Software Architect in Germany

• Analysis of existing microservice structures and integration into the event-driven architecture
• Design and implementation of prototypes
• Introduction of structured workflows and integration into a solid testing strategy
• Team: Small specialized team (3-5 people) from analysis through implementation readiness
• Documentation of architectural decisions and definition of interfaces
• Integration of the event-driven pipeline into the existing landscape
• Technologies: Kafka, Docker, Microservices, Event-Driven Architecture, Java, Liquibase

• Support for a data, analytics and AI initiative in a regulated enterprise environment by structuring, evaluating and prioritizing several data-driven use cases based on business impact, feasibility, scalability, data maturity and governance requirements.
• Translation of complex business and analytics requirements into clear product, data and implementation logic, as well as preparation of decision-ready documents, target visions and roadmap inputs for stakeholder and management discussions.

• Industry: Insurance, Trade, IT
• Customers & Projects: Consulting and selling insurance and similar services
• Main tasks: Insurance consulting (health insurance, retirement planning, wealth building); commercial services, inside and field sales; sales data analysis and forecasting; customer consulting and support; opening a new sales headquarters for private and business customers; business development & innovation management; business use case development; process optimization; stakeholder management; team leadership and training; preparation and delivery of trainings;
• Technologies used: Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Teams, Jira, Draw.IO, Camunda 8, Java (8, 17,21,25), Git, Spring Boot, Spring Batch, Spring Data REST, Spring Web, Spring Security, J-Unit, Playwright, Lombock, Vaadin, H2, PostgreSQL (16, 17 18), pgAdmin, Docker, LLMs, JasperSoft Studio, JasperReports

• Development of an agent-based governance platform for the automated assurance of EU AI Act compliance and ODA-compliant orchestration of AI services in complex enterprise environments.

• Design and implementation of an agent-based "Mission Control" framework (Aletheia Conductor) for autonomous state monitoring and process control.

• Development of "Compliance-as-Code" (CaC) solutions based on OPA/Rego for system-wide enforcement of regulatory guardrails.

• Integration of TM Forum ODA standards (TMF630, TMF622, TMF642) to ensure interoperability and standardization.

• Building a highly available event-driven architecture using Redpanda and CloudEvents v1.0 for near-real-time event processing.

• Implementation of an audit-proof "Evidence Chain" through cryptographic linking of trace logs in preparation for automated audits.

• Tech Stack: Java 21 (Quarkus Native), TypeScript (Next.js), Redpanda (Kafka API), CloudEvents v1.0, OPA (Open Policy Agent) & Rego, TimescaleDB, ZincSearch, Redis, TM Forum ODA, Git, GitHub, Clean Code Development, Like-C4.

• Focus: System architecture, cloud-native platforms, microservices, API design
• Product: Pflege-Pfad is a digital placement platform that directly connects relatives of people in need of care with verified care services and caregivers – without an agency and without ongoing fees.
• Business analysis & process design:
• Analysis of the German care market and identification of the key pain points of both target groups.
• Modeling of core business processes: registration, verification, care request, application, placement, and rating.
• Definition of the business model as a freemium/premium model with optional contact unlocking.
• Creation of user stories and requirements documentation for relatives, care services, and administrators.
• Design of trust and quality assurance mechanisms with document upload, admin review process, and rating system.
• Coordination with stakeholders and validation of product decisions with potential users.
• Technical implementation:
• Design and implementation of the entire platform architecture as the sole developer.
• Design and implementation of a REST API with Spring Boot and Kotlin, including JWT-based authentication.
• Development of the frontend as a single-page application with Angular 17.
• Implementation of the AWS infrastructure with EC2, RDS PostgreSQL, S3, CloudFront, and IAM.
• Document upload with AWS S3 using presigned URLs to verify care services.
• Email notifications via Resend API.
• AI-supported care service search via OpenAI API.
• Implementation of complete user flows such as registration, login, password reset, and the placement process.
• Development of an admin panel for user and care service management as well as analytics.
• CI/CD with GitHub Actions and containerized deployments with Docker.
• End-to-end tests with Playwright.

Technologies: Kotlin, Spring Boot 3, Spring Security, JWT, JPA/Hibernate, PostgreSQL, Angular 17, TypeScript, RxJS, AWS (EC2, ECS, S3, CloudFront CDN, RDS PostgreSQL, IAM), nginx, GitHub Actions, Playwright, Maven, Git, OpenAI API, Resend API, Docker, Scrum, i18n (DE/EN/TR), Kiro, feature flag architecture.

• Technical leadership across hardware, firmware, and software teams; scope: hardware/firmware team (4 people) and leadership group (5 people)
• Consolidated and documented a product family that had grown over more than 15 years and aligned it with CRA compliance — from the bare-metal I/O module to the cloud interface.
• Provided the most important customer product with the essential requirements and architecture documentation within two months — for a firmware landscape that had grown over more than 15 years. It now supports the customer’s modernization strategy.
• Established a monthly reporting line to the supervisory board and executive board within three months: nine meetings since 12/2025. The report itself is versioned and built from the CI pipeline; it is based on automatically collected activity and release data instead of assessments.
• Built a container-based CI/CD infrastructure from scratch: cross-compilation, host tests, and documentation builds in one continuous pipeline.
• Introduced declarative QA gates for DevOps and development artifacts — from the start using lefthook instead of pre-commit, executed in a dedicated container image.

Technologies used: arc42, req42, tpo42, docToolchain, PlantUML, ArchiMate, C4 model, ADR, C, C++ (GTest), CMake, Bare Metal (ARM Cortex-M3/M7), OCI containers, Jenkins, lefthook, Prometheus, Grafana, SBOM, CRA, OPC, SCADA, PLC integration, IPv6 migration, Zero Trust, Sociocracy 3.0, Cynefin

Built an international e-commerce platform for a multi-vendor marketplace for digital assets from scratch. Designed and operated cloud native architectures at enterprise scale.

• Designed and operated a highly scalable microservice and serverless architecture
• Built the complete cloud infrastructure with Terraform + AWS CDK in AWS
• Provisioned ECS/EKS clusters (Fargate), Application Load Balancers (reverse proxy), and Lambda functions
• Observability & tracing with CloudWatch, DataDog, Prometheus, and Grafana
• End-to-end setup with DataDog (formerly AWS CloudWatch), Prometheus, and custom Grafana dashboards
• Integration of advanced metrics (including ORM mapper) and distributed tracing with Jaeger
• Robust backup and disaster recovery strategies
• RDS Postgres backups and hourly snapshots
• Read-only, asynchronously synchronized replicas with automated master failover in emergencies
• Minute-level rollback capability through versioned Docker images on ECS and Git-based CI/CD pipelines
• Created CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions for automated multi-stage deployments (Dev, Testing, Prod)
• Integrated Stripe for international payment processing
• Built a marketplace payment system with multiple parties and payout routines
• Used Algolia for high-performance real-time search of digital assets on the platform
• Federation of services with GraphQL and Hasura
• Later migration to GraphQL Mesh
• Test Driven Development (TDD) - unit, integration, and E2E testing with Jest, Vitest, and Playwright
• Used Next.js / React for modern frontend applications in the nx monorepo
• Enterprise security architecture & access control
• Integration of JWT tokens with Auth0, OAuth, OIDC, IP guards, BOLA protection, and secret vaults
• Authorization concepts with RBAC, ABAC, and native Postgres Row-Level Security (RLS)
• Built internal microfrontends with Retool for fast prototyping and operational business processes

Technologies: ABAC, AWS CDK, AWS CloudWatch, AWS ECS, AWS EKS, AWS Fargate, AWS RDS, AWS S3, Algolia, Auth0, DataDog, Docker, GitHub Actions, Grafana, GraphQL, GraphQL Mesh, Hasura, JWT, Jaeger, Java, JavaScript, Jest, Kotlin, Kubernetes, Monorepo, Next.js, OIDC, Playwright, Postgres, Postgres RLS, Prometheus, RBAC, Redis, Retool, Serverless, Stripe, Terraform, TypeScript, Vitest

• Fully on-premises LLM document-examination platform for a compliance-critical banking domain: agentic LangGraph pipeline with deterministic verification, every AI judgment structured and source-anchored; ~960 automated tests, zero data egress
• GPU throughput engineering (quantized serving, speculative decoding, prefix caching): 9.5x extraction speed-up, 500+ multi-document case files per day on a single A100
• AI-native EDI/EDIFACT integration platform (~116k LOC Java 25 / Spring Boot 4, 1,900+ tests): LLM-drafted partner mappings machine-verified before go-live (DFDL conformance, field-coverage checks, dry runs), ~99.5% byte match on real customer files — replacing weeks of manual mapping per partner

Product:

• Built a production-ready AI platform for generating brand-aware marketing images and videos from product data, user requirements, and uploaded media.
• Own the platform architecture, technical roadmap, API design, security, deployment workflow, operational reliability, and model-provider strategy.
• Developed the core platform in .NET and built supporting AI and workflow prototypes in Python, applying language-independent API contracts and structured interfaces between services and model providers.
• Implemented reliable background processing with RabbitMQ, persisted workflow state, idempotent handling, retries, failure recovery, logging, secure storage, authorization, and credit accounting.
• Made pragmatic build-versus-buy and model-routing decisions based on reliability, latency, cost, and maintainability rather than novelty.

Agent Orchestration & RAG Systems

• Built and compared agent workflows using Microsoft Agent Framework, LangGraph, and LangChain, including tool use, conditional routing, clarification steps, state management, and hand-offs between agents.
• Implemented reusable .NET components for agents, prompts, tools, model providers, structured responses, and retrieval with pyvector, making it easier to change AI providers without rewriting the core workflow.

• Recurring problem in my own AI-assisted projects: requirements analysis, use cases, and architecture decisions can be created quickly with AI support, but remain difficult to follow and scattered across Markdown files – knowledge is lost as soon as it is no longer in the context window. arknet turns requirements engineering and architecture knowledge into structured, verifiable data instead of plain text: requirements, use cases, and architecture decisions form a consistently linked knowledge graph, traceable from requirement to architecture decision – queryable by both people and AI agents. Technically based on RDF/OWL and a custom MCP server.

• Result: Working MCP daemon, Docker image published automatically to GHCR, nine hexagonal modules, eleven ADRs (including an Open-Core licensing model). Requirements engineering and Ubiquitous Language hexagons are active. Public as a Community Edition under Apache-2.0 since 07/2026 (github.com/kogn-io/arknet), together with the Claude Code plugin and GHCR image; Open-Core model.

• Label: Java, Maven, RDF, RDF4J, OWL, SPARQL, Model Context Protocol, Spring AI, Docker, GitHub, Git, Claude Code, Obsidian, DDD, Hexagonal Architecture, ArchUnit, JUnit, AssertJ, Interface Development, Software Architecture, Continuous Integration, Knowledge Management

The combined experience from recent project years shows that I have two passions: on the one hand, working in and for organizations to develop new, innovative products, ideally as part of a digitalization strategy or business development – as well as the closely related expertise in change and transformation processes as part of holistic organizational consulting. For this purpose, I established the Change Bakery and Product Validators offerings. On the other hand, my heart and mind are driven to find my own products, evaluate markets and potential, and test ideas. I am currently working independently and part-time alongside ongoing projects on a product idea related to mental health and have founded Therapymate.

• Development of safety-related embedded software for a mobile machine on a Hydac TTC 2390 controller.
• Implementation in C with consideration of SIL 3 / ASIL D and MISRA-C:2025.
• Implementation of communication via CAN, CANopen, and J1939.

Standards, guidelines and norms: ISO 26262, IEC 61508, MISRA-C:2025

Technologies: C99, Hydac TTC 2390, Infineon TriCore Aurix TC397, Hightec C/C++ Compiler, PC-lint Plus, CAN, CANopen, J1939, MISRA-C:2025

• Building a data integration platform for high, medium, and low voltage assets for contextual analysis of time series with master data from the SCADA control system (IEC 60870 104), INIS, and SAP.
• Responsibility for the architecture and implementation of the solution, as well as sparring partner for the Product Owner.
• Use of Kotlin, Spring Boot, Maven, TimescaleDB, PostgreSQL, liquibase, Elements IoT, Docker, Kubernetes, Grafana, Python, jupyter, and various API gateways.

• Optimizing and accelera­tion of our Gitlab CI pipeline

• Conceptual work for the PoC of the Zero Trust system

• Extension of the policy-engine backend in Go

• Extension of the policy-testing mechanism in Python

• Architectural design of the PEP component of Zero Trust

• Documentation of the product

• Technologies: Zero Trust, Go, Python, Gitlab CI, Docker, JWT, Domain-Driven Design