Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900)

• Integration of highly regulated countries such as China and South Korea into a company-wide M365 tenant.

• Technical contact for integrating special requirements for the executive board and German subsidiaries that are subject to BaFin compliance requirements.

• Subproject management.

• Coordination of requirements within the overall architecture.

• Design of the use of DLP features from Microsoft Purview.

• Design of special access restrictions via Entra ID Conditional Access.

• Support in designing the provisioning of Teams teams and SharePoint sites with higher compliance requirements.

• Technical support for implementing information classification with sensitivity labels for SharePoint Online and Teams.

• Technical support for the subproject introducing CoPilot for M365.

• Skills: M365, Purview, DLP, Entra ID, Sensitivity Labels, CoPilot, Teams, SharePoint Online.

• Head of the group-wide, international, and cross-functional IT Governance & IAM department within the central IT division of a large French-German private banking group. Disciplinary management of around 30 employees at five different locations within the group (Frankfurt, Paris, Tunis, Saarbrücken, Düsseldorf). Head of IT committees and key role in direct communication with management, the supervisory board, external stakeholders, and regulators.
• Definition and establishment of a state-of-the-art IT strategy process and related IT governance structures for the group's IT department with more than 600 employees (testified by the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority and the ACPR) and successful process run.
• Establishment of a new future-oriented process framework for IT and necessary governance structures (process squads) for the continuous improvement of IT processes with regard to new regulatory requirements (including DORA, EU AI Act, etc.).
• Establishment of stringent processes to close a historical backlog of findings (> 100 IT findings, 40 overdue findings in 2022) from internal and external auditors (WP, ACPR, BaFin). Successful reduction of stock of overdue findings to 0 at the end of 2025.
• Supporting more than 20 IT audits per year and establishment of regulatory monitoring processes. Introduction of ServiceNow to revolutionize regulatory change and IT compliance processes with advanced AI functionalities.
• Realignment of IT control processes in conjunction with the newly established ICT risk function under DORA and the three lines of defense concept using the TopEase GRC solution.
• Reduction of the application landscape, by systematically analysing the purpose with application and business owners, identifying duplicates while implementing a One-Tool Strategy throughout the group. Successful reduction of one third of the application landscape within the CMDB.
• Onboarding of all group applications into One Identity's group-wide IAM solution, as well as operation and further development of the solution in connection with segregation of duties (SoD), role-based access management (RBAC), etc.

• Deployment and scaling of existing ML initiatives, including demand and cash flow forecasts.
• Building robust monitoring with mlflow for data stability, model performance, and drift detection, as well as implementing additional ML use cases.
• Further development of an Agentic AI chatbot for transparent and easy-to-understand model explanations.

Scope: Embedded as FP&A Data & AI Architect within the Finance function of a major European refrigeration manufacturer, leading the transformation of manual, fragmented financial reporting into an automated, governance-driven intelligence platform. Driving the shift from Excel-based controlling to structured data architecture, Power BI analytics, and AI-assisted financial operations.

Financial Data Integrity & ERP Governance

• Initiated and led GL vs. subledger reconciliation investigations, identifying and resolving structural mismatches between General Ledger and subledger data that had gone undetected prior to engagement
• Conducted asset analysis to identify items missing from General Ledger postings, surfacing gaps in fixed asset tracking and period-end completeness
• Validated SAP reports, establishing baseline data quality standards for Finance team consumption
• Established systematic SAP data validation framework ensuring ongoing integrity between ERP postings and downstream reporting outputs

Finance Reporting Transformation

• Designed and implemented a structured Transformation Project approach for converting manual Finance reports into fully automated processes
• Created and owns the Data Reporting Audit Log; a centralized tracking system capturing report owners, stakeholders, data sources, manual effort estimates, and automation opportunity scores across the Finance function
• Mapped the full reporting landscape identifying quick-win automation targets and strategic Power BI migration candidates
• Actively reducing manual Excel and PowerPoint dependency across FP&A workflows; replacing point-in-time snapshots with live, governed data models

Power BI & Analytics Enablement

• Introduced and presented Power BI as the strategic reporting platform to Finance leadership, building internal buy-in for the BI transformation roadmap
• Designed initial Power BI architecture aligned with SAP, Salesforce and Oracle data structures and FP&A reporting requirements
• Established report ownership, governance documentation, and data lineage standards enabling sustainable self-service analytics across the Finance team

Transformation Infrastructure & Collaboration

• Configured and deployed Jira as the transformation project management hub, establishing structured sprint workflows, backlog management, and progress visibility for Finance IT initiatives
• Proposed and initiated a dedicated FP&A Communication & Transformation Hub, a structured cross-functional forum aligning Finance, IT, and business stakeholders around the reporting transformation roadmap
• Positioned the Finance function as an active driver of data governance and digital transformation within the broader organization

Outcomes

• GL/subledger reconciliation gaps identified and investigation framework established within first two weeks of engagement
• Data Reporting Audit Log deployed; first structured inventory of Finance reporting landscape in company history
• Power BI transformation roadmap presented and approved by Finance leadership
• Jira-based project governance live; Finance transformation now tracked with full sprint visibility

Technologies: SAP FI/CO · Power BI · DAX · SQL · Excel (advanced) · Power Query (M) · Power Automate · VBA · Jira · Microsoft 365 · SharePoint · Salesforce (Sales Data) · Oracle HCM · Python

• Regulated environment within a German banking group (approx. 8,500 employees, hybrid cloud strategy).

• Responsible for operating, provisioning, and continuously securing business-critical platforms – including a GenAI chat application, a big data/AI platform, and data science workspaces based on Azure Virtual Desktops and VMs. Ownership of Azure DevOps projects for ShaiHulud and React2Shell, as well as BSI alerts – Security Operations improvements across the SDLC.

• Deployment responsibility for the GenAI chat application, big data/AI platform (BDAI), and data science workspaces (AVD/VM-based) in the respective landing zones.

• Deployment & release management: end-to-end responsibility for deploying portal and service applications across multiple Azure landing zones, including technical approvals, compliance with development team deployment guidelines, and ensuring ITIL-based change and release processes via ServiceNow.

• Azure landing zones & network architecture: design, provisioning, and operation of Azure landing zones for 3-tier web applications with enhanced network segmentation, VNet peering, hub-and-spoke architectures, private endpoints, and firewall integration across separate subscriptions and tenants.

• Azure DevOps governance & operations: ownership of the Azure DevOps organization, including projects, repositories, and CI/CD pipelines; implementation of governance requirements such as branch policies, approval gates, permission models, and audit-ready operating structures.

• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform): design, implementation, and operation of a modular Terraform architecture for standardized cloud infrastructure deployment, including state management, provider versioning, reusability, and policy-as-code approaches.

• CI/CD pipeline engineering: design, operation, and optimization of complex YAML-based CI/CD pipelines with multi-stage deployments, template standardization, self-hosted agents, integrated secret management, and automated quality and security checks.

• Git migration & platform consolidation: planning and execution of repository and pipeline migration from Azure DevOps to GitLab CI/CD, including automated scripts, full Git history transfer, pipeline porting, and platform consolidation.

• Container & platform operations (AKS): operation and security assessment of containerized workloads on Azure Kubernetes Service, centralization of on-premises container registries for ACR.

• OpenShift (OCP) security reviews: security assessment of code baselines, build pipelines, and deployment processes for on-premises OpenShift clusters with critical applications, and derivation of specific hardening recommendations.

• Shift-left security & DevSecOps transformation: introduction of a company-wide shift-left approach for early security integration in development and deployment processes, enabling developers to perform self-led security checks and sustainably reduce vulnerabilities before production (IDE integrations, pre-commit hooks, local scanners).

• Software supply chain security: analysis and mitigation of supply chain risks in NPM- and Yarn-based applications through dependency audits, CI/CD pipeline hardening, token rotation, and restriction of risky build and lifecycle mechanisms.

• Frontend & framework security (React / Next.js): security assessment and coordination of critical vulnerability remediation across platform applications and web frameworks, including coordination and complementary technical mitigations with all teams following BSI alerts.

• Software composition analysis (SCA): introduction and operation of automated vulnerability scans for container images, pipelines/artifacts, and third-party dependencies, including SBOM exports within CI/CD pipelines.

• SAST/DAST integration: design and piloting of static and dynamic application security tests in close collaboration with security architecture and development teams, for continuous improvement of code and runtime security, and establishing operational acceptance tests.

• Artifact & registry consolidation: analysis and consolidation of all package and container repositories for service applications and AKS workloads, aiming for a centralized, secured registry strategy with centralized vulnerability scanning and governance.

• Dependency-Track & SBOM strategy: advising the compliance board on introducing a central SBOM and vulnerability management platform to increase enterprise-wide dependency transparency and accelerate CVE response capability.

• CI/CD pipeline hardening: security analysis and cleanup of the existing pipeline landscape by removing unused pipelines, improving secrets hygiene, implementing least-privilege principles, and isolating build agent environments.

• Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) optimization: analysis and tuning of existing Azure WAF rules (OWASP Top 10 Core Rule Set, DSR/SDC, custom rules) to defend against known vulnerabilities and exploit patterns, including reducing false positives and improving threat detection.

• Documentation & stakeholder communication: creating and maintaining technical documentation, runbooks, and architecture overviews in Jira and Confluence, as well as active knowledge transfer between operations, development, security, and compliance stakeholders.

Built Python-based AI microservices and integrations for an AEC/VR Unity-based SaaS app, focusing on LLM/VLM capabilities, retrieval-backed systems, RESTful APIs, containerized deployment, and an automation microservice for the CAD-to-Unity pipeline.

• Developed a custom Hybrid A* based algorithm in C# to simulate hospital scenarios and detect early-stage design conflicts from collision/spatial data and generate structured reports.
• Solved and automated the time-consuming problem of converting CAD files to usable Unity environments with a custom-engineered and real-time pipeline using a ZeroMQ-based communication layer to distribute workloads across multiple processes and achieve real-time performance.
• Built a Dockerized FastAPI pipeline for CAD-to-Unity automation, combining vision-based object matching, image embeddings, and precomputed metadata to automatically map CAD objects to Unity behavior scripts, assign properties, and reduce repeated AI inference calls.
• Created documentation and examples to help technical users understand, configure, and extend the AI automation pipeline.

• Project: ESU Windows and SQL Server consolidation / Configuration Management in ServiceNow
• Creation of an as-is analysis of all servers worldwide
• Creation of an as-is analysis of all SQL servers worldwide
• Creation of requirements analyses for SQL and server migrations
• Coordination of requirements with partners for migrations to Hyper-V (on-premises) or Azure Cloud
• Moderation of jour fixe meetings
• Creation of roadmaps and solution models for server migrations
• Setup of test scenarios
• Moderation of workshops for the introduction of a Global Admin Team
• Creation of data models (CMDB) in ServiceNow
• Conducting workshops for the CMDB data model
• Creation of solution models for the CMDB
• Creation of seamless configuration and work documentation for the CMDB
• Creation of reports for license management
• Creation of KPIs for data quality in ServiceNow
• Creation of a service catalog
• Moderation of workshops for creating service requests
• Interface between needs analysis and ServiceNow development team
• Systems used: Windows 7, Windows 10, Microsoft Office 365/2010, Windows Server 20xx, SQL Server 20xx, SharePoint, Azure Cloud, Hyper-V, ServiceNow, various tools

I designed and developed an AI-powered multi-tenant platform on Azure that transforms SAP process recordings into technical documentation, presentations and automated tests, processing over 15,000 process recordings for enterprise customers like Würth. I owned the architecture, the production releases and the DevOps setup. I also designed a multi-tenant system with SSO and role-based access on Azure. Implemented an MCP Server with Dynamic OAuth Authentication.

Main Tasks:

• Sprint planning and feature preparation
• Design the multi-tenant platform architecture (FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, PostgreSQL row-level security for tenant isolation)
• Develop AI pipelines with Prefect for transcription (Azure Speech API), document generation and SAP screen-recording analysis (Claude, gpt-4-mini)
• Design and implement an MCP server to expose tenant knowledge to LLM clients (Claude), with async retrieval and reranking
• Implement LLM cost tracking, rate limiting and client pooling for Anthropic/OpenAI/Azure OpenAI endpoints
• Set up CI/CD: Docker images to Azure Container Registry, GitHub Actions, Azure Static Web Apps, Alembic migrations in containers
• Manage production releases and execute live data migrations for enterprise customers
• Define engineering standards and architecture patterns for the team

Environment: Azure / Azure Foundry / Python / FastAPI / Prefect / React / PostgreSQL

Technologies: n8n, Notion, OpenAI API, Claude, MS AI Foundry, MS CoPilot Studio, MS CoPilot, LLM, Node.js, Vercel, LangGraph, PostgreSQL, pgEdge, pgvector, Docker, LangChain, Ollama, Open WebUI

• Continuous evaluation and prioritization of internal automation needs
• ~20 AI agents in active use: research, content pipelines, document processing
• 5 n8n workflows for automated data and process control
• Architecture built on the same principles as in customer projects: state management, event-driven orchestration, API integration
• Ongoing operation and further development

Project: Tax Exemption Order Application

The client has an existing application for creating and maintaining tax exemption orders for end customers; design and implementation of a comparable application for internal employees.

• Design and implementation of microservices and the UI for the business area "tax exemption orders" using Domain Driven Design as well as Spring Boot and Angular.
• Implementation of reactive, non-reactive, and asynchronous APIs (Spring REST, WebFlux, GraphQL).
• Development of the Angular application, including state management using Signals, RxJS Observables, and subscriptions.
• Securing the API and the application using OAuth2, JWT, and OpenID Connect.
• Configuration and setup of CI/CD pipelines with Jenkins.
• Collaboration with cross-functional teams and conducting code reviews.

Environment: Java, Spring Boot, Angular 18 & 19 (standalone, signals), RxJs, Bootstrap CSS, Vitesting, OpenShift, Istio, microservices, Kafka, Dynatrace, Jenkins, GitLab, Graylog, Sonar, Oauth2, OracleDB

• As-is assessment of the current network infrastructure and its documentation, including on-site inspections
• Independent planning of new distribution and main distribution rooms in the individual district offices (components used, rack layout, connectivity), considering the BSI IT-Grundschutz and InfoSic requirements
• Planning of new copper and fiber optic cabling, including patch panels
• Coordination with building services engineering (TGA) to ensure compliance with relevant on-site requirements
• Development of detailed execution plans and high-level concepts for the rollout of the new infrastructure
• Additional support after the components go live (hypercare phase)
• Regular communication with project management and client stakeholders

• Project management for the SAP release upgrade of a large multi-client environment (IT service provider in the SAP area for energy companies)
• Setting up a release process for future operational workflows
• Cutover planning
• Building a test management process with the involved clients

Tasks: Design and operation of end-to-end cloud data platforms for enterprise clients in publishing and finance, including infrastructure automation, pipeline development, monitoring, and data quality.

Activities:

• Built multi-layer data architectures on Databricks (Apache Spark, Delta Lake), BigQuery, and GCP
• Fully automated cloud infrastructure with Terraform across 3 environments (DEV/STG/PRD)
• Developed automated data pipelines with Python, dbt, and GCP services for different data sources
• Built monitoring and alerting systems for real-time platform monitoring
• Implemented data versioning and quality checks at every layer
• Designed automated test and deployment pipelines in GitLab and Bitbucket

Achievements:

• 2× production data processing capacity, reduced spike response time from minutes to ≤15 s, server errors ≈ 0
• Replaced 3,000 lines of manual configuration with a reusable automation module for 7 customer domains, configuration errors to 0
• Delivered a complete end-to-end data platform at ~€10/month infrastructure cost
• Migrated 7 database tables with 0 downstream issues
• Removed 100% exposed credentials, eliminated external vendor dependency
• Delivered integration of 3 teams in 1 sprint

• Identification of requirements (legal, organizational, and technical)
• Design of solution architectures
• Evaluation of concepts and technologies
• Preparation of decision templates
• Architectural Decision Records (ADR)
• Coordination of implementation
• Review of implementations
• Documentation