity | Outcome |
|---|---|
| Skyfire | Declined |
| ComposioDev | Declined |
| Cloudflare DevRel partnership | Stalled / rejected after prolonged negotiation |
| StackOne | Declined |
| SocialDatabase | Declined |
| Iterate.com trial (~$3,600) | Trial completed; full-time offer declined |
| Ben Tossell (investor interest) | Not pursued |
This pattern reflects a recurring tension between independence and stability, informing his more pragmatic approach to employment in 2026.
Stated preferences:
Self-described strengths relevant to applications:
| Company | Role Type |
|---|---|
| New_Nexus | Agile Analyst |
| Stekz | Engineering |
For New_Nexus, Wilmake prepared extensively for the Agile Analyst role, studying Domain Driven Design (DDD), Behavior Driven Development (BDD), Specification by Example (SbE), and SAFe. His pitch: "I've spent years building complex systems for demanding clients, and I've noticed the highest-leverage work is always upstream — getting the problem definition right before a line of code is written."
Notable targets include Nango (API integration), OpenRouter (LLM routing), Composio (agent tools), Scalar, and Zuplo.
Linear, Oxide Computer, Val.town. Amsterdam targets include PromptWatch and Lemni.
In-person networking events planned in Amsterdam:
Active on X (Twitter) as @janwilmake for professional networking and product announcements.
Active independent work alongside the job search:
On March 20, 2026, Jan publicly announced his job search on X: "Hi! Based in the Netherlands, I'm looking for a new opportunity as full-stack product engineer with experience with React (Native), Node.js and Cloudflare, and generally, building entire products from scratch. DMs open!" The post received 14 likes.
He also expressed interest in several roles posted by founders including a staff infrastructure role at Nebula, a position at Biscuit in Amsterdam, and an AI PM role via thenanyu.
In early April 2026, Jan continued pursuing opportunities. On April 9, he responded to a senior full-stack engineer listing at ViewMax.io by pointing the founder to his GitHub portfolio, and also expressed interest in joining @jdanjohnson's team (Miami-based, open to part-time).
On April 12, 2026, Jan spent an extended session browsing startupmap.one — exploring 175+ Amsterdam startup jobs and clicking through to Airweave, Transferz, LangWatch, Oaky, Orderchamp, Happeo, Workwize, and Stacks AI. On LinkedIn, he browsed founding engineer and AI roles at Venta AI (YC S23), Ascending AI, Carv, LangChain Amsterdam, and kapa.ai.
Jan researched ProfitPath (profitpath.com) — an Amazon FBA / online arbitrage SaaS — as a potential employer. He browsed their jobs page (Senior Product Engineer opening), blog, and parent company (Fourbite GmbH). He ran a dedicated Claude session for interview preparation lasting approximately 16 minutes.
On April 14, Jan also publicly declared cold outreach as the single most critical skill for builders in 2026.
Jan researched Merge Labs (merge.io) — a unified API platform. He browsed their blog, X profile, careers page, and a Senior Application Engineer opening. He also checked job listings at Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI) and a Cloudflare job opening.
April 17 was the most sustained job-searching day recorded. Jan ran extensive LinkedIn searches for remote TypeScript/fullstack roles, including specific listings at:
| Company | Role |
|---|---|
| Tether.io | Developer Relations P2P (100% remote) |
| Mistral AI | Software Engineer, Fullstack/Frontend |
| Mistral AI | Applied AI Engineer, Fullstack (EMEA) |
| Checkly | Senior Product Engineer AI (remote, UTC-3 to UTC+3) |
He also searched X for "hiring" threads, finding The Agents Company and a Cloudflare job opening.
On April 19, 2026, Jan received and replied to a recruiting email from SILA — a startup seeking a founding engineer. He also checked the Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2026) thread on Hacker News and browsed careers at Featurebase (a Product Engineer opening) and Better Stack.
April 20 was driven by three threads: MCP research, job hunting, and apartment hunting in Amsterdam. The MCP deep-dive included watching Anthropic's David Soria Parra talk on "The Future of MCP" (~21 min), browsing the MCP spec repos and GitHub discussions. Job hunting included visits to the Wellfound listing for a Founding Engineer role at Topliner (Amsterdam/The Hague/Rotterdam or Remote).
On April 21, Jan explored the intersection of MCP and cybersecurity — including a Claude session on "MCP for pentesting and security testing" and registration of the domain hackbot.cc (see Hackbot). He viewed LinkedIn listings for AI Security and Security Engineer roles.
He also explored Composio (composio.dev) as a potential employer, browsing their blog, job listings, and documentation extensively.
Jan checked the newly shipped Cloudflare Billable Usage Dashboard, explored Jonas_Templestein's cf-artifact-viewer, and continued LinkedIn networking. On April 24, he read Jonas Templestein's influential idea about Cloudflare API bindings.
moyai.ai) — an AI monitoring platform — researching the founders (Robert Hommes, Vladimir Vuckovic) on LinkedIn.On April 30, 2026, Jan noticed the trending X topic "Parallel Web Systems Raises $100M at $2B Valuation for AI Web Tools" — a significant validation of Parallel_AI, his former employer. He also discovered the Amsterdam Tech Connect | AI Coding Agents Edition event (May 7) and began researching Amsterdam hotels for May 4–8.
Jan prepared for an Amsterdam trip (May 4–8), booking accommodation and checking transit routes. On May 4, he completed his BTW (VAT) tax filing and booked a 30-minute meeting with Ives_van_Hoorne (founder of CodeSandbox / Biscuit) for May 8, later rescheduled to May 12.
On May 6, Jan resumed the Topliner Founding Engineer application on Wellfound and researched PromptWatch (promptwatch.com).
May 7 was a pivotal day. Jan attended (or prepared for) the Amsterdam Tech Connect | AI Coding Agents Edition event. More significantly, he resumed active coding after roughly seventeen consecutive days without development — working on a technical assignment (likely for PromptWatch) using NestJS/Fastify.
On May 8, Jan received a "CV Request - Moyai Interview" email — confirming that Moyai is now at the interview stage. The meeting with Ives_van_Hoorne was rescheduled from May 8 to May 12, 2026 at 11:00 UTC.
On May 11, Jan had a ~30-minute Google Meet call with Arsen Ibragimov (connected through Wijnand Karsens, via Topliner) — showing the Self-Driving_Repos landing page during the call. He also received a Moyai email about connecting and scheduled a chat with Dineke Mulder at Atlas Agency (a recruitment firm).
May 12 was dominated by deep exploration of Biscuit and a meeting with its founder Ives_van_Hoorne. Jan spent ~30 minutes building a project called "Publican" inside Biscuit, then had a 30-minute Google Meet with Ives, showing the OpenPolsia dashboard and GitHub repository.
May 13 featured multiple developments:
On May 14 (Ascension Day holiday), a calendar invite arrived for a 30-minute intro call with Floris from Blixt, scheduled for May 20, 2026 at 3:00–3:30 PM CEST.
On May 17, Jan visited the Calendly booking page for the Moyai intro call and selected the May 19, 2026 at 13:00 CEST slot after re-reading the invite email three times.
May 19 was a pivotal day. The morning opened with an extensive job-hunting session, during which Jan applied to multiple new positions:
| Company | Role | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Youwe (Groningen) | Senior Full-Stack Headless Developer | ✅ Applied |
| Lightdash (YC-backed) | Full Stack Software Engineer | Explored |
| Learned | Senior Fullstack Developer | ✅ Application started |
| Harborn Digital | Front-end Developer | Explored |
| Foreside | Fullstack Developer | Explored |
Mid-morning, Jan completed the Moyai intro call (~11:00–11:32 CEST) with co-founder Robert Hommes and Wijnand Karsens. He had prepared a PDF deck titled "Presentation for Moyai — AI Agent Reliability & Observability" and showed his GitHub profile during the meeting.
The Blixt intro call with Floris Weers took place from approximately 13:00–13:30 CEST via Google Meet — earlier than the originally scheduled 15:00 slot. Jan performed last-minute preparation just before the call, reading Floris's X post about automatic integration tests and Blixt's post about AI-driven testing with forked databases. During the call, Jan showed the OpenPolsia dashboard as a portfolio piece.
Earlier that morning, Jan explored INDEX by Parallel — a new system that indexes websites for AI agent discovery. He also viewed the front-end Member of Technical Staff job listing at Parallel on Ashby.
Following the high-intensity interview week of May 19–20, the period May 21–24 was largely passive. No follow-up emails were sent to any pipeline targets during this stretch, allowing several of the warm relationships to go cold.
May 28 marked a shift back into active job search mode. Jan browsed 100+ recommended LinkedIn job positions, clicking into multiple listings including a Full-Stack Developer role at YOHR Consultancy.
The HACKADAM indie-maker meetup in Amsterdam is taking place today — Jan was personally tagged by @AbnerHout on May 22. The event offers an in-person networking opportunity.
| Company | Contact | Stage | Days Since Last Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moyai | Robert Hommes, Wijnand Karsens | ✅ Intro call completed May 19 | 9 days |
| Blixt | Floris Weers | ✅ Intro call completed May 20 | 8 days |
| Biscuit | Ives van Hoorne, Maria Martin | Post-Bakin' Biscuit (May 15) | 13 days post-event |
| Atlas Agency | Dineke | Call completed May 13 | 15 days |
| Topliner | Arsen Ibragimov, Wijnand Karsens | Networking call completed May 11 | Wijnand confirmed as key network node |
| Youwe (Groningen) | — | ✅ Applied May 19 | Awaiting response |
| Learned | — | Application started May 19 | Awaiting response |
| YOHR Consultancy | — | 🆕 Application form visited May 28 | New lead |
| Parallel_AI | — | Front-end MTS role viewed May 20 | No application filed |
| Lightdash (YC) | — | Explored May 19 | Decide on application |
| Harborn Digital | — | Explored May 19 | Decide on application |
| Polarsteps | — | Careers page browsed May 13 | No follow-up |
In addition to the ongoing projects listed above, Jan's April–May 2026 side projects include: