October 22nd 2025
Project manager David van Duinen talks about embracing diversity and living with a butler.
David van Duinen has just returned from a month-long holiday in the United States, the home country of his wife Amy. Trips such as this one have become a yearly tradition for the couple and their two-year-old son, who often travel to Pennsylvania to spend time with Amy’s family.
“America is definitely a big part of my life,” says David. “I appreciate how friendly and chatty the locals are. It’s a country built on immigrants and, as such, it’s a big melting pot of people. I think it’s very valuable to bring different backgrounds and cultures together.”
Which also happens to be one of the main reasons why David enjoys working at PHIX. “I appreciate how international and open the team is,” he says. “What I like the most about my job is its multidisciplinarity, which inevitably leads to working with a wide variety of people.”
This diversity, of people, disciplines and topics, is what attracted David to the company in the first place. “Working at PHIX appealed to me because I’m very broadly educated and broadly interested. Photonics is a very multidisciplinary field. It’s also a very new field, which means a lot of it isn’t standardized, and so every new project requires a new solution.”
This demands a highly collaborative way of working, he adds. “We always have to find the best way forward together. PHIX is a fairly young company, and I have seen it grow and evolve. Our processes are more established, and we have more teams and departments than at the start, but we still try to solve all problems together. We don’t just throw it over the fence to the next department and wait for them to figure it out.”
Starting his career at PHIX “during the first COVID winter four years ago” was a sort of homecoming for David, who grew up near Zwolle and studied Applied Physics at the University of Twente. After graduation, he moved to Germany to conduct his PhD research at the Max Planck Institute. “I met my wife there, so it was definitely the right call,” he adds with a smile.
When the job opportunity in Twente came up, David and Amy didn’t hesitate. They found a house in Hengelo and immediately acquired a Butler. “Our dog,” explains David. “We gave him this name, so we could officially say that we have a butler, even though he doesn’t exactly help us around the house,” he laughs.
“Like most of my colleagues, I like tinkering, and building a guitar is a nice combination of engineering and woodworking.”
When he’s not playing with Butler or his son, David likes to play the guitar. Or to build one. “I’m now in the middle of the slow process of assembling my own electric guitar for the second time. Like most of my colleagues, I like tinkering, and building a guitar is a nice combination of engineering and woodworking.”
Apart from finishing the guitar and finding a “forever home” for him and his young family, David’s bucket list contains only one more item. “I recognize that I’m a person born into privilege and I hope to use this privilege for something good because things aren’t always as good as they could be. Other than that, I’m the type of person who just sees what comes their way. My main goal in life is to have a happy life and surround myself with nice people.”
Are you interested in a career at PHIX?
As a rapidly growing integrated photonics packaging foundry we are always looking for new talent. Even if our current job openings aren’t an exact fit, we are eager to meet promising candidates who are experienced in photonics.
