Daniel Sum
Available for work

Daniel Sum

Senior Lead Full-stack Engineer · DevSecOps · AI Forward Deployed Engineer

Brussels, Belgium · "The sum of us is greater than us."

EmailLinkedInPortfolioCo-Labs
20+
Years shipping
150+
Collaborators
60+
Projects
6
Awards

TL;DR

20+ years building products, teams and ecosystems. Founder, CTO and Tech Lead combining AI, engineering and security — now focused on mentoring people and passing on that experience.

For more than 20 years, I’ve built digital products, grown teams and connected people into thriving ecosystems — across SaaS, AI, e-commerce and web platforms. I co-founded Cherry Pulp, a bootstrapped agency that grew 150× before its acquisition by CBTW in 2023, and served as Tech Lead for Aware (Intermarché Group), Wequity, Producers’ College and Rebel.coop. Today, I’m CTO of Co-Labs, a Brussels venture studio focused on Civic & Health Tech and Cyber Defense. AI-augmented delivery lets us ship in weeks what once took months. After 20 years of hands-on building, I want to dedicate the next 20 to passing on that experience: mentoring people, developing teams and helping others build what comes next.

Experience

Volunteering

Mentor

Team4Job

Helping job seekers find their way and land a job.

100%of my mentees found a job

One of my mentees, François Campos, went on to become a presenter at Nostalgie.

Speaker

100.000 entrepreneurs

Sharing my entrepreneurial experience in schools, helping students find their own path and giving them space to ask questions.

President

Co-Labs ASBL

Supporting civic initiatives and collective action.

  • •La Zinne (Brussels local currency)
  • •Bees Coop
  • •Agora Brussels
  • •Surf Rider — Ban the bags campaign
  • •Covid Solidarity
  • •Ensemble Solidaires

Selected works

Stack & skills

TypeScriptPythonGoPHPJavaNext.jsReactNestJSHonoFastAPIPostgreSQLBigQuerySnowflakeClaudeMCPLangGraphLiteLLMPresidioDockerKubernetesTerraformGCPAWSVercelKeycloakEntra IDDevSecOpsNIS2 / DORA / AI Act

Awards

  • Cannes Lions — Best B2B Campaign (Bpost × Marcolini, Mini for TBWA)
  • Digital Society Champ Award — Ensemble Solidaires
  • ING Society Award — Co-Labs
  • Belgian representative — Web Design International Festival

Education

  • UX Design — UX Design Institute · 2024 – 2025
  • BeAngels Academy — BeAngels · 2024
  • Executive MBA — ThePower Business School · 2022 – 2023
  • Master, Information & Communication Technologies — Université libre de Bruxelles · 2010 – 2011
  • Bachelor, Multimedia — HEPL Liège · 2007 – 2010

Certifications

  • Project Management
  • EITC/AI/GCML Google Cloud Machine Learning
  • DevSecOps: Securing CI/CD
  • GitHub Actions
  • API Platform Security

Languages

  • French — Native
  • English — Professional

Trusted by

TBWA · Unicef · Oxfam · EU Institutions · ING · eFarmz · Engie · KBC · Sony · IKEA · Carrefour · Delhaize · National Lottery · Bpost · RTL-TVI · BMW · Groupon · Leo Pharma

Daniel Sum

Senior Lead Full-stack Engineer · DevSecOps · AI Forward Deployed Engineer

Brussels, Belgium · daniel@co-labs.be · +32 485 66 25 69 · linkedin.com/in/danielsum · sumdaniel.com

TL;DR: 20+ years building products, teams and ecosystems. Founder, CTO and Tech Lead combining AI, engineering and security — now focused on mentoring people and passing on that experience.

For more than 20 years, I’ve built digital products, grown teams and connected people into thriving ecosystems — across SaaS, AI, e-commerce and web platforms. I co-founded Cherry Pulp, a bootstrapped agency that grew 150× before its acquisition by CBTW in 2023, and served as Tech Lead for Aware (Intermarché Group), Wequity, Producers’ College and Rebel.coop. Today, I’m CTO of Co-Labs, a Brussels venture studio focused on Civic & Health Tech and Cyber Defense. AI-augmented delivery lets us ship in weeks what once took months. After 20 years of hands-on building, I want to dedicate the next 20 to passing on that experience: mentoring people, developing teams and helping others build what comes next.

Experience

Co-Founder · CTO — DrimtOct 2026 – Present

Co-founding and leading the technology of a new venture.

Co-Founder · CEO & CTO — Co-Labs.groupOct 2026 – Present

Venture studio building and co-owning ventures in Civic & Health Tech and Cyber Defense. ING Society Award.

• Venture architecture, team building and tech due diligence

• AI-augmented delivery across studio ventures

Team Lead Developer — EEAS — European External Action ServiceMay 2025 – Present

Leading a development team delivering secure web platforms for the EU diplomatic service.

• Technical leadership, code quality and delivery of the dev team

• Secure architecture, DevSecOps pipelines and identity integration

Co-founder · Board Member — We Are Rebel SCApr 2025 – Present

Cooperative-as-a-service where freelancers and companies co-create ventures, pool resources and share learnings.

• Set direction and governance, ship things that matter

Tech Consultant · CTO as a Service — Sum ConsultingSep 2022 – Present

Tech strategy, team management & recruitment, full-stack, cybersec, ISO certification, data architecture, DevOps and product design for EU institutions, Aware, Wequity, Gratiago, Socopro and more.

• Tech Lead — Aware (Intermarché Group), Producers’ College and Rebel.coop

• Tech Lead — Socopro (2024): new website with many partners and tight constraints

• Tech Lead — Wequity (2023): ESG SaaS and AI pivot

• Tech Lead — data platform for farmers

Coach — Réseau Entreprendre

Coach at Réseau Entreprendre.

Final Project Jury — La CapsuleMar 2020 – Mar 2023

Jury for final projects of the web developer bootcamp.

Founder · CTO — Cherry Pulp (sold to CBTW)Feb 2013 – Mar 2023

Founded and led a bootstrapped digital agency that grew 150× and was acquired by CBTW in 2023.

• Built products for 87seconds (exit), SocialKarma (exit), MyTribuNews (Startup of the Year), eFarmz (E-commerce of the Year)

• Digital Society Champ Award — Ensemble Solidaires (RTL-TVI / RTBF / Sud Presse)

Freelance Rich Media Developer — TBWA\Belgium2011 – Feb 2013

Flash AS3, XHTML/CSS, PHP, JavaScript and iPhone work for Bpost, BMW Mini, Eni, National Lottery, Ecover.

• Cannes Lions — Best B2B Campaign (Bpost × Marcolini)

Web Developer — GluconeAug – Oct 2009

XHTML/CSS integration, Flash animation, PHP/AJAX development and SEO.

Volunteering

Mentor — Team4Job: Helping job seekers find their way and land a job. 100% of my mentees found a job. One of my mentees, François Campos, went on to become a presenter at Nostalgie.

Speaker — 100.000 entrepreneurs: Sharing my entrepreneurial experience in schools, helping students find their own path and giving them space to ask questions.

President — Co-Labs ASBL: Supporting civic initiatives and collective action. La Zinne (Brussels local currency) · Bees Coop · Agora Brussels · Surf Rider — Ban the bags campaign · Covid Solidarity · Ensemble Solidaires.

Skills

Languages: TypeScript, Python, Go, PHP, Java

Frameworks: Next.js, React, NestJS, Hono, FastAPI

Data: PostgreSQL, BigQuery, Snowflake

AI: Claude, MCP, LangGraph, LiteLLM, Presidio

Cloud: Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, GCP, AWS, Vercel

Security: Keycloak, Entra ID, DevSecOps, NIS2 / DORA / AI Act

Awards

• Cannes Lions — Best B2B Campaign (Bpost × Marcolini, Mini for TBWA)

• Digital Society Champ Award — Ensemble Solidaires

• ING Society Award — Co-Labs

• Belgian representative — Web Design International Festival

Education

UX Design — UX Design Institute (2024 – 2025)

BeAngels Academy — BeAngels (2024)

Executive MBA — ThePower Business School (2022 – 2023)

Master, Information & Communication Technologies — Université libre de Bruxelles (2010 – 2011)

Bachelor, Multimedia — HEPL Liège (2007 – 2010)

Certifications & Languages

• Project Management

• EITC/AI/GCML Google Cloud Machine Learning

• DevSecOps: Securing CI/CD

• GitHub Actions

• API Platform Security

French — Native · English — Professional

Clients

TBWA · Unicef · Oxfam · EU Institutions · ING · eFarmz · Engie · KBC · Sony · IKEA · Carrefour · Delhaize · National Lottery · Bpost · RTL-TVI · BMW · Groupon · Leo Pharma