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Simon Gielen

Third-year Electronics - ICT student at Thomas More, Belgium.
Working toward cloud and systems engineering,
built up from scratch, through the failures.

Cloud Linux Networking Infrastructure Security
Portrait of Simon Gielen
Based in Belgium, aiming international
Year Third-year Electronics - ICT student
Focus Cloud · Infra
School Thomas More
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Cloud Engineering ◆ Linux Systems Administration ◆ Infrastructure & Networking ◆ AWS · EC2 · VPC ◆ Containerization & Orchestration ◆ Network Security ◆ Windows Server ◆ Thomas More Belgium ◆

I didn't arrive here knowing what I was doing.

I started Electronics - ICT with a general interest in technology and no clear picture of where it would take me. The first semester was a mix of exposure to things I'd never touched: web basics, networking fundamentals, and server concepts. It slowly became clear that I wanted to understand systems at a level where I could actually control and change them.

That realization took some time. It came from building things that broke, reading errors I didn't understand yet, and gradually working through them. The infrastructure side of the field started to click in a way that the surface-level work did not.

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Selected projects documented

SKIL2 work and extra realisations are documented with context, visuals, learning outcomes, contribution details, and honest reflection on what needed correction.

3 years of technical progression

From early web and programming foundations to networking, server administration, Linux, cloud infrastructure, and application security, tracked and reflected on across the full bachelor journey.

Built from first principles

Every project started from scratch, debugged through real errors, and iterated toward understanding. Not copy-pasting tutorials, but building the mental model from the failure up.

Cloud and systems engineering is the direction.

Not web development as a destination. Not chasing frameworks. The infrastructure layer is where my attention ended up after two years of hands-on exposure to the full stack of Cloud & Cybersecurity: how systems are deployed, secured, connected, and kept running.

Skills & background →
Cloud compute & hosting AWS EC2, networking, deployment, Elastic IP
Linux systems Server admin, CLI, permissions, services, logs
Network security Firewalls, access control, TLS, SSH hardening
Containerization Docker fundamentals, deployment architecture

Projects

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Open to internships and collaborative projects.

Currently in the advanced phase of my studies at Thomas More. Looking for opportunities to apply cloud and infrastructure skills in a real-world context, internships, student projects, or technical collaborations.

Next chapter — 01 / 02 About→ The story, the skills, and where this is heading