Release Train Engineers in Germany

• Transformation Consultant, Release Train Engineer and Program Lead – responsible for the new Way of Working in the Open Gateway Program; optimizing the flow of value by ensuring the ART events and artifacts function correctly, including the Open Gateway Release Train Kanban, Inspect & Adapt (I&A) workshop, ART Sync Meetings, and PI Planning to ensure stakeholder alignment;
• Coaching and guiding the Product Owners, Business Owners, Product Management, Program Managers, Leaders, Tribe Architect
• Coaching the OGW Core Team (cross functional) within the OGW Program and developing optimization measures in their transformation process;
• Facilitating and working actively towards the creation of the Definition of Ready (DoR) and the product Definition of Done (DoD);
• Introducing knowledge sharing workshops and grow the agile engineering practices;
• Hold Team lift-off workshops;
• Help the group to become a team by providing system team coaching and multifunctional learning;
• Facilitate, decision making, feedback loops for learning new skills and practices

Tools: JIRA, Confluence, MS Teams, Miro

• Senior agile practitioner in a complex, regulated pharmaceutical environment — facilitating Scrum ceremonies across three international teams (~40 people) while supporting delivery governance and agile coaching.
• Time-limited assignment to bridge the gap until the client could fill the role internally
• Facilitated all Scrum ceremonies (Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-up, Review, Retrospective) across multiple international teams; kept sprints predictable and productive
• Coached teams and Product Owners in agile practices within a GxP-regulated environment, pragmatically balancing agile ways of working with QMS compliance requirements
• Tracked and visualized delivery metrics, managed dependencies, and produced status reports for senior stakeholders and Steering Committee
• Stepped up to project leadership of the internal CCMS product initiative: introduced structured processes and transparent tooling into a previously low-governance environment
• Actively contributed to the company-wide Agile Community of Practice, including authoring blog articles on agile topics
• Commended for analytical thinking, reliability under pressure, and the ability to manage multiple workstreams simultaneously

• Orchestrate cross-functional delivery across organisational units in the Connectivity domain, aligning teams around integrated end-to-end, customer-testable value rather than isolated component delivery.
• Drive a shift from local component optimisation towards shared outcomes and a common delivery goal, increasing focus and enabling significantly faster integrated delivery.
• Coordinate across 15 cross-functional organisations in a highly complex OEM environment; bring Product, Engineering, Programme Management and specialist functions together to resolve dependencies and improve decision-making.
• Coach Product Managers, Product Owners and stakeholders on product responsibility, prioritisation, outcome orientation and aligned backlogs.
• Use Claude through an AWS Bedrock integration to analyse Jira and Confluence content, identify patterns, dependencies and quality gaps, and support structured product and delivery decisions.
• Establish AI-native requirements excellence with LLM-supported quality gates for epics, features, stories, acceptance criteria, roadmaps and task breakdowns; scale adoption through templates and prompt playbooks.

• Industries: Energy, Telecommunications, Manufacturing
• Transformation & Change: Supported complex IT and digital transformation programs as Scrum Master, Agile Coach, Change Manager and RTE Consultant at Siemens Energy (global SAFe rollout), E.ON (sales technology platform), Schneider Electric (S/4HANA transformation DACH) and Vodafone (Operational Excellence)
• Agile Roles: Scrum Master, Agile Coach, Product Owner, Business Analyst, RTE Consultant in cross-functional and scaled teams (SAFe, Scrum, Spotify Model)
• Procurement Excellence: Strategic purchasing consulting with a focus on cost optimization, supplier management, digitalization and organizational development, including building supplier scorecard models, AI-supported procurement approaches and process automation in purchasing
• Managed functional leadership of interdisciplinary project teams of up to 12 people in national and international settings
• Successful launch of several global ARTs at Siemens Energy with improved coordination across sites
• Increased change acceptance and established communication structures in the S/4HANA program at Schneider Electric
• Introduced agile methods, OKR frameworks and KPI dashboards at E.ON, increasing velocity and transparency
• Reduced purchasing costs through strategic sourcing and supplier optimization
• Implemented process innovations in close cooperation with IT and business teams

• Drove two cross-functional engineering teams within the SAFe framework to deliver backend and integration solutions for Visa’s Terminal Management and Cybersource Onboarding platforms
• Served as Program Coach for ten teams within the Platform Services organization, advancing Agile maturity, delivery alignment, and a culture of continuous improvement
• Orchestrated Agile ceremonies including Product Manager syncs, metrics reviews, inspect-and-adapt sessions, system demos, and leadership workshops to strengthen transparency, collaboration, and delivery performance
• Championed the rollout of the Re-imagine Work@Visa scaled delivery framework within the Agile Transformation Team, improving collaboration and delivery predictability
• Increased release frequency 18× per quarter by synchronizing distributed teams and developing a comprehensive release guide
• Partnered with the Release Manager to standardize deployments across Visa Data Center, AWS, and Mobile platforms
• Led teams to close all security findings and embed remediation into BAU, achieving zero open issues by mid-2024
• Directed the Security Findings Program across the portfolio, ensuring visibility, accountability, and progress tracking
• Supported the roll out of the OKR framework and led quarterly reviews to align execution with business goals
• Strengthened communication across distributed teams, removed blockers, and advocated for continuous improvement and automation
• Delivered on demand workshops for teams with raising maturity and adoption of best practices
• Co-founded a Center of Excellence and Agile Community of Practice to promote continuous learning and alignment
• Partnered with SRE and InfoSec teams on multi-region rollout and security initiatives to enhance reliability and compliance

• Evaluation and further development of Engineering Excellence initiatives as part of the “Digital First” program
• Validation of efficiency, productivity, and cost-saving potential in the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)
• Organization-wide analysis of the use of Generative AI in the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)
• Evaluation of optimization measures in the areas of product management, delivery, developer experience, metrics, and quality assurance
• Comparison of the target vision “Next Level Architecture (NLA)” with regard to organizational design, governance model, and scalability
• Identification of structural bottlenecks in the delivery organization and development of alternative optimization approaches
• Preparation of decision-making and management documents for division management and the Executive Board to evaluate efficiency potential and transformation measures

Skillset: Engineering Excellence, Operating Model Design, Generative AI, AI in SDLC, SAFe, DevOps, Software Delivery Metrics, Value Streams, Team Topologies, Domain Driven Design, Azure DevOps, Jira, Confluence, Management Reporting, Business Case Assessment

• Transformation of the program organization from six subprojects into a scaled agile setup as RTE to stabilize the go-live date

• Organizational development by building virtual, agile, cross-functional teams and establishing metrics and performance indicators

• Coaching agile development and rollout principles for an SAP migration

• Training internal staff for new roles and toughening up effort estimates towards the steering board

• Switching to agile governance and reporting structures with a focus on end-to-end business processes

• Establishing the product owner role and promoting agile principles in the SAP development team

• Reduced delivery times through domain-based scoping and smaller cycle times

• More reliable delivery forecasts and increased delivery rates

• Earlier and more frequent feedback from business units, increased trust, and cost savings by eliminating duplicate structures

• RTE/Agile Coach for the SAFe 6 (Scaled Agile Framework) rollout
• Building and establishing a LACE (Lean-Agile Center of Excellence) for several ARTs
• Using the tools: Azure DevOps with SCALE, Loop, MS Whiteboard
• Building the ART with 7 teams
• Training Product Owners, e.g. through SAFe POPM training and LearnSnacks
• Running the initial PI Planning as a Kickoff Planning Event
• Introducing a demand process

• Role as RTE for building the Agile Release Train (ART)
• Bringing together agile practices and system engineering
• Setup and facilitation of rituals: ART Sync, Refinement, Coach Sync, PI Planning, System Demo
• Structure and execution of the first PI Planning
• Optimization of program alignments and dependencies
• Set up JIRA & Confluence SAFe structure and workflows

• Introduced SAFe and set up an Agile Release Train with 11 teams
• Coached business owners, product managers, Scrum Masters, and teams
• Conducted value stream identifications and roadmap workshops
• Optimized agile collaboration through targeted training and coaching

• Servant leader for an Agile Release Train (~60 people)
• Close collaboration with product management and system architecture
• Focus on remote management and cross-functional coordination

• Agile Coach for the Mauterhebung domain, Release Train Engineer for the Portfolio & Governance division with 5 teams and 19 sub-teams

• Implemented based on SAFe 6.0 and supported all other RTEs in an overarching role defining standards and processes for the entire company to support higher compliance

• Led the largest agile project at Telefonica O2 (€21+ million, 11 Scrum & system teams in Germany and India, 80+ developers, 3 vendors) using SAFe, Scrum and Kanban. A showcase project at Telefonica for agile scaling.
• Scaled agile processes to a large project using SAFe.
• Delivered the project at half the cost and time compared to similar projects.
• Test management / coordination of system testing.
• Coached teams (SAFe & Scrum).
• Rollout planning/management.