Artificial Intelligence Experts in Düsseldorf

• Conducted security assessments for supplier qualification, business unit onboarding, and ongoing reviews of service providers and partners (Ongoing Assurance).
• Assessed technical and organizational measures (TOMs) against GDPR and information security requirements.
• Handled security reviews and approval processes in the Global Approval Navigator (OneTrust).
• Advised business units and IT on information security, security requirements, and risk-appropriate measures.
• Supported the development of SOC/SIEM processes and tools as part of the ISMS in line with ISO/IEC 27001.
• Analyzed cyber threats and coordinated security objectives and measures to address Security Findings with the SOC team.
• Monitored and assessed current security advisories and security-related metrics (KPIs).
• Reviewed, assessed risks, and approved exception requests (Security Exceptions).
• Independently analyzed and handled Security Events and supported the handling of security incidents.
• Planned and supported awareness initiatives to strengthen security awareness.
• Created, implemented, and reviewed information security policies and standards.
• Conducted protection needs analyses and gap assessments to identify security gaps and risk deviations.
• Defined and reviewed technical and organizational risk treatment measures.
• Advised on Third Party Governance with consideration of DORA, ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 27005, ISO/IEC 42001, and BCM in line with ISO 22301.

Advising various companies in the areas of controlling, finance and planning, transformation, business partnering, management reporting and AI-driven forecasting systems

• Advising primarily mid-sized companies on growth and transformation topics
• Developing business models, positioning and strategies including implementation plans and KPI roadmaps

Non-custodial staking and digital-asset infrastructure for Web3 wallets, exchanges, and institutional custodians

Advised the COO on delivery for staking and digital-asset infrastructure serving institutional custodians, exchanges and wallets across regulated markets.

• Ran the company-wide KPI and OKR process across the organisation, raising company-wide OKR achievement from 50% to 65%.
• Designed and implemented OKR/KPI frameworks enabling structured quarterly delivery cycles and executive-level execution visibility.
• Defined, documented and improved the P2P governance and operating processes across programmes and operations.

• Ran a group-wide steering committee to set strategic direction for a turnaround program. Planned delivery to secure go-to-market and investor milestones
• Prepared the project structure and supplier management process for an ACQ.4 Automotive SPICE audit. Built dry runs and compiled evidence with the team, resulting in a successful CL2 assessment
• Synchronized Automotive SPICE activities with the organization's SAFe rollout by screening base practices and agile artifacts for overlap. Avoided approximately 30% duplicate effort

• QA Lead for end-to-end quality assurance of the Sparkasse & Sparkasse Business banking apps (iOS/Android); design and implementation of the Test Strategy including functional testing, regression testing, and UAT for eID, Push Notifications, and white-label components
• Creation and maintenance of test concepts and test plans in TestRail; structured Defect Management and error analysis; stakeholder management and risk management for the early identification of critical quality risks
• Accessibility Testing according to WCAG 2.1 (iOS/Android); coordination of AI-supported test automation and optimization of test processes to shorten release cycles
• Release Management: planning, management, and coordination of all test activities; status reporting to management and stakeholders; quality assessment of releases and release recommendations in an Agile/Scrum environment
• Challenge: Highly complex build and release process across several Sparkasse institutions; close coordination with the DevOps team to stabilize the CI/CD pipeline and ensure reproducible test builds before every release.

Tools: Jira, Confluence, TestRail, Android Studio, Xcode, Firebase, Jenkins, GA4

• Success: Successful launch of the eID authentication process - quality assurance ensured for 50+ Sparkasse institutions

Time-limited interim assignment filling a vacant program leadership position: joint leadership of a complex software project and orchestration of several agile teams (business, development, and DevOps teams), as well as actively driving change processes.

• Program Management & Planning: Responsibility for creating and updating milestone, resource, and budget plans to ensure project objectives using agile and hybrid methods.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Promoting cooperation and knowledge sharing across teams; resolving blockers through proactive conflict management and targeted facilitation.
• Stakeholder Management & Transparency: Ensuring transparent and audience-appropriate communication within and outside the project organization using modern project management tools.

Sovereign, cloud-native developer platform based on Kubernetes for critical energy infrastructure; around 200 people and 15 product teams.

• Introduced the product operating model for the platform, aligning around 18 product managers and product owners with Platform Architecture and Delivery in a matrix organisation.
• Defined the platform product processes and core product artefacts as the standard across all product teams.
• Established processes for non-functional requirements and Requests for Enhancement from consuming teams and customers.
• Designed the Jira structure supporting the programme's product and delivery processes.

• 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

Project lead for the development, launch and company-wide implementation of the strategic repositioning of the brand based on the new corporate vision (CEO-driven transformation project).

Key areas of responsibility:

• Conceptualization, further development and implementation of the global brand and communications strategy (internal and external) to strengthen the strategic positioning, including subsequent concepts to foster internal identification with the new corporate vision (cross-country implementation with > 60 thousand employees) and for external activation.
• Development and implementation of new global campaigns across owned and paid channels, including channel strategy, (social) media strategy and creative concepts.
• Development and implementation of a data-driven approach to managing and optimizing brand communications.
• Management of internal communications on strategic topics, including internal events.
• Functional leadership of interdisciplinary project teams and collaboration with stakeholders across various functions and organizational levels.
• Budget responsibility as well as management and integration of external agencies and service providers.
• Driving the integration of AI into brand management and communications.
• Strategic sparring partner for organizational design as well as the further development of the department strategy and project roadmap in Corporate Branding. Result: Global brand and communications strategy implemented and data-driven as well as AI-supported foundations for future-ready brand management established, internal anchoring of the corporate vision strengthened and transformation of Corporate Branding significantly advanced; awarded the CEO Award.

Project scope: Supported the establishment, scaling and continuous improvement of project management and support processes by modernizing governance, processes, documentation, deliverables tracking, training content and tool-supported ways of working across a complex energy project environment.

Key contributions

• Supported the build-up and maturation of the PMO department, including governance structures, operational frameworks, project management processes, templates and deliverables tracking mechanisms.
• Conducted As-Is analysis of existing processes and their documentation, including process inventory, interface mapping, problem identification and creation of visualizations and white papers to improve shared understanding.
• Reviewed and improved project management documentation, templates and work instructions, including support for a project document master list to strengthen standardization and control.
• Designed and supported rollout of a lessons learned process and related system/application, including pilot preparation, coordination and implementation support.
• Mapped and supported implementation of a new resource management process connected to the rollout of a resource planning tool.
• Led and supported adoption of agile ways of working and Atlassian tools, including Jira and Confluence team boards, plans/roadmaps, dashboards, sprint planning and retrospectives.
• Acted as key user for continuous usage improvements in PMO tools and collaboration practices.
• Developed training curricula, instructional videos, supporting materials and PMO Open Doors sessions to improve capability transfer and provide a recurring forum for updates and information sharing.
• Developed a skills matrix concept and supported rollout as a basis for structured capability management and training demand analysis.
• Supported preparation of department offsites, implementation of a new Integrated Management System (IMS), creation of a SharePoint-based PMO website and department integration after restructuring.

Results / business impact

• Improved project management & PMO structure, processes and their documentation
• Enhanced transparency and standardization across processes, documentation, governance routines and project deliverables tracking.
• Enhanced information flow and knowledge transfer through SharePoint-based communication, PMO forums, training curricula and instructional videos.
• Strengthened lessons learned, resource planning, agile collaboration, capability management and post-restructure department integration.

Gronic Ident & Sign

Core technologies: Android, Jetpack Compose, Retrofit, Regula Document Reader, Adobe Sign

Android app on dedicated devices for identifications and electronic signatures at the PoS

• Training AI models, evaluating images and text UI/UX, turning the provided data into insights through OpenAI Feather as part of the machine learning workflow

Technologies: OpenAI Feather

• Led end-to-end delivery of ML/AI applications for the QuantistryLab simulation platform, from requirements definition and solution design to development, testing, deployment, and production support, coordinating efforts across back-end, DevOps, and ML teams
• Designed and implemented a compound search system with an open-weights LLM, the Pydantic AI agent framework, and the Model Context Protocol (MCP), exposing it through FastAPI endpoints
• Deployed and configured vLLM-based LLM serving on Kubernetes
• Built CI/CD pipelines and Helm charts to automate deployments across staging and production environments
• Instrumented the search system with OpenTelemetry spans and traces, integrating with the Honeycomb observability platform to monitor component-level latency and functional errors
• Developed a custom evaluation dataset and implemented evaluations for retrieval relevance, answer correctness, tool-call accuracy, and end-to-end task success
• Reduced infrared spectrum prediction time by 83% (from 60 to 10 minutes) by replacing a quantum-mechanical model with a pretrained graph neural network; fine-tuned the model using PyTorch, built and containerized the inference pipeline with Docker, and integrated it into the platform
• Implemented an MLflow model registry with MinIO-backed artifact storage
• Advised sales and science teams on ML/AI applications for prospective client projects, providing technical expertise to shape proposed solutions and prototypes

Technologies: AWS, Hetzner, Kubernetes, Helm, Docker, vLLM, Pydantic AI, MCP, Qwen, Llama 3, MLflow, MinIO, GitHub Actions, Python, FastAPI, OpenTelemetry, Honeycomb, PyTorch, Polars, pytest