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Career Plan 2026

From Jan Wilmake's personal knowledge base

Career Plan 2026

As of early 2026, Jan_Wilmake is conducting an active job search from Groningen, Netherlands.[1] 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.

Target Role Profile

Stated preferences:

  1. Daily collaboration with peers of comparable or greater technical ability
  2. AI/LLM-adjacent work — API integration, LLM orchestration, context tooling, or agent infrastructure
  3. Location: Groningen (preferred) or remote-first; Amsterdam acceptable
  4. Company type: Product company or consultancy with genuine technical depth

Self-described strengths relevant to applications:

  • Deep expertise in TypeScript/JavaScript, React Native, Cloudflare Workers
  • Rare combination of technical implementation experience with AI/LLM systems
  • Track record of building products from zero to paying users independently
  • Experience with MCP (Model Context Protocol), OpenAPI ecosystems, and Cloudflare edge infrastructure

Target Sectors and Companies

Groningen / Local

Wilmake explored local Groningen opportunities, including IT consultancies and engineering roles aligned with his TypeScript and AI background.

API / LLM Orchestration Space

Notable target categories include API integration platforms, LLM routing, agent tooling, and developer-tooling companies — areas that map directly onto his work on uithub, ContextArea, and installthismcp.

Remote-First / Amsterdam

A broad set of remote-first and Amsterdam-based startups were evaluated throughout the spring, with a particular focus on AI engineer and full-stack product engineer roles.

Networking Strategy

Networking channels used during the search:

  • In-person events — AI Tinkerers, Internet Friends, and the HACKADAM indie-maker meetup in Amsterdam
  • Local meetups — aiGrunn Café in Groningen
  • X (Twitter) as @janwilmake for professional networking and product announcements

Public Announcement

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!"[1]

Ongoing Side Projects (2026)

Active independent work continued alongside the job search:

  • uithub improvements (token counts, library mode, advanced filters, open-sourced March 2026)
  • forgithub — Dashboard for GitHub, Context for GitHub (launched December 2025)
  • gcombinator.com — HN article+comment context tool (launched January 2026)
  • ContextArea — context engineering and MCP client (launched February 2026)
  • Markdown_Browser — browser for the second web (launched March 2026)
  • SimplerAuth — auth library collection (consolidated December 2024)
  • OpenPolsia — open-source variant of Polsia (started March 2026)
  • Grok_Thyself — X data sync tool (launched April 7, 2026)
  • Self-Driving_Repos — autonomous agent orchestration on GitHub repos (launched April 8, 2026)

Outcome: Joined Hyre

By early July 2026, the search concluded with Jan signing a freelance (ZZP) contract with Hyre (hyre.io) as a founding engineer, where his work focuses on Model Context Protocol (MCP) tooling for recruitment workflows. The progression from discovery to signed contract took under four weeks — the fastest cycle of the entire search.[2]

See Also

References

  1. X posts: x-archive/raw/x-posts/2026-03-20.md ↑
  2. X posts: x-archive/raw/x-posts/2026-07-09.md ↑