I am a technologist, DevOps engineer, fullstack developer, product builder and entrepreneur. Turning ideas and visions into well-crafted technical solutions is my passion. As former Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of VC-backed cloud startup and market leader Talentry, I have over ten years of experience in software engineering, DevOps, cloud technology, leadership and entrepreneurship. In my role as CTO, I was responsible for building a global SaaS platform that is resilient, scalable, maintainable - and loved by our customers. Being a maker at heart, I have always remained in a hands-on engineering role while building a high-performance engineering organization.
Today, I act as an independent DevOps and software engineering consultant on a freelance basis. I enjoy both working as a hands-on engineer as well as taking over interim leadership roles. Although generally tech-agnostic, the stack I enjoy working with most is AWS, Terraform, Python, Typescript and React. My Experience
DevOps & IT Security
Definition of the technical platform vision and responsibility for the entire system and cloud architecture
Running highly available and secure services, Kubernetes clusters and database systems for a global, multi-product HR SaaS platform
Multiple migration projects of production systems, moving from legacy vendors and Azure to AWS (Kubernetes, EKS, Terraform, EC2, ECR, ELB, S3, Lambda, RDS, DynamoDB, KMS, Elasticsearch, ElastiCache, SQS, SES)
Overall responsibility for technical and organizational IT security and networking, for both cloud-based product infrastructure as well as internal IT (e.g. TLS/HTTPS, DNS, VPN, Azure AD, Office365, SSO, VPC, Security Groups, Bastion Hosts, AWS VPN, AWS Secrets Manager, HSTS, XSS, OWASP, internal IT security guidelines, building an internal ISMS, preparing for ISO27001 certification)
Preparing and managing regular third-party IT security and data protection audits as well as penetration tests as required by enterprise customers (OWASP, GDPR, risk evaluation, remediation roadmaps)
Overall responsibility for data protection and in-depth experience with technical considerations of GDPR, close collaboration with external data protection officer
Finding technical solutions for enterprise customer requests like handling data according to Russian data protection regulations or US-specific employment laws
Management and delivery of more than 30 integration projects, including IBM Kenexa, SAP SuccessFactors, Oracle Taleo, SmartRecruiters and greenhouse.io
Close collaboration with customer-side decision-makers from the areas of IT, IT security, data protection, HR and purchasing
Software Engineering & Machine Learning
Responsibility for overall software architecture and technical implementation of the product vision, from operational development to building and directing cross-functional product and engineering teams
Shaping the agile software development life cycle across teams (Scrum, Kanban)
Evaluating and gradually introducing domain-driven design to the code base
Driving the execution of the roadmap of a highly configurable, multi-product HR SaaS solution that is available in 11 languages on three platforms, targeted at international enterprises (Python/Django, React.js, PHP/Symfony, Angular, REST, Kafka)
Implementation of enterprise features like SSO, Workflow Automation, Domain Whitelisting, White-Label Branding, Custom Data Models, Compliance Management
Building a serverless, Lambda-based integrations platform to facilitate efficient and flexible integration projects with customer HR and applicant tracking systems
Development and deployment of machine learning models predicting user behavior and exploratory data analysis (Jupyter, SageMaker, Numpy, Pandas)
Direction of external engineering teams in Spain, Serbia, Vienna and Romania
Management of customer implementation projects for corporates and SMEs
Entrepreneurship
Co-founded and successfully built up Talentry GmbH, a leading and growing cloud software company in the talent relationship space with international enterprise clients such as Vodafone, Henkel, Universal Music or Axel Springer
Successful closing of multiple venture capital financing rounds with a sum of over €9 million, partnering with Nauta Capital, Global Founders Capital and others
Many years of strategic collaboration with a high-profile advisory board
Leadership
8 years of experience as co-founder & managing director of a leading SaaS startup
Total budget responsibility of over €4 million per year
End-to-end hiring of various roles (including Tech Leads, Fullstack Developers, DevOps Engineers, VP Product, Designers, Product Managers), including sourcing, screening, interviewing, negotiating and optimizing recruiting processes
Leadership and mentoring for tech leads, establishing the leadership approaches “Servant Leadership” and “Radical Candor”
Disciplinary and technical leadership as well as personal development of more than 20 team members in the areas of Engineering, DevOps, Internal IT, Product Management and Design
Introduction and continuous optimization of a company-wide target framework based on OKRs (Objectives & Key Results)
Building an agile, value-based and healthy corporate culture (Kununu Top Employer, Focus-Business: Top Employer Medium-Sized Businesses 2018-2021)
Projekthistorie
05/2021
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12/2021
DevOps Engineer & Consultant
(Pharma und Medizintechnik, 50-250 Mitarbeiter)
Overall DevOps responsibility for entire system and cloud architecture (Kubernetes, Terraform, AWS, ELK, DataDog, CloudFlare)
Running highly available and secure services, multiple Kubernetes clusters (kops, GitOps/FluxCD) and database systems (RDS, AuroraDB) for a global, multi-product health-tech platform
Establishing best-practice standards for new project setups and their deployments (GitLab CI/CD, Kubernetes/Helm, Harbor, S3)
Integrating AWS China accounts into overall landscape, finding work-arounds for the Great Firewall
Migrating systems from self-hosted solutions to SaaS (e.g. Sentry, GitLab, PostHog)
Establishing proactive monitoring and alerting practices based on DataDog, migrating from self-hosted ELK stack
Continuous optimization of CI/CD pipelines and deployment practices (immutable infrastructure, IaC, blue/green deployments, build speed reduction)