Thomas Hoefkens - Senior MLOps, DevOps and...

Q: Where is Thomas based?

Thomas is based in Munich, Germany .

Q: How many years of experience does Thomas have?

Thomas has at least 25 years of experience. During this time, Thomas has worked in at least 10 different roles and for 9 different companies . The average length of individual experience is 3 years and 6 months . Note that Thomas may not have shared all experience and actually has more experience.

Q: What is Thomas's latest experience?

Thomas's most recent position is Senior MLOps, DevOps and Full-Stack Engineer at Trianel Energy .

Q: What companies has Thomas worked for in recent years?

In recent years, Thomas has worked for Trianel Energy , mynaric Laser Communications AG , Dyrisk GmbH / MunichRE , and EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg .

Q: Which industries is Thomas most experienced in?

Thomas is most experienced in industries like Transportation , Agriculture , and Telecommunication . Thomas also has some experience in Manufacturing , Information Technology , and Retail .

Q: Which business areas is Thomas most experienced in?

Thomas is most experienced in business areas like Information Technology , Product Development , and Project Management . Thomas also has some experience in Customer Service .

Q: Which industries has Thomas worked in recently?

Thomas has recently worked in industries like Energy , Insurance , and Space Exploration .

Q: Which business areas has Thomas worked in recently?

Thomas has recently worked in business areas like Information Technology and Project Management .

Recommended expert

Munich, Germany

Experience

Feb 2024 - Present

2 years 2 months

Senior MLOps, DevOps and Full-Stack Engineer

Trianel Energy

Built and operated an end-to-end MLOps platform on Azure ML and Kubernetes (Kubeflow) for automated deployment, monitoring and scaling of forecasting models (e.g. Temporal Fusion Transformer, Informer, Autoformer)
Implemented CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps for the complete ML lifecycle – from resource provisioning (Terraform), data transformation (Hugging Face Datasets, Pandas, PyTorch, CUDA clusters) through training and evaluation to model registry and endpoint deployment
Integrated MLflow for experiment tracking, model versioning, performance monitoring and automated registration in Azure Model Registry
Developed and containerized PyTorch training jobs with CUDA (Azure Notebook, Jupyter Notebooks) for price and time series forecasting (PFC models) with automatic rollout via Azure ML endpoints and REST/gRPC interfaces, Docker containerization, secured with OAuth 2.0
Set up monitoring and alerting mechanisms (Prometheus, MLflow metrics), centralized logging and cost tracking
Configured security (OAuth2) and rate limiting via APIM
Automated infrastructure provisioning and model deployment using Terraform, Helm and Azure CLI; integrated with existing market data systems and event pipelines
Migrated existing workloads and databases (IONOS → Azure, MongoDB) integrating them into central MLOps workflows and internal networks
Extended the platform with LLM-based tools (LangChain, LangServe) to integrate GPT-based analysis modules into existing Spring Boot services for market anomaly detection and automated reports
Analyzed and designed a software solution to efficiently process high-volume data (>3000 messages/sec) (market data store)
Developed Spring Boot / Java 21 containers with RabbitMQ to distribute market data via MongoDB (Kubernetes) with fast data storage in Redis RMaps, deduplication, forwarding of messages to read model queues and building read models for UI display in MongoDB
Integrated RESTHeart to generate a REST API for MongoDB
Migrated to MongoDB ClickHouse for mass ingests and automatic deduplication using the ReplicatedMergeTree engine in ClickHouse
Built a Python Apache Arrow Flight service for querying the ClickHouse DB in milliseconds for complex queries (gRPC protocol / ClickHouse column-based queries)
Developed an Angular frontend to simplify data queries and master data maintenance
Used agentic coding with remote and local LLMs (Claude, Ollama Qwen, OpenLLM) and MCP servers
Created Python scripts for transforming and cleaning incoming market data (Pandas, scikit-learn)

Mar 2023 - Feb 2024

1 year

Munich, Germany

Senior DevOps Engineer and Platform Architect

mynaric Laser Communications AG

Architected and designed a DevOps/deployment platform
Built a DevOps and software deployment platform based on Azure AKS and AWS ECS/EKS, GitLab Enterprise, Ansible
Migrated VMware workloads to Azure AKS and AWS EKS
Configured and deployed applications with Microsoft Entra (App Registrations, App Roles, published web APIs with OAuth authentication and authorization)
Developed TypeScript backend services (Serverless)
Created GraphQL APIs on a Neo4j database
Scripted Ansible playbooks and set up inventory for VMware-managed virtual machines
Automated playbook deployments via Ansible Control Tower (AWX) for Unix instances
Implemented GitOps with GitLab and built GitLab pipelines
Deployed infrastructure on Azure using Pulumi and Terraform
Collaborated in an agile team using the Scrum framework

Nov 2021 - Mar 2023

1 year 5 months

Senior MLOps, DevOps Engineer and Platform Architect

Dyrisk GmbH / MunichRE

Built and managed an enterprise-wide MLOps infrastructure on Azure Databricks to automate the entire ML lifecycle from data processing to model deployment
Implemented scalable ETL/ELT pipelines with Airflow and Databricks for continuous supply of clean risk data to training and inference pipelines
Automated training, evaluation and deployment pipelines with MLflow, Azure DevOps and Databricks Workflows, including automatic model registration, versioning and stage promotion
Containerized and deployed trained models as scalable REST/gRPC services via Azure ML endpoints and Kubernetes; integrated into production risk and security platforms
Set up Azure API Management (APIM)
Provisioned infrastructure as code with Terraform, Helm and Kustomize for reproducible deployments including monitoring, logging and security components
Implemented end-to-end monitoring with Prometheus, Grafana and the Elastic Stack (Beats, Logstash)
Built a secure authentication and access infrastructure (Keycloak, OAuth 2.0, OIDC, JWT) for APIs and internal MLOps services
Developed and integrated .NET Core microservices for model APIs and service orchestration
Designed and implemented CI/CD pipelines (Azure DevOps, GitLab CI) for automated testing, container builds, release management and deployment across multi-cloud environments
Monitored, logged and handled incidents for production machine learning workloads in on-premises and cloud environments
Centralized SSH and access management with Teleport to ensure compliance and audit readiness
Worked in an agile scrum process with close coordination between Data Engineering, MLOps and DevOps

Jan 2021 - Nov 2021

11 months

Senior AWS Cloud Expert, Digital Transformation Architect

EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg

Set up and configured Red Hat OpenShift including deployment, monitoring, alerting, DB operator and Nginx Ingress controller
Developed Java (Spring Boot/Spring Cloud) AWS Lambda microservices following an OpenAPI API-first approach
Dockerized microservices and defined Docker Compose files for local development and testing
Created automated unit tests using AWS LocalStack
Developed an Angular 12/TypeScript frontend to display automated energy trading and manual intervention data
Built streaming connectors for AWS MSK (managed Kafka) and automated processing of trading streaming messages
Established a base AWS resource pipeline and microservice-specific pipelines to automate infrastructure creation with AWS CDK
Provisioned EKS clusters with external DNS, AWS Load Balancer Controller, Route 53 and Transit Gateway
Provisioned EC2 instances using Terraform with access via AWS SSM
Integrated with AWS IAM and Cognito (Single Sign-On); worked with AWS Control Tower and VPC peering via Transit Gateway attachments
Developed Helm charts for automated OpenShift deployments
Implemented Swagger UI integration on backend endpoints
Collaborated in bi-weekly sprints with agile team and Scrum ceremonies

Jul 2016 - Jan 2021

4 years 7 months

Senior Cloud Architect and Full-Stack Engineer

Bayer AG, Digital Farming

Developed a field and crop management solution for large agricultural enterprises based on AWS Lambda .NET Core (C#) microservices with domain-driven design and event sourcing
Implemented two frontend solutions: Angular for the web and Xamarin (now MAUI) for mobile applications
Built frontend in TypeScript (Angular) and .NET Standard (Xamarin)
Responsible for delivering all technical components of a requirement within an interdisciplinary team, including frontend changes, backend development, terraforming with Terragrunt/Terraform and CI/CD setup, automated unit tests and Sonar quality checks
Created a fully decoupled architecture using SQS, DynamoDB, API Gateway, Route 53, AWS Lambda, .NET IDP with Azure AD federation and OAuth/JWT authorization
Developed GraphQL APIs (stitching) over multiple backend farming data sources (weather forecasts, spraying recommendations, infestation data)
Built a .NET Core CLI tool for technical management of the platform
Developed iOS/Android apps with Xamarin including push integration and mapping with Carto maps
Created a VS Code extension plugin to connect JavaScript with C# via the V8 engine
Wrote GitLab CI pipelines
Integrated Raygun for centralized logging
Collaborated in bi-weekly sprints with agile teams and Scrum ceremonies

Jan 2014 - Jun 2016

2 years 6 months

Paris, France

Senior Cloud Developer

OTIS France

Developed field service applications on the Kony platform for iOS and Android, as well as backend endpoints using Java Spring Boot and Spring Cloud
Integrated internal APIs (Asset Management, Field Service Management)
Developed Azure Functions and Function Apps (C#)
Developed ASP.NET MVC admin interfaces
Created Azure DevOps (Team Foundation Server) pipelines
Oracle 12 PL/SQL development, database design and maintenance

Jan 2013 - Jun 2015

2 years 6 months

Ingolstadt, Germany

Technical Project Lead

Mobility Media-Saturn E-Business GmbH

Provided technical leadership for evaluating, selecting, and implementing a mobility platform (MDM and MAM), setting up an internal enterprise app store, and establishing BYOD policies
Selected and developed various apps on the Kony platform for Android, iOS, and Windows tablets
Developed the MC@POS Kony app for retail use cases such as item comparison, inventory lookup, pricing, and in-store online ordering

May 2011 - Jan 2013

1 year 9 months

Munich, Germany

Technical Team Lead, Senior Developer, Enterprise Architect for the CRM domain

Telefonica o2 Germany GmbH & Co KG

Led the team for CRM and order management applications and provided enterprise architecture in the CRM domain
Developed service requests and integrated over 40 systems across the provisioning and billing landscape
Implemented middleware connections using Tuxedo, MQSeries, WebLogic, and WebSphere
Developed UI and backend components (Oracle and Java server-based)
Integrated with middleware systems such as RabbitMQ, Tibco, and Tuxedo (REST- and SOAP-based systems, as well as database connectors)
Managed a complex fat-client upgrade, including migration to the Microsoft VSTA engine

Mar 2003 - May 2011

8 years 3 months

Munich, Germany

Technical Team Leader, Senior Developer

Deutsche Bahn AG

Developed an HR platform and an e-recruiting portal based on PeopleSoft HCMS
Built a ticketing system with a JBoss backend and Apache MyFaces UI
Developed the Deutsche Bahn enterprise portal for employees
Implemented broker messaging and asynchronous message delivery
Created batch application workflows

Jun 2001 - Mar 2003

1 year 10 months

Munich, Germany

Application Developer

Telefonica o2 Germany GmbH & Co KG

Java development with WebLogic 5.1 and EJB
Developed a JSP-based frontend
Set up a proof-of-concept Oracle 8i jServer
Migrated web applications to WebLogic 6.0
Win32 API development
Supported frontend development for Vantive 8.2

Industry Experience

See where this freelancer has spent most of their professional time.

Experienced in Transportation, Agriculture, Telecommunication, Manufacturing, Information Technology, and Retail.

Transportation

Agriculture

Telecommunication

Manufacturing

Information Technology

Retail

Business Area Experience

See which departments and functions this freelancer has contributed to most.

Experienced in Information Technology, Product Development, Project Management, and Customer Service.

Information Technology

Product Development

Project Management

Customer Service

Summary

Passionate Senior MLOps, DevOps and Cloud/Platform Engineer with extensive experience in developing and operating scalable platforms and AI-powered solutions. Expertise in building end-to-end MLOps workflows: data preparation (ETL/ELT pipelines), developing ETL/ELT pipelines in Python (Pandas, PySpark, Airflow, Dask), experiment tracking and model versioning with MLflow, using Azure Databricks Data Lake for data engineering and training, feature stores (Feast) and automated deployment of trained models as services. Experienced in implementing continuous training and delivery pipelines (CI/CD) for ML and software components using GitLab CI/CD, Azure DevOps, Kubeflow. Solid knowledge in virtualization and container orchestration (Kubernetes: OpenShift, EKS, AKS, OVH Kubernetes, Docker) and infrastructure as code with Terraform and Ansible. Strong in observability, classic and model monitoring with Prometheus, Grafana as well as traditional logging stacks (Loki, ELK, DataDog). Proficient in backend development with C#, Java, TypeScript, Python and Bash scripting as well as SQL and NoSQL databases.

Skills

Programming & Frameworks: C# .Net Core, Java (Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, J2ee), Golang, Python (Pandas, Numpy, Scikit-learn, Tensorflow, Pytorch), Bash Scripting
Frontend & Cross-platform: Typescript, Angular, React, Macos, Xamarin, Maui
Cloud & Container Platforms: Aws Cloud, Azure Cloud, Ovh Cloud, Gcp, Docker, Kubernetes, Aks, Eks, Red Hat Openshift, Vmware Tanzu, Cluster Controller, Cluster Operator
Infrastructure As Code & Ci/cd: Terraform, Ansible, Pulumi, Kustomize, Helm Charts, Github Actions, Gitlab Ci, Azure Devops, Argocd, Flux, Jenkins Pipelines
Messaging, Data & Databases: Rabbitmq, Redis, Mongodb, Neo4j, Sql, Oracle, Aws Msk (Managed Kafka)
Observability & Logging: Prometheus, Grafana, Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, Loki, Datadog
Mlops & Data Engineering: Mlflow, Azure Databricks, Apache Spark, Feast, Dvc
Machine Learning & Ai: Xgboost, Scikit-learn, Hugging Face Transformers

Languages

German

Advanced

English

Advanced

Spanish

Advanced

French

Advanced

Hungarian

Advanced

...and 6 more

Statistics

Experience

Total positions 10

Experience in Transportation 8 y

Avg length 2 y 7 m

Longest experience 8 y 2 m

Global Experience

Countries worked in 2 (Germany, France)

Primary country Germany

Expertise

Recent roles Senior MLOps, DevOps and Full-Stack Engineer, Senior DevOps Engineer and Platform Architect, Senior MLOps, DevOps Engineer and Platform Architect

Main industries Transportation, Agriculture, Telecommunication

Main business areas Information Technology, Product Development, Project Management

Profile

Created

March 2026

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Frequently asked questions

Do you have questions? Here you can find further information.

Where is Thomas based?

Thomas is based in Munich, Germany.

What languages does Thomas speak?

Thomas speaks the following languages: German (Advanced), English (Advanced), Spanish (Advanced), French (Advanced), Hungarian (Advanced), Italian (Advanced), Dutch (Advanced), Norwegian (Advanced), Hindi (Elementary), Portuguese (Elementary), Romanian (Elementary).

How many years of experience does Thomas have?

Thomas has at least 25 years of experience. During this time, Thomas has worked in at least 10 different roles and for 9 different companies. The average length of individual experience is 3 years and 6 months. Note that Thomas may not have shared all experience and actually has more experience.

What roles would Thomas be best suited for?

Based on recent experience, Thomas would be well-suited for roles such as: Senior MLOps, DevOps and Full-Stack Engineer, Senior DevOps Engineer and Platform Architect, Senior MLOps, DevOps Engineer and Platform Architect.

What is Thomas's latest experience?

Thomas's most recent position is Senior MLOps, DevOps and Full-Stack Engineer at Trianel Energy.

What companies has Thomas worked for in recent years?

In recent years, Thomas has worked for Trianel Energy, mynaric Laser Communications AG, Dyrisk GmbH / MunichRE, and EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg.

Which industries is Thomas most experienced in?

Thomas is most experienced in industries like Transportation, Agriculture, and Telecommunication. Thomas also has some experience in Manufacturing, Information Technology, and Retail.

Which business areas is Thomas most experienced in?

Thomas is most experienced in business areas like Information Technology, Product Development, and Project Management. Thomas also has some experience in Customer Service.

Which industries has Thomas worked in recently?

Thomas has recently worked in industries like Energy, Insurance, and Space Exploration.

Which business areas has Thomas worked in recently?

Thomas has recently worked in business areas like Information Technology and Project Management.

What is the availability of Thomas?

Thomas will be available full-time from April 2026.

What is the rate of Thomas?

Thomas's rate depends on the specific project requirements. Please use the Meet button on the profile to schedule a meeting and discuss the details.