Apache Zeppelin Experts in Germany

• Short description: Leading a group-wide project to establish standardized cloud governance for Microsoft Azure, including policies, security and compliance controls, automation, and cost and operations management while preserving the autonomy of decentralized business units within regulatory frameworks.

• Tasks and activities:

• Overall responsibility for designing, building, and implementing a company-wide cloud governance structure (Azure), including target picture, roadmap, and operating model.

• Managing internal and external stakeholders (C-level, IT, Security, Compliance, Cloud Architecture, DevOps), including decision and escalation management.

• Planning and facilitating workshops on cloud strategy, governance principles, and the design of areas such as identity, connectivity, and platform management.

• Defining, implementing, and rolling out cloud policies (Azure Policy / custom policies), security standards, and compliance requirements (including GDPR, ISO 27001, BSI C5).

• Building a cloud governance framework based on the Azure Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF), including landing zone and guardrail concepts.

• Introducing automation solutions for governance, security, and cost control (policy/control automation, IaC, CI/CD-based control mechanisms).

• Implementing cloud security and compliance monitoring mechanisms as well as continuous improvement processes.

• Establishing and operationalizing FinOps in an enterprise environment (central and decentralized FinOps teams), including cost management strategies, reporting, and guardrails.

• Integrating governance policies into DevOps processes (e.g. CI/CD principles for security and compliance checks, GitLab Runner concept in spokes, GitLab CI/CD for CAF landing zones).

• Implementing access concepts including RBAC design and breaking-glass mechanisms (emergency access) as well as certificate automation (ACME / step-ca).

• Achievements:

• Created a unified, auditable governance and control set for Azure (policies, standards, compliance mapping) and thus laid the foundation for scalable cloud use in a regulated environment.

• Established repeatable automation for governance, security, and cost control (IaC + CI/CD), reducing manual effort and implementation risk.

• Improved operational and decision-making capability across central and decentralized units (clearer roles, responsibilities, escalation paths, balance between autonomy and group requirements).

• Significantly increased workload compliance during lift-and-shift migrations.

• Technologies used:

• Microsoft Azure Policy, custom policies.

• Terraform, OpenTofu, Terragrunt.

• step-ca (ACME).

• Entra ID.

• Azure Firewall.

• Azure Networking, hub-and-spoke architecture.

• Azure vWAN (evaluation).

• Azure Front Door, Azure Application Gateway.

• Azure ExpressRoute.

• Azure Key Vault.

• NetBox.

• GitLab (on-premises).

• Infrastructure, concepts used:

• Cloud shared responsibility model.

• Hub-and-spoke connectivity / central shared services (from hub-spoke context).

• Central governance with decentralized delivery (business unit autonomy with guardrails).

• Methods used:

• Scrum.

• Stakeholder management (C-level to engineering).

• Cloud governance, Azure Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF).

• DevOps, CI/CD.

• Cost and FinOps approaches: tagging/chargeback models, budget/alert concepts, reserved instances/savings plans vs. on-demand scenarios, sensitivity analyses.

• RBAC, breaking-glass concepts.

• ACME / certificate automation.

• GitLab Runner concept in spokes, GitLab CI/CD pipelines for CAF landing zones.

Conceptualizing and developing AI-powered app MVPs from the first idea to a working product. I combine UX strategy with modern AI and no-code tools — especially Claude and Claude Code, where I work directly in the terminal on real code (React, Vite), complemented by Figma, Bolt.new, and Base44 — to quickly validate and build product ideas. Personal platforms: Nutrycoach.ai (AI nutrition coaching with role-based dashboards for clients, coaches, and admins, AI meal analysis, and a scalable design system) and LuxuryBandit (content/creator app). This led to my own practice 'AI-assisted App Strategy', which combines human creativity, UX logic, and intelligent automation.

• Migration of customer data from a private cloud to AWS
• Optimizing data transformation jobs and migration from Talend to AWS Glue
• Automation of all migration steps
• Used technologies: AWS, Python, Lambda, CloudFormation, SQLServer, AWS Stepfunctions, Glue, PySpark

Project Manager – Management Consultant – Lean Manager – Coach in machine and plant engineering, pharma and medical technology

Senior Project Manager + Assembly Manager: Conversion of Porsche assembly lines Emil Schmid Maschinenbau GmbH & Co. KG

• Planning and conversion for the integration of new camera technology with AI tools for process optimization on V-engine lines Management Consultant: Business Development for defense industry for NATO Emil Schmid Maschinenbau GmbH & Co. KG
• Market research - analysis of potential customers in the defense industry
• Direct approach to potential customers and market participants
• Developing options for action and a strategy for further market development Seminar Leader, Consultant + Coach: Project Management + Experience Exchange Ness Wärmetechnik GmbH
• Workshop for further development of project managers with prior knowledge
• Exchange of experience with project managers and derivation of measures
• Recommendations to improve the project management organization Management Consultant: EU market research for hemodialysis systems Scherzinger Pumpen GmbH & Co. KG
• Market research for gear pumps in hemodialysis systems
• Contact with purchasing and R&D of dialysis system manufacturers
• Collecting market data with growth forecasts and changes Management Consultant: Strategy + Global Business Development Vibrationmaster s.à r.l.
• Company-wide strategy development together with the CEO for test systems for bolted joints
• Consulting and support in international business development and cooperation with partners Senior Project Manager + Assembly Manager: Conversion of Porsche assembly lines Emil Schmid Maschinenbau GmbH & Co. KG
• Project management for new conversion of wheel carrier press line and assembly line
• Coordination of tasks and work packages for sub-project leaders
• Schedule planning and cost control
• Resource planning with internal departments and external specialists
• Management and execution of customer and supplier coordination Management Consultant + Coach: Handling difficult project situations Ness Wärmetechnik GmbH
• Coaching project management in project control for major project Exyte to ensure ongoing order processing, awareness of difficult project situations and emerging decisions Senior Project Manager, Consultant, Coach: Improving quality of pharma pouches B. Braun Melsungen AG, Hospital Care Division, Pharma, Plant A
• Project management for improving/preventing quality fluctuations of three-chamber pouches and their outer packaging
• Leading an interdisciplinary international team from Germany, Italy, Switzerland
• Improving the production concept
• Adjusting quality criteria and setting up continuous traceability across manufacturing/logistics processes Management Consultant: Further development of structure + business processes KLAUS UNION GmbH & Co. KG
• Analysis of the current state of pump handling
• Design of the target state for pump handling
• Cost-benefit analysis of changes
• Reorientation of business processes
• Implementation with internal and external resources Senior Project Manager, Consultant, Coach: Production improvements pharma B. Braun Melsungen AG, Hospital Care Division, Pharma, Plant A
• Replacement procurement of packaging machines (carton erector, sealer)
• Concept / implementation of first-time procurement of depalletizing to packaging process
• Concept development in a simulation with production employees for a new manufacturing area for small-batch packaging, including implementation and setup
• Expansion of a rack conveyor system
• Bringing automation know-how and lean management into projects
• Further development of project management specifically for Technical Service
• Sparring partner, consultant and coach for specialists and managers Senior Project Manager: Plant conversion for filter production for ventilators 3M Deutschland GmbH Membrana
• Management support for program and project management for a fast-track project at the Wuppertal plant
• Setup of a plant (approx. €30 million) for the production of filter membranes for use in ventilators (oxygenators) Consultant: Review of leadership, structure, processes + trends at US subsidiary Bleichert Inc. for R. Weiss Verpackungsmaschinen GmbH & Co. KG
• Company-wide review of structure, business processes, communication and activities with SWOT analysis in interviews at all company levels
• Assessment of existing leadership, control tools and aids
• Estimation of potential and trends in the North American market Senior Project Manager: Streamlining packaging variety in medical technology at B.Braun B. Braun Melsungen AG
• Leading and supporting the implementation phase of a company project (multi-million-euro range)
• Reduction of packaging variety
• Implementation for different product families while considering the views of sales, marketing, R&D, regulatory affairs, supply chain, logistics, sterilization, production, purchasing and controlling
• Challenging communication / conflict management in bringing together the interdisciplinary, international teams with 30 team members
• Management reporting of the implementation phase with quality assurance and implementation costs Management Consultant: Corrective alignment of the Wärmetechnik Ness project Ness Wärmetechnik GmbH
• Supervision of major projects + further development of project management
• Interim manager "Head of Project Management": supervision of large and critical projects with direct customer contact in Latvia
• Coaching project managers and teams to secure ongoing order processing, awareness of difficult project situations, consulting on emerging decisions
• Improving deadline tracking for ongoing projects
• Concept for further development of project management
• Consulting on necessary structural company changes and staffing of project-related functions Senior Project Manager + Consultant: Schedule coordination for major BMW projects Emil Schmid Maschinenbau GmbH & Co. KG
• New / conversion of assembly lines for BMW Munich / Steyr / Hams Hall
• Project management for more than 500 conversion / new-build measures for assembly lines
• Detailed, structured scheduling, preventing potential delays
• Resource planning with internal departments and external specialists
• Coordination and execution of customer and supplier meetings
• Resolving staffing disputes with conflict management
• Further development of project management, support of change process
• Management consulting on various business matters Senior Project Manager + Consultant: Technical cleaning BMW Dingolfing A. Markert GmbH Metallreinigungsmaschinen
• Project leadership with employee motivation during the integration of a cleaning system into the production line within a short conversion time
• Fast creation of project transparency when joining an ongoing project
• Structured coordination with customer and suppliers to improve deadlines
• Preventing a critical scheduling situation to win back the customer
• Ensuring a stable schedule situation through detailed planning Senior Project Manager: Streamlining packaging variety in medical technology at B.Braun B. Braun Melsungen AG, Melsungen
• Project: Harmonization of packaging for cost optimization for the plant in Gyöngyös, Hungary
• Leading the concept and implementation phase of a company project (multi-million-euro range)
• Reduction of packaging variety ahead of costly validation / verification processes for packaging families
• Guiding towards the best solution proposals for different product families while considering the views of sales, marketing, R&D, regulatory affairs, supply chain, logistics, sterilization, production, purchasing and controlling
• Challenging communication and conflict management in bringing together the interdisciplinary, international teams with 30 team members
• Management reporting on the concept result with quality assurance, cost, schedule and capacity planning for the following implementation phase Consultant: Market study USA / Canada + business development basics Scherzinger Pumpen GmbH & Co. KG, Furtwangen
• North America market study with market data and competitive situation
• Contact and interest check with customers and sales partners
• Travel to potential customers and partners as a basis for decision-making Trainer: Workshop team building, self-management & conflict management ZF AG, ABB AG in cooperation with Lindconsult GmbH
• Working in teams, self-management & conflict management
• Workshop with individual and group exercises as well as role plays Consultant: Introduction of project management + process adjustment Lauffer Maschinenfabrik Lauffer GmbH & Co. KG
• Introduction of project management
• Examination of current business processes and definition of target processes for quotations, handover of orders and processing with clear responsibilities in all process steps
• Review and development of internal tools for the processes
• Process documentation and review for the quality management manual
• Support during briefings and employee buy-in
• Fine-tuning of processes after initial implementation experience Management Consulting: Plant layout and business process development ACSYS Lasertechnik GmbH, Mittweida
• Development of hall layout with production, manufacturing areas, warehouse, goods receipt, shipping and material flow
• Examination of current business processes and definition of target processes from "inquiry to after sales" with clear assignment of responsibilities in all process steps
• Review and development of internal tools for business processes
• Documentation and review of business processes
• Support during briefings Moderator: Plant planning with master, layout and business plan Klaus Union GmbH
• Moderation and consulting in a workshop to develop a plant layout with production areas, testing areas, warehouse, goods receipt, shipping and material flow
• Template for the architect layout for the building permit for the conversion Management Consultant: Adjustment of business processes + structure AMT Alfing Montagetechnik GmbH
• Examination of current business processes and definition of target processes for "order entry", "spindle repairs" and "spare parts handling" with clear responsibilities in all process steps
• Review and development of internal tools for the business processes
• Documentation and review of business processes
• Support during briefings Management Consultant + Coach: Introduction of project management ELHA ELHA Maschinenbau Liemke KG
• Professional coaching for project managers and consulting on building project management in the field of manufacturing systems with analysis of business processes and production workflows
• Examination of current processes and definition of target processes for sales, order handover, processing, schedule control, cost control and dunning with clear responsibilities in all process steps
• Review and development of internal tools for business processes
• Documentation and review of business processes
• Support during briefings
• Development of hall layout with production areas, warehouse and material flow Consultant: Further development of project management + knowledge management AKS AKS Alfing Kessler Sondermaschinenbau GmbH
• Consulting and reorganization of business processes to further develop project management and build a knowledge database
• Examination of current business processes and definition of target processes for order handover, cost orientation, additional claims & change management and securing know-how with clear responsibilities in all process steps
• Review and development of internal tools for business processes
• Documentation and review of business processes Senior Project Management: Patent implementation security concept Human Bios International AG
• Overall project management for patent implementation
• Market analysis in the field of security technologies
• Acquisition of development partners, sales partners and potential customers
• Strategy development and implementation
• Sales and technical development consulting
• Application for and receipt of government funding Project Manager + Management Consultant: Processing of BMW Munich order AMT Alfing Montagetechnik GmbH
• Leading the project with accompanying business consulting and coaching
• Internal coordination with sales and technical processing
• External coordination with customers and suppliers
• Quality assurance, deadline tracking, cost control with claim management
• Preparation of inquiries with specifications and negotiations with suppliers Trainer: Workshop time and self-management ABB AG in cooperation with Herrenberger Team GmbH
• Training on time & self-management
• Workshop with individual and group exercises as well as role plays Management Consultant: Ongoing analysis of business processes Klaus Union GmbH
• Ongoing analysis of the key business processes for pumps, valves, spare parts/service from inquiry through order entry, technical and commercial processing to delivery
• Showing collected weaknesses and disruptions, their dependencies and joint development of process improvements in workshops
• Documentation of the analysis and workshops Management Consultant: International sales development for combo dampers Lefa Fleischereiausstattungen GmbH + Edelstahl-Mechanik GmbH
• Europe-wide market research of sales partners and potential customers for the sale of combo dampers with smoking function
• Support in developing marketing material and campaigns
• Introduction of sales partners and support at trade fair appearances Management Consultant: Strategy workshop + strategy review workshops Klaus Union GmbH + Co. KG
• Strategy development with company analyses (SWOT, portfolio)
• Regular strategy review workshops with development of the holistic company strategy / vision / mission / goals, use of balanced scorecard
• Definition of strategic measures for further company development Lecturer "International Project Management" Aalen University Aalen University, Master's program International Business
• Workshop-style course with teaching of project management basics, experience, tools and simulation
• Domestic and foreign market studies (Europe, overseas, Asia), company analyses, staffing concepts for German industrial companies with students Business Developer: Market development India for nanotechnology product Rewitec GmbH
• Market study India
• Market development in India for nanotechnology products with trade fair appearance, search for trade partners and follow-up of contacts
• Support during test phases, coordination of local partners as exclusive agent Moderator: Strategy rollout for automotive engineering companies IAV + NCC IAV GmbH, NCC Deutschland GmbH in cooperation with Herrenberger Team GmbH and E³ GmbH
• Moderation in strategy rollout workshops
• Training in contract and conflict management with basics and role plays Overall Project Manager: Processing of Zeppelin granulate conveyor systems order Zeppelin Silo & Systems GmbH
• Leading the project with sales and profit increase
• Professional coaching of the deputy project manager and project team
• Internal coordination with the project team, sales and technical processing
• External coordination with customers and suppliers
• Quality assurance, deadline tracking, cost control with claim management
• Preparation of inquiries with specifications and negotiations with suppliers Sessler Galvanikanlagen GmbH
• Market studies in the USA and Russia with market data and competitive situation
• Strategy, contracts and marketing development with joint venture partner in the USA
• Training of US representatives and initial sales support

References [link]

• Designed and developed interactive SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) dashboards and reports for Finance, Supply Chain, Logistics, Procurement, HR, and Manufacturing, covering KPIs such as Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Fixed Costs, Headcount, Personnel Expenses, Stock Analysis, OTIF, Production Volume, BOM, Spend, and Compliance to Schedule.
• Built and optimized end-to-end ABAP CDS data models (Basic, Composite, and Consumption Views) using the VDM approach, integrating data from key SAP S/4HANA tables. Strong expertise in ABAP CDS, SQL, SAP data modeling,
• Collaborated with cross-functional teams to define KPI logic, standardized user story templates, resolved BI requests through JIRA, improved reporting performance, and delivered scalable, secure, and business-focused analytics solutions that enhanced decision-making and operational efficiency.
• Trained business stakeholders across various countries on SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) dashboard usage and developed comprehensive training manuals to promote user adoption and enable self-service analytics.

• Workshop preparation and facilitation for the BMW digital team to plan the Matko Cockpit product delivery for the second half of the year.

• Team building and preparation of the Matko Cockpit product delivery roadmap.

• Stakeholder alignment and workshop design.

• Managing the workshop agenda, identifying focus topics, and topic prioritization.

• Review of team sentiment and capturing impressions.

• Identification, summary, and documentation of action items.

• Methodologies used: Ice Breaker, Brain Storming, Story Points, Magic Estimation, Hypothesis Statement, Problem Statement, Dot Voting, and Parking Lot.

• Owning RAG, LLM-System, ML-ops-Pipelines for various startups in Insurance, Banking, Energy (KRITIS)

• Further development of the web app for creating Zeppelin maintenance contracts by fully covering all contract configurations, automatic calculation of total costs and inspection intervals, SSO login and Jenkins-based deployment with automated tests
• Replacement of a legacy-based calculation service with a modern API integration compliant with corporate IT standards
• Result: complete digitization of the process, functionally superior and deeply integrated into the IT infrastructure

• Presentation introducing generic AI and large language models
• Explanation of legal frameworks (EU AI Act, US CLOUD Act, GDPR)
• Systematic review of AI tools along the SDLC and holistic systems
• Comparison of on-prem LLMs vs. cloud-based, as well as change management and works council
• Facilitated the discussion and derived next steps for introducing AI development tools

• Lead Architect to design and implement the data lake and ETL Pipeline using AWS Stack
• Performance Optimization of Data Ingestion of ETL Pipeline
• Development of Data Validation using Great Expectations
• Leading of the data migration for two sources exchanges
• Data Modeling in AWS Redshift

MLOps

• Model inference implementation by mlflow and AWS SageMaker
• Feature Engineering for the running ML Models ( Recommender Engineer, Clustering )
• Implementatino of Model Registry and artifactory using mlflow
• Historization an Profiling of the Input Data Using AWS Glue Crawler and AWS Data Catalog
• Feature importance using mlflow

Tech. Stack: Python 3, AWS Glue, AWS Step Fucntion, AWS Lambda, AWS EventBridge, AWS IAM Role, AWS SageMaker, AWS EC2, AWS Glue Crawler, AWS CloudWatch, MLFlow, ETL, Data lake, GitHub Action, Terraform, Jenkins, Ansible playbooks (Infrastructure as Code), CI/CD, GitLab, SQL, PySparkSCRUM, Agile, Jira, BigData, VSCode, DBeaver, MSSQL, MySQL, grafana, Docker, Linux, Bash, MapReduce, Data Modeling (ORM), Pandas, YAML, SQL-Alchemy

• Driving app monetization and growth initiatives for Bundesliga products.
• Moderation of cross-team ideation workshops for idea generation.
• Amplitude Product Analytics, Google Ad Manager, Firebase.

• Help developers with individual live coaching to become pro-level Apache Spark engineers
• Organize and host multi-day, tailored Apache Spark workshops for development teams
• Create educational technical content on a self-hosted blog, YouTube, and social media

• Head of technical overall integration NSC (National Secure Cloud project with about 60 employees).

• Technical integration of all subprojects into one product, definition of interfaces, basic components of a cloud including hardware, technical architecture of the IABG base.

• Development of a Cloud Management Platform (CMP) that can create a private/mixed cloud of any complexity based on a textual description with one click or interactively.

• CMP also includes the complete hardware management cycle.

• As a foundation, it uses Kubernetes, OpenStack, and Hadoop.

• The management layer includes Harbor, Gitea, Longhorn, Keycloak, Rancher and Jenkins, which are automatically configured.

• The private cloud can run any customer workloads, including a full Hadoop stack with HDFS, Spark, MapReduce, Mesos, HBase and around 20 other ML/DL technologies.

• Hadoop worker clusters can also be automatically installed on bare metal or commodity hardware without Kubernetes.

• OpenStack with Nova, Neutron, Ironic, Swift, Cinder, Ceph.

• Development of a Java application Rudi: SOAP, REST, containers, database.

• Technologies: Kubernetes (K3s, RKE2, Minikube, Harbor, Gitea, Jenkins, Longhorn, Keycloak, Rancher), OpenStack (Nova, Neutron, Keystone, Swift, Ceph, Cinder, Sahara, Magnum, Kayobe, Kolla, Bigrost, Ironic), Hadoop (HDFS, Ambari, Solr, Livy, Ranger, YARN, Tez, HBase, Kafka, Hive, Zookeeper, MapReduce, Spark, Oozie, Flink), virtualization (Kubernetes (K3s), VMware, Oracle), scripting (Ansible, Puppet, Juju, Shell, Groovy, Gradle, Maven).

• Independent project work focused on authorizations with S/4HANA and Fiori for the Korea site.

• Rolling out Korea-specific roles to test users as per template.

• Providing support during various testing phases.

• Assigning roles for UAT and subsequent go-live.

• Independent project support for the GTS project (Global Trade System).

• Creating function roles and assigning them to individual locations.

• Creating business catalogs and Spaces & Pages.

• Supporting testers during integration tests.

• Preparing for UAT and the planned go-live.

• Independent project support for the TM EWM project (Transport Management; Extended Warehouse Management).

• Creating function roles and business catalogs in collaboration with the project team.

• Developing Spaces & Pages with the project team.

• Preparing for the integration test, creating users in the test system, assigning roles.

• Supporting the authorization teams with ticket processing.