As from May 15th, Kris Huybs will join The Sniffers team as ICT Director. Join us in welcoming him. Who is he and where does his passion for IT come from? Let us find out.

Can you introduce yourself?

Hi, my name is Kris Huybs, I am 40 years old and live together with my wife and 3 sons in Ten Aard, a peaceful town in the city of Geel.
I love spending time with my family, preferably outdoors, playing soccer, hiking, and together discovering each other and the world in general.

Where does your experience in ICT come from?

My passion for ICT and technology in general started when I was a young boy. I was always interested in how things work and tried to build things on my own. Dreaming of what the future would bring, and what role I could play in that, following new technological evolutions and playing with the first PC’s.

That passion and drive unfolded a path to a job at Telindus, a network integrator. It was just before the year 2000, a time when ICT was booming. I had the luck to work next to very keen and experienced people whom I was eager to learn from. That is where I build a firm basis on networking & security the foundation of ICT, which connects it all together. On my path I rolled into a leadership training, Process oriented Leadership, which helped me to become more aware of myself, my strengths and challenges. It also revealed a new way of leadership and organization development, the seed for a new passion. It helped me in my new role as teamleader of the transmission team in Telindus.

In 2006 Telindus was acquired by Belgacom, later rebranded to Proximus, the Belgian national telecom operator. In this new context, I got the opportunity to become operations manager of the datacenter. Here a completely new world opened, a datacenter is a true playground for anyone with interests in ICT, as all the layers and aspect of ICT are present in a datacenter. In the past 8 years I worked with top engineers on all different layers of ICT, helping me to broaden my view and knowledge of ICT. I also had the opportunity to experiment with new forms of leadership and team development.

What made you apply for the job of ICT Director at The Sniffers?

I felt a big awareness within The Sniffers that ICT is not a loose, supporting department, but a core, key component of the company’s products and services. That was key to me, as I believe that evolution to innovative digitized services is key to the growth of a company like The Sniffers.
Seeing what steps and investments The Sniffers had already taken with the development of SFEMP, Perseus, Snifflare and Sniftrap, it was clear that this vision was really put to practice.

I look forward to help the Sniffers further digitize their products and services and build a steady bimodal IT. Working both on a reliable, predictable basis with proven technologies and vendors, and in parallel working in an exploratory way to create new agile, innovative solutions.

The Sniffers have a strong team with a lot of deep expertise in the field of emission reduction and pipeline services, I feel that there is a lot of drive and passion present. That is the kind of environment I love and look forward to working in.