Erkan Y.-Devops Expert
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Experience
Devops Expert
Datev
Task: Operator development and observability
Technologies and skills: Kubernetes, Valkey-Operator, Crossplane, Backstage, OpenPortal, OTEL, Grafana Cloud, Azure DevOps, Artifactory, Flux, Alloy, Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, OCF, Copilot
What I did:
- Evaluated/developed Valkey-Operator
- Set up OpenTelemetry
- Integrated it with OpenPortal/Backstage/CrossPlane
Enterprise Architect
Bundesagentur für Arbeit
Task: Review and optimization of the Kubernetes architecture
Technologies and skills: Kubernetes, NIS2, KRITIS, BSI/IT-Grundschutz, VMWare, Devcontainer, Cisco, Ansible, Terraform, SUSE, Confluence, Neuvector, Kyverno, Gatekeeper, Trivy, Harbor, RKE2, Istio, Flux, ArgoCD, Ceph, Terraform, Alloy, Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Pyroscope, Renovate
Kubernetes DevOps Expert
Leue & Nill
The client wanted several Kubernetes clusters in its VMWare environment and to migrate the applications running in VMs to Kubernetes. Naturally, they wanted a modern solution.
What I did:
- Created FIPS-compliant Kubernetes (RK2) installations as code in a VMware environment using Terraform.
- Ubuntu was used as the OS.
- Managed the OS and Kubernetes lifecycle using system-update-controller
- Managed system components and application objects via ArgoCD from Azure "DevOps"
- Secrets are encrypted in the GitRepo using SOPS
- Represented several cluster environments as ArgoCD-Kustomization
- Delegated authentication to Entra ID (OIDC)
- Validated cluster compliance and security using kube-bench
- Used CNPG, Cert-manager, and ElasticSearch as operators
- Addressed workload security using tools such as cert-manager to automatically provision and renew application certificates, and Trivy to scan for vulnerabilities within Harbor.
- Set up Harbor as the image registry in K3s and implemented backups using VMWare built-in tools
- The backup plan consists of backing up the Postgres database (CNPG)
- Recovery involves redeploying the entire stack and restoring the database
- Monitoring: Traditional setup with Prometheus, Grafana, Loki
- Updates with Renovate
- Project management with Azure DevOps Boards
- Knowledge transfer: Trained application owners and VMWare admins in cluster operations
- Ongoing: Support and assistance with the infrastructure migration to Nuantix
Technologies and skills: Kubernetes, Nuantix, Calico, Operators, Renovate, RKE2, VMware, Terraform, ArgoCD, Azure DevOps, Postgres, Redis, Elastic, Cammunda, nginx, cert-manager, kube-vip, DevOps, Prometheus, Promtail/Allow, Backup, Loki, FIPS, Helm, Kustomize, Harbor, Microsoft Aure Entra ID, Git, Bash ..
Kubernetes Architect Expert
Innascor
The client had an old, hand-built Kubernetes installation in the Hetzner Cloud. It needed to be replaced with a new, forward-looking, stable solution. Cluster-API was used to declaratively manage additional "satellite" Kubernetes clusters from a management Kubernetes cluster, also with the help of ArgoCD.
What I did:
- Installed Vault in a separate internal network (with Terraform)
- Built Kubernetes clusters using Cluster-API
- Packaged them into a Helm chart and managed it in Gitlab
- The Kubernetes clusters use Ubuntu ARM images, use GatewayAPI with Contour, and use Cilium for networking
- Authentication is handled by a Dex instance running in the management Kubernetes cluster, which queries an internal LDAP
- Monitoring: Traditional setup with PrometheusOperator, Grafana, Loki, Alertmanager, OTEL
- Applications can (and should) add/manage their own metric endpoints, alerts, and dashboards
- The management Kubernetes cluster manages the "satellite" Kubernetes clusters, which are also deployed like Helm.
- The control plane of the satellite Kubernetes clusters is backed up via clusterctl. The management Kubernetes cluster otherwise needs no backup, as it is managed via GitOps.
- All clusters are centrally managed via ArgoCD on the management Kubernetes cluster.
- External-DNS automatically updates DNS
- CertManager provides official certificates via LetsEncrypt
- While ArgoCD supports (k)SOPS for managing SOPS-encrypted objects, access to (Hashicorp) Vault is handled via Secret Store CSI, directly in the container/pod without being persisted in etcd
- Secured the Kubernetes clusters using NetworkPolicies and PodSecurityStandards (more to come)
Technologies and skills: Kubernetes, Hetzner, ArgoCD, CAPI, Operators, Prometheus, OTEL, Grafana, Alertmanager, Loki, Cluster-API, DevOps, Vault, Dex, OAuth, Secrets Store CSI, Gitlab, cert-manager, Cilium, Git, Bash, ..
Senior Kubernetes Architect
Bundesdruckerei
Task: Bundesdruckerei wanted advice on compliance with and monitoring of security requirements according to BSI. This was implemented using Kyverno.
What I did:
- Wrote Kyverno policies. The following Gitrepo was created as part of this work
- Exported metrics via Kyverno Reporter
Technologies and skills: Kubernetes, Kyverno, BSI, Prometheus, Loki, Grafana
Senior Kubernetes Architect
TÜV SÜD AG/Kobaltblau
A company whose task was to operate Kubernetes clusters in a cloud environment automatically, in such a way that unauthorized access could be technically prevented, was to be evaluated as part of an M&A assessment.
As part of an M&A assessment, I was responsible for evaluating a company specializing in secure Kubernetes computing solutions. This was done based on the available documents and compared with other SecureComputing offerings.
Senior Kubernetes Architect
Deutsche Bahn
There were many tasks, and although I ultimately built a Kubernetes As A Service, I also supported the operation and support of the central OpenShift cluster. I was also part of the team that wrote the security standard, with a focus on Kubernetes.
The projects were carried out using Scrum/Kanban.
OpenShift operations:
- Managing OpenShift 3.x, migrating to OpenShift 4.x, and operating it
- Installation/updates using custom-written scripts
- First/Second Level Support, including in-depth debugging
- Advising users of the OpenShift cluster
- Managing the OpenShift cluster with ArgoCD(ish), encrypting secrets via SOPS
- Writing custom operators in Golang
Governance Team:
- Writing security standards for Kubernetes
- Example implementations of the security standards
- Coordination with Splunk/SIEM and Qualys/Vulnerability Management
Kubernetes As A Service:
- The goal was to provide Kubernetes as a Service on AWS and Azure
- Evaluation of Crossplane. Promising, but unsuitable for operations.
- Using Cluster-API (CAPI) to build Kubernetes clusters on top of EC2
- CAPI has the advantage of managing Kubernetes clusters declaratively, as is familiar from Pods
- Adapting to Deutsche Bahn-specific requirements (especially networks)
- Encrypted VMs (Ubuntu)
- Authentication via Cognito
- External-DNS for Route53 (Amazon DNS)
- Building Helm charts for the Cluster-API objects
- Setting up a management Kubernetes cluster via Helm-CAPI
- Provisioning/managing the satellite Kubernetes clusters with ArgoCD
- GitOps management of the satellite Kubernetes clusters with Flux
- Replacing host-based IAM roles with IRSA (IAM Roles for Service Accounts) so that AWS permissions were tied to Kubernetes ServiceAccounts rather than machines, to improve security.
- Forwarding logs to Splunk. A custom Helm chart was written for this, which deploys fluent-bit as a DaemonSet. Like many other things, this was handled using a GitOps approach via Flux.
- Deploying Qualys. A Helm chart was also written for this, which deploys Qualys as a DaemonSet.
- Deploying Kyverno to monitor and enforce compliance and security requirements. Custom-written rules are deployed for this.
- Kyverno Reporter to collect Kyverno metrics via Prometheus.
- Monitoring: Standard setup with PrometheusOperator, Grafana, Loki, Alertmanager
- Metrics endpoints, alerts, and dashboards can (and should) be added/managed by the applications themselves
- Deploying ClusterAutoScaler to dynamically scale the worker nodes
- Deploying the Kubernetes Dashboard
- OpenUnison as the login dashboard for each Kubernetes cluster. One advantage of OpenUnison is that it allows access to "Backends" such as the Dashboard or Grafana only after authentication
- Configuring multiple StorageClasses
- Calico was installed as the CNI
- Automatic updates via Renovate
- Using Cluster-API to build Kubernetes clusters on top of EKS. The setup was also adapted to integrate and operate AWS-EKS. Due to customer requirements, project-based employment/temporary staffing
Technologies and skills: Kubernetes, OpenShift, ClusterAPI, AWS/EKS, Golang, Operators, Azure/AKS, Prometheus, Cognito, Grafana, EKS, Jira, Elastic, KMS, Loki, Helm, Splunk, Gitlab, Ansible, Terraform, ArgoCD, Flux, Helm, JFrog, Centos, Ubuntu, CrossPlane, BSI, Qualys ..
Senior Kubernetes Architect
Berenberg
Berenberg introduced Kubernetes. The goal was to get employees up to speed on Kubernetes and support them with the migration to Kubernetes.
Tasks: Preparing Kubernetes for operations
Technologies and Skills: Kubernetes, Prometheus, Elastic, VMWare
Senior Kubernetes Architect
Deutsche Bahn
The Passenger Information department at Deutsche Bahn wanted to switch to Kubernetes. I was responsible for supporting them with this.
Tasks:
- Analyzing the existing Ansible deployment
- Supporting operations, e.g. MongoDB
- Implementing a custom Kubernetes cluster in AWS.
- Using Ansible and Terraform
- Building custom OS images with Packer
- Building Kubernetes clusters from Jenkins
- A special feature of the Kubernetes cluster was that the Controlplane was deployed as a Deployment/Statefullset, so there were no traditional "Controlplane/Master" nodes. This made updates as declarative as any other Kubernetes application
- Operating MongoDB
- Operating Redis
- Operating node.js
- Kubernetes Dashboard
- Calico as the CNI
- Monitoring: Standard setup with PrometheusOperator, Grafana, Elastic, Alertmanager
- Metrics endpoints, alerts, and dashboards can (and should) be added/managed by the applications themselves
- Deploying Qualys. A Helm chart was also written for this, which deploys Qualys as a DaemonSet.
- Forwarding logs to Splunk. A custom Helm chart was written for this, which deploys fluent-bit as a DaemonSet. Like many other things, this was handled using a GitOps approach via Flux.
- Project management with Jira
Technologies and skills: Ansible, AWS, Kubernetes, Rancher, Prometheus, Grafana, Elastic, Terraform, Ubuntu, Jira, MongoDB, Redis, node.js, Rocketchat
Expert Kubernetes Devops
FTAPI
This is an ongoing project where I support the migration of the software stack to Kubernetes to enable scalable deployment across thousands of tenants. In addition to securing the workloads, I also helped the company meet compliance requirements such as C5, CIS Benchmarks, and NIS2 within the Kubernetes environment. These requirements were enforced using Kyverno, Pod Security Standards, and NetworkPolicies. Attack detection was implemented with Falco and Wazuh, while DefectDojo was used for management.
Technologies and skills: Kubernetes, Operators, FIPS, C5, CIS, NIS-2, BSI, OWASP, NIST, KRITIS, Kyverno, Wazuh, Falco, DefectDojo, CrowdSec, Prometheus, Loki, Grafana, Gitlab, Traffik, Calico, Syseleven, OAuth, RBAC, Helm
Senior Kubernetes Architect
dmTech
dmTech (then Filiadata) wanted a Kubernetes as a Service that could be integrated into its infrastructure managed via Foreman/Puppet.
Doing:
- Managing the machines via PXE boot
- To do this, we used matchbox from Foreman and CoreOS
- In other words, the OS was CoreOS
- Configuring the machines via Ignition
- Building Kubernetes via HyperKube
- Independently rolling out and operating the control plane
- Ingress via nginx
- Authentication via LDAP via Dex
- Writing foreman-templates
- Installing and operating Vault
- Calico as CNI
- Heapster for basic monitoring
- Rolling out PodSecurityPolicies
- Using MetalLB for LoadBalancer-type services
- Installing OPSView
- Sealed Secrets for secret management in Gitlab
- Rolling out MetricBeat for ElasticSearch
- Sending logs to ElasticSearch
Technologies and skills: Kubernetes, CoreOS, Foreman, Prometheus, VMWare, Vault, Elastic, Grafana, Ignition, Puppet, Matchbox, Sealed Secrets, MetalLB, Gitlab, OPSView, Nginx, LDAP, Heapster, PodSecurityPolicies
Senior Kubernetes Architect
T-Systems-MMS
Telekom wanted to dynamically roll out Kubernetes clusters in the OTC.
Doing:
- Provisioning the OTC using terraform (in addition to VMs, adding DNS, SecurityGroups, networking, and LoadBalancer)
- Rolling out Kubernetes clusters with self-written playbooks and roles
- Ubuntu as the base OS
- Flannel as CNI
- HAProxy as Ingress
- Gitlab as repository
- Tickets were handled in Jira
Technologies and skills: Kubernetes, Git, OTC (OpenStack), Ansible, Terraform, Ubuntu, Jira
Senior MySQL DBA
Godaddy
Designing and building a MySQL Galera Cluster
Doings:
- Ubuntu as OS
- OCF scripts for Pacemaker (including HAProxy)
- Backup/recovery concept
- Integration with CheckMK
Technologies and Skills: MySQL Galera, Ubuntu, Pacemaker, HAProxy, Check-MK
Trainer/Lecturer/Auditor
Training and reviews regarding the Kubernetes/Docker/DevOps ecosystem
- Training, workshops, and audits
Training company partners: Entwickler.de, Linuxhotel, Heinlein
Clients (selection): Adesseo, die Bayrische, VisualVest, Telekom, DB, HDI, VHV, Adcubum, 1und1, AEB, Axenta, BauerDigial, Brockhaus, Bundesdruckerei, CIS, CooectAddCar, DataBlue, ERGO, F&P, HanseMerkur, Grid, data-experts, Werum ...
Topics: Kubernetes (Basic and Advanced), GitOps, Flux, ArgoCD, Puppet, MySQL, Gitlab CI/CD, Docker, OpenStack, Tekton, Kyverno, Falco, Trivy, Istio, Helm
Training setup:
- Workshops and training sessions—when hosted by me—have been running in my own setup since 2017.
- Fallback: Build Kubernetes clusters with Terraform and Ansible (this is a version that has not been updated for years).
- Newer implementations are based on CAPI.
- The clusters are deployed from a Git repo via Flux
- Monitoring: Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Promtail, Tempo, OTEL
- Cert-Manager
- Keda
- Kyverno
- Cilium or Calico
- sshwifti
Optional: AgroCD, RocketChat, Dashboard, k8spacket
- VNC environment based on linuxserver.io (via HelmChart)
Senior Kubernetes Architect
Babymarkt
Babymarkt wanted a Kubernetes cluster for its containerized application
Doing:
- Designing Kubernetes in OpenStack
- Provisioning the infrastructure with Ansibel
- Ansible roles for Kubernetes (Manager, Worker, Controlplane, etc.)
- Flannel as CNI
- Ubuntu as OS
- Test infrastructure via Vagrant
- Project management with Jira
Technologies and Skills: Kubernetes, Prometheus, Elastic, Ansible, Ceph, Terrafrom, VMWare, CentOS, Git, Vagrant, Jira
Senior Kubernetes Architect
Pro7Sat1
Building Kubernetes for Pro7Sat1 in the UCP (United Container Platform) and further developing it
Doing:
- Deploying Kubernetes on bare metal using self-written Ansible roles
- Using CentOS
- Control plane as static pods
- Deploying test Kubernetes with self-written Ansible roles via Vagrant
- Ansible roles for collectd, consul, docker, docker-swarm, docker-compose,influxd, jenkins, jenkins-slave, nexus, postfix, postgres, redis, nginx, logstash, portainer
- Rollouts and updates via Jenkins
- Building images in Jenkins and storing them in Nexus
- Monitoring: ELK, Prometheus
Technologies and Skills: Kubernetes, Prometheus, Elastic, Ansible, Ceph, Terraform, Vault, VMWare, CentOS, Git, Vagrant
Senior MySQL DBA
Sysback
Tasks: MySQL migration/architecture
Technologies and Skills: MySQL, Ansible, Ubuntu
Senior Docker Integration Expert
VHV
VHV wanted a container orchestrator for the new microservice digital:broking
Tasks:
- Evaluating Docker Swarm as the new container orchestrator
- Building development, staging, and production environments with Ansible
- Ubuntu as the OS
- Creating deployment guidelines
- Image scanning with CoreOS Clair
- Writing Docker stacks for Postgres, ELK, Prometheus,
- Supporting the writing of Docker stacks for the application
- Training employees
- Supporting the platform through GoLive
Technologies and skills: DockerSwarm Mode, Postgres, Elastic, Prometheus, Ubuntu
Senior Docker Integration Expert
R+V
R+V wanted to represent processes in Docker to speed up development workflows.
Tasks:
- Building compliance-compliant Redhat images for VMWare using Packer with integration into Spacewalk
- Building docker-compose files for ElasticSearch
- Building systemd unit files for docker-compose
- Building Ansible roles
- Certificate management for company integration
- Introducing and installing Gitlab
- Building application containers in pipelines with automatic rollouts via docker-compose; building a Docker infrastructure with CD/CI
Technologies and Skills: Docker, Elastic, Ansible, VMWare, Gitlab, Redhat, Photon
Senior Docker Integration Expert
Tengelmann
Tengelmann's data center wanted to run Docker as securely as possible, so a concept and implementation were created.
Tasks:
- OS hardening
- Restricting Docker installation and operation
- systemd
- Running Docker in a user namespace
- Apparmor
- Apparmor "kind" profiles
Technologies and Skills: Docker, Ubuntu, Apparmor, systemd
Senior MySQL Architect
Webtrekk
Activities: MySQL migration/Galera Cluster
Technologies and Skills: MySQL, Ansible, MySQL Galera, Ubuntu
Senior Docker Integration Expert
DER Touristik
Rewe Reisen already had some Docker experience and was now looking for support
Activities:
- Support for the legacy infrastructure
- Management of Profitbricks using Ansible
- Certificate management
- MySQL database administration
- Replaced Chef configuration management with Ansible
- Designed and built a Blue-Green architecture for Docker
- Containerized the web application, MySQL database, Prometheus, and ELK
- Used BTRFS for data migration between environments
- Integrated the setup with services managed by REWE RIS
- Unified all web presentations, including REWE Reisen, Jahnreisen, Clevertours, ITS Reisen, Meiers Weltreisen, DERTOUR, ADAC Reisen
- Managed DNS certificates
- Shared knowledge with REWE
Technologies and Skills: Docker, Consul, Prometheus, Ansible, Btrfs, Profitbricks (now IONOS), Debian, MySQL/MariaDB
Senior Consultant MySQL/Kubernetes
GiantSwarm
GiantSwarm wanted Galera integrated into its "cloud offering"
Activities:
- Created K8s objects for Galera
- Integrated it with Prometheus
Technologies and Skills: Kubernetes, Galera, GiantSwarm
Senior MySQL Architect
TrustInternational/Sabre
Third-level support was needed for the central Galera Cluster
Activities:
- Set up and operated the Galera Cluster with Ansible
- Created a backup/recovery plan using xtrabackup
- Debugged with MySQL tools as well as gdb and strace
Technologies and Skills: MySQL-Galera, Ansible, Ubuntu, xtrabackup, gdb, strace
Docker Integration Expert
1&1
1&1 was building a Docker offering and needed strategic advice
Activities:
- Provided strategic advice on Docker architecture and offerings
Technologies and Skills: Docker
Senior Consultant MySQL
T-Systems
This project involved operational support for MySQL NDB Cluster
Technologies and Skills: MySQL NDB Cluster, RedHat
Senior Consultant MySQL
my-xplace GmbH
Doings: Build a high-performance MySQL system
Technologies and Skills: MySQL, Nagios, Ceph, S3, Puppet, Redhat, Ubuntu
Senior Consultant MySQL
Deutsche Telekom
Set up a HA MySQL Cluster. Naturally, this included documentation.
Technologies and Skills: MySQL, DRBD, Pacemaker, RedHat
Senior Consultant OpenStack
teuto.net
Galera as a Service was implemented for OpenStack in this project
Technologies and Skills: Docker, Galera, LXC, Ceph, OpenStack, Ubuntu
Senior Consultant Performance and Infrastructure
codership
Codership - the company behind Galera - needed support with technical topics
Doings:
- Performance tests with sysbench and gnuplot
- Automated regression tests
- Deployments of MySQL-Galera on AWS and OpenStack
Technologies and Skills: MySQL, Galera, Ansible, Git, AWS, OpenStack, Python, RedHat, Ubuntu, sysbench, gnuplot, Gitlab
Senior Consultant MySQL
Deutsche Telekom
Tasks: Training and implementation of a MySQL HA setup (Galera)
Technologies and Skills: MySQL, Galera, Pacemaker, HAProxy, garbd, glbd, SUSE
Senior Consultant MySQL
1&1 DE-Mail
1&1 DE-Mail needed a highly available database for its service
Tasks:
- Comparison of HA concepts for MySQL DRBD vs. Galera
- Setup of an HA MySQL cluster
- Training
Technologies and Skills: MySQL, MySQL NDB Cluster, Galera, DRBD, Pacemaker, HAProxy, Ubuntu
Senior Consultant Devops
Land Baden-Württemberg
Tasks: Puppet consulting
Technologies and Skills: Puppet, MCollective, CMDB, Hiera, Ruby, Debian, Ubuntu, RHEL, SLES
Indipendant Contractor
MariaDB Corporation
Task: Contracting
Tasks:
- MariaDB/Galera setup
- MariaDB/Galera debugging
- Migration Oracle -> MariaDB
Documentation Writer
codership
Tasks: Write documents for Galera Cluster
Topic: Galera
Senior Consultant MySQL
demotix
Doings: Install MySQL Galera Cluster
Technologies and Skills: MySQL, Galera, Ubuntu
Senior Consultant Rapid Prototyping Infrastructure
Deutsche Telekom
In this project, our task was to evaluate, set up and operate OpenStack for Telekom
Doings:
- Installation of OpenStack
- Use of Puppet
- Design and implementation of HA concepts for OpenStack
- Ceph as block, NFS and S3 storage
- Management of various tenants with Puppet Hiera (MySQL backend)
- LXC integration in Nova
- API development for the Database As A Service service
Technologies and Skills: MySQL, Galera, Pacemaker, OpenStack, KVM, LXC, Puppet, Python, Git, Jenkins, Ubuntu
Indipendant Contractor
FromDual
Task: Contracting
Doings:
- MariaDB/Galera setup, support and debugging
Senior Consultant Datenbanken
Deutsche Telekom
I was responsible for operating the MySQL databases for Deutsche Telekom
Doings:
- 1st-3rd level support
- Building installation scripts (according to standards) for Solaris, SUSE, Redhat
- Building RPM files
- Monitoring with Nagios
- Performance measurements with tools such as sysbench and gnuplot
- Setting up high-availability solutions with MySQL, Keepalived and DRBD
- Setting up high-availability solutions with MySQL, Pacemaker and DRBD
- Setting up high-availability solutions with MySQL-Galera, Pacemaker
- Operating MySQL in Solaris Zones
- Backup/recovery concepts for all environments
- Migrations from Oracle to MySQL
- Using CfEngine for host rollouts
- Installation/support/training for MySQL NDB (Telcograde) Cluster
- Building a Database As A Service system with Perl, LXC, MySQL and LVM snapshot
Technologies and Skills: MySQL, MySQL Cluster, MongoDB, RPM, SLES, Ubuntu, RHEL, Solaris, Solaris Zones, OpenVZ, LXC, Pacemaker, Keepalived, Perl, DRBD, SAN, Puppet, CFengine, Nagios, ITIL
Industry experience
See where this freelancer has spent most of their professional time.
Experienced in Telecommunication, Information Technology, Banking and Finance, Insurance, Education, and Tourism.
Business area experience
See which departments and functions this freelancer has contributed to most.
Experienced in Information Technology, Audit, Product Development, Project Management, Customer Service, and Quality Assurance.
Summary
Hey there,
Technically speaking, I’m an old-school admin: I know operations inside out, but today I build and run modern DevOps and Kubernetes platforms across the DACH region.
For me, “old school” doesn’t mean keeping outdated tooling alive for no reason. Quite the opposite: I question established structures, cut away what’s no longer needed, and replace it with automated, transparent, and maintainable solutions built to last.
My main area of expertise is Kubernetes—not just setting up a cluster, but building the entire production-ready platform: networking, storage, security, observability, identity, and GitOps-based deployment and operations. As a Kubestronaut, I have also demonstrated my broad experience in the cloud-native space through a number of challenging certifications.
With this technical foundation, I’m also at home in the DevSecOps space. I have introduced GitOps at multiple companies, bringing development, security, and operations requirements together in shared, automated processes.
My technical understanding also comes with a desire to share what I know: I write articles for magazines such as iX, Java Magazin, and Entwickler Magazin, regularly deliver training courses and workshops, and give talks. Explaining complex topics clearly and getting people on board with new ways of working are just as much a part of platform work for me as architecture and technology.
I have also gained extensive experience in large companies—often tasked with introducing the “new stuff” as an old-schooler and making it a lasting part of the organization.
One more fun fact: I originally graduated with a degree in sociology. That still helps today, because technical change rarely fails for purely technical reasons.
I also organize the Kubernetes Meetup Frankfurt and the Docker Meetup Frankfurt.
Skills
- Languages: German, English
- Databases: Mysql, Mariadb(Galera), Percona
- Virtualization: Kvm, Lxc/Lxd, Docker, Podman ...
- Clouds: Openstack, Hetzner, Aws, Digital, Azure, Google, Vmware, Proxmox
- Linux: Debian, Sles, Ubuntu, Redhat/Coreos
- Kubernetes Distributions: Vanilla, Eks, Openshift, K3s, Rke2
- Kubernetes Ecosystem: Helm, Kustomize, Istio, Tempo, Jaeger, Argocd, Flux, Knative, Kyverno, Crossplane, Cluster-Api And More.
- Ci/Cd: Gitlab, Tekton, Azure
- Config Management: Cfengine, Puppet, Ansible, Terraform
- Monitoring: Nagios, Check Mk, Prometheus, Grafana
- Logging: Splunk, Elastic, Loki/Alloy, Grafana, Otel
- Programming: Bash, Perl, Golang
- Security: Kyverno, Trivy, Sigstore, Falco, Tetragon, Kube-Bench, Kubescape
Languages
Education
Diploma in Sociology · Sociologist
Certifications & licenses
CGOA (Certified GitOps Associate)
CKS (Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist)
CMDBA (Certified MySQL 5.0 Database Administrator)
CMDBA (Certified MySQL 5.1 Database Administrator)
CMDEV (Certified MySQL 5.0 Database Developer)
KCNA (Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate)
KCSA (Kubernetes and Cloud Native Security Associate)
Kubestronaut
PCA (Prometheus Certified Associate)
PPT-201 (System Administration Using Puppet)
RHCT (Linux RedHat Certified Technician)
Statistics
Experience
Expertise
Qualifications
Frequently asked questions
Have questions? Find more information here.
Erkan is based in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Erkan speaks the following languages: German (Native), English (Advanced).
Erkan has at least 19 years of experience. During this time, Erkan has worked in at least 20 different roles and for 33 different companies. The average length of individual experience is 1 year and 6 months. Note that Erkan may not have shared all experience and actually has more experience.
Based on recent experience, Erkan would be well-suited for roles such as: Devops Expert, Enterprise Architect, Kubernetes DevOps Expert.
Erkan's most recent position is Devops Expert at Datev.
In recent years, Erkan has worked for Datev, Bundesagentur für Arbeit, Leue & Nill, Innascor, and Bundesdruckerei.
Erkan is most experienced in industries like Telecommunication, Information Technology, and Banking and Finance. Erkan also has some experience in Insurance, Education, and Tourism.
Erkan is most experienced in business areas like Information Technology, Audit, and Product Development. Erkan also has some experience in Project Management, Customer Service, and Quality Assurance.
Erkan has recently worked in industries like Information Technology, Banking and Finance, and Insurance.
Erkan has recently worked in business areas like Information Technology, Audit, and Product Development.
Erkan holds a Master in Sociologist.
Erkan has 14 certificates. Among them, these include: CGOA (Certified GitOps Associate), CKA (Certified Kubernetes Administrator), and CKAD (The Certified Kubernetes Application Developer).
Erkan will be available full-time from November 2026.
Daily rate distribution
The rates shown represent the typical market range for freelancers in this position based on recent contracts on our platform.
Average rates for similar positions
Rates are based on recent contracts and do not include FRATCH margin.
The average daily rate is the mean of all daily rates from recent contracts of comparable freelancers on our platform.
The median daily rate is the middle value of all daily rates — half of comparable freelancers charge less, half charge more. Unlike the average, it is barely affected by outliers.
Calculated based on our freelancers’ daily rates as of 3 Nov 2026. Actual rates may vary depending on seniority level, experience, skill specialization, project complexity, and engagement length.
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