Artificial Intelligence Experts in Frankfurt

• Analysis, structuring, and prioritization of complex business and stakeholder requirements for a business-critical limit and risk system.
• Translation of business requirements into backlog items, user stories, acceptance criteria, and end-to-end scenarios.
• Facilitation of structured workshops and refinements with business, development, and QA to clarify complex issues and derive actionable product and system requirements.
• Optimization of requirements, testing, and quality processes, including automation, data quality, and CI/CD-related workflows.
• Discovery and evaluation of AI/GenAI use cases in terms of user and business value, data basis, feasibility, and potential capability impact.

• Goal: Development and optimization of loyalty and CRM measures for a leading e-commerce platform
• Solution: Identification of promising users, increase in engagement, and long-term retention to drive revenue growth
• Definition of local CRM direct communication for specific segments
• Translation of research insights into actionable recommendations
• Planning and implementation of CRM campaigns in close collaboration with marketing and product teams
• Identification of optimization potential in direct communication
• Collaboration with external agencies on creative solutions, prototyping, and UAT
• Measurement and reporting of key KPIs

• Head of the group-wide, international, and cross-functional IT Governance & IAM department within the central IT division of a large French-German private banking group. Disciplinary management of around 30 employees at five different locations within the group (Frankfurt, Paris, Tunis, Saarbrücken, Düsseldorf). Head of IT committees and key role in direct communication with management, the supervisory board, external stakeholders, and regulators.
• Definition and establishment of a state-of-the-art IT strategy process and related IT governance structures for the group's IT department with more than 600 employees (testified by the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority and the ACPR) and successful process run.
• Establishment of a new future-oriented process framework for IT and necessary governance structures (process squads) for the continuous improvement of IT processes with regard to new regulatory requirements (including DORA, EU AI Act, etc.).
• Establishment of stringent processes to close a historical backlog of findings (> 100 IT findings, 40 overdue findings in 2022) from internal and external auditors (WP, ACPR, BaFin). Successful reduction of stock of overdue findings to 0 at the end of 2025.
• Supporting more than 20 IT audits per year and establishment of regulatory monitoring processes. Introduction of ServiceNow to revolutionize regulatory change and IT compliance processes with advanced AI functionalities.
• Realignment of IT control processes in conjunction with the newly established ICT risk function under DORA and the three lines of defense concept using the TopEase GRC solution.
• Reduction of the application landscape, by systematically analysing the purpose with application and business owners, identifying duplicates while implementing a One-Tool Strategy throughout the group. Successful reduction of one third of the application landscape within the CMDB.
• Onboarding of all group applications into One Identity's group-wide IAM solution, as well as operation and further development of the solution in connection with segregation of duties (SoD), role-based access management (RBAC), etc.

• Led business development across DACH for a PropTech platform digitising distressed real estate and NPL asset sales — unlocking liquidity for illiquid assets through structured digital bidding processes for brokers, investors and insolvency administrators.

• Developed and managed enterprise relationships with real estate agencies, banks, servicers and PropTech platforms — driving pipeline generation, commercial negotiations and partnership development across Germany and Europe.

• Replaced opaque one-to-one negotiations with transparent multi-bidder environments — supporting distressed real estate sales, NPL/REO asset disposals, portfolio sales and high-demand residential listings with speed, compliance and auditability.

I am an experienced data engineer specializing in end‑to‑end data integration, cloud DWH architectures, and high‑quality, governed data products.

I delivered following projects and engagements as a freelancer.

• Data Migration of CRM System for AL-FA Objekt Service Gmbh
• Microsoft Software Resales Partnership

I am looking for freelance roles like: Freelance Data Engineer Cloud Data Warehouse Architect Data Modeling & Architecture Consultant MDM & Data Governance Specialist BI & Analytics Developer

Technical Focus Areas

• Data Engineering & Integration: SQL Server/SSIS, Informatica PowerCenter/IDQ, Talend, Kafka, Azure Data Factory – Delta/CDC/ELT patterns, robust pipelines, monitoring/recovery, data lineage & impact analysis, medallion architecture Bronze/Silver/Gold layers
• DWH & Cloud: Azure SQL / Data Lake / Synapse, AWS Redshift/S3, on‑prem SQL/Oracle – scalable data marts with a strong cost/benefit focus.
• Data Modeling: Atomic (Inmon) and Dimensional (Kimball), Data Vault (Linstedt), Domain‑Driven Design, clear lineage & contracts.
• MDM & Governance: Informatica MDM, IBM MDM, stewardship processes, data quality rules, survivorship/XREF, catalog/glossary, SIF/BES/REST publication.
• Analytics/BI: Power BI, SSAS, Cognos – business‑ready, maintainable data products.

2nd LoD/Change the Bank (CtB)

• CtB: External consultant and workstream lead for rectifying findings by BaFin following a special IT audit in the 2nd LoD, management of the work package for revising the ICT Risk Management & ICT Asset Classification in accordance with DORA Chapter 2, the processes for structural analysis, protection requirements, and control assessments (4 FTEs).

• Architected the Yatta Integration Layer – a config-driven integration platform on Java 25, Spring Boot 4 (WebFlux), Temporal, gRPC and Kafka, enabling new third-party integrations (e.g. AVS fulfillment) via declarative JSON configs with zero code changes.
• Designed and implemented Tink integration with 0Auth IBAN verification to enhance fraud prevention and account validation workflows with Adyen payByBank.
• Architected and implemented an OpenFGA-based authorization model for centralized management of users, groups, and fine-grained access control in the vendor portal.
• Architected and led delivery of the Yatta API Gateway platform using GraphQL Federation, providing a unified enterprise API layer across distributed microservices with centralized authentication, authorization and request orchestration.
• Replaced NGINX + NLB with Istio service mesh and AWS ALB; rolled out WAF, OAuth (Cognito), IP whitelisting and RBAC across environments.
• Migrated CDC from Confluent Cloud connectors to a self-hosted Kafka Connect + Debezium stack, reducing operational cost by ~80% across multiple environments.
• Implemented the Transactional Outbox pattern with Debezium for reliable, exactly-once event publishing to Kafka with Avro and Schema Registry.
• Migrated dunning/payment-recovery workflows from Airflow to Temporal, achieving 99.9% reliability for settlement handling.
• Optimised Apache Airflow with deferrable sensors to handle 1000+ concurrent DAG runs without scaling the worker pool.
• Refactored a monolithic Terraform codebase into 3 modular projects, cutting deployment time by ~45%.
• Stood up full observability with OpenTelemetry, Tempo, Prometheus and Loki; automated dev/staging/prod with ArgoCD, Image Updater and Helm.
• Collaborated with product, operations and engineering stakeholders to define scalable platform architecture and integration standards aligned with long-term business and operational goals.

Goal:

• Stabilize and realign a central software platform for digital office processes and restore solid product and delivery management.

Tasks & responsibility:

• Took over product and project management during a critical development phase
• Sharpened product vision, target picture, roadmap, and prioritized product capabilities
• Analyzed user needs, processes, system dependencies, and operational pain points
• Reorganized and prioritized backlog, releases, and work packages based on customer value and delivery risk
• Cross-functional leadership of engineering, product owners, scrum masters, architecture, business units, and operations
• Introduced reliable planning, decision-making, reporting, and escalation structures
• Moderated discovery, refinement, planning, and decision workshops
• Managed scope, risks, dependencies, and stakeholder expectations in a complex product environment

Result:

• Sharpened product vision and roadmap, stabilized delivery structures, and sustainably improved management and decision-making capabilities.

Europe-wide re-platforming & centralization

• Independently created the migration concept and implementation plan for the Europe-wide centralization and consolidation of IT services for around 20 European companies as part of a re-platforming program.
• Migration assessment: analysis of the existing IT, infrastructure, application, and service landscapes of the companies as the basis for the migration strategy.
• Development of the centralized target vision and target architecture based on a modern technology stack, taking platform and containerization approaches into account.
• Design of a highly available central infrastructure in an active-active model across two data centers; consideration of cloud, infrastructure, application, CMDB, and IAM services.
• Development of the migration and transformation roadmap, including defining migration waves, dependencies, requirements, and priorities for the move from decentralized services to the central platform.
• Analysis of technical and organizational dependencies, identification of migration risks, and development of a structured approach for step-by-step migration and centralization.
• Creation of target, solution, and implementation views for each service domain; design of the end-to-end join-move-leave process as a blueprint for the European rollout (Jira/Jira Asset Management).
• Alignment of migration strategy and roadmap with European companies, management, IT, providers, and other stakeholders; presentation of the 12-month roadmap to the Managing Director Europe.

I founded Nick's Advisory to make HR management, HR project delivery, and AI expertise available to companies on a temporary basis when internal capacity or experience is lacking.

Services:

• HR interim management: taking over the HR business partner or HR manager role during restructuring, growth, or a vacant leadership position, on a daily or hourly basis
• HR consulting: projects around reorganization, talent acquisition, separation processes, and building HR structures
• AI consulting for HR teams: selection, introduction, and use of AI tools in HR processes

• Responsibility for the further development of digital service products with a focus on customer value, profitability, and scalable growth
• Development and prioritization of the service product roadmap based on customer feedback, market analysis, financial evaluation, and technical feasibility
• Identification of new digital service opportunities as well as derivation of product requirements, feature priorities, and value propositions
• Alignment of product vision, roadmap, and user experience with product owners, center of competence, sales, service, and market organizations
• Support of go-to-market activities, market validations, and internal training for the successful launch of digital service offerings
• Use of data-based decision-making to assess customer needs, business model assumptions, and product progress

• Conceptual design and implementation of modular AI assistants for sales and business processes in the Microsoft ecosystem (Agentic AI, Copilot extensions)
• Frontend architecture and development with React + TypeScript for embedded chat and assistant surfaces (streaming UI, hooks, React Query, OpenAPI clients)
• Enterprise-level agent development: reusable skill/agent library, MCP server, review and compliance gates
• LLM integration into the user experience: Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI, tool use, RAG pipelines, prompt engineering, guardrails
• Architecture and code review consulting as well as mentoring in the AI development team
• Integration with Microsoft Graph, Power Platform, and Azure services
• Technologies: React, TypeScript, Anthropic Claude, OpenAI, MCP, RAG, Microsoft Graph, Power Platform, Azure

• Project-based work in marketing automation, process optimization, and content.
• On-site operational assignments in fully English-speaking teams.
• Focus on self-organized work, changing locations, quick onboarding, and a high level of personal responsibility.
• Remote projects for Spartan Race Australia & DMC Europe, among others.

• Led discovery phase and POC for Shopware to Shopify Plus migration across EMEA markets, evaluating platform suitability, technical architecture, and multi-brand/multi-country capabilities against business requirements.
• Designed reference architecture for Shopify Plus implementation incorporating headless front-end patterns (Vue.js, Nuxt.js), CMS integration (Magnolia), and Azure middleware (APIM, Functions, Logic Apps, Service Bus) for 11 EMEA markets.
• Defined migration strategy analyzing data mapping, cutover approach, and zero-downtime deployment patterns using Varnish caching, GitOps pipelines, and CI/CD orchestration across six vendor teams.
• Architected multi-tenant Shopify Plus governance model with centralized admin, localized storefront customization, and compliance controls (GDPR, data residency).
• Prototyped AI-driven search optimization (LLM.txt, JSON-LD) for product discoverability in Google AI results, demonstrating post-launch performance opportunities.
• Defined EMEA expansion roadmap for 15+ markets through C-level strategic workshops, identifying phased rollout, market-specific configurations, and resource requirements.
• Tech Stack: React, Nuxt.js, Vue.js, Magnolia CMS, Shopware, Shopify Plus, Azure (APIM, Functions, Logic Apps, Service Bus, Front Door), Varnish, SAP, MS Dynamics, Docker, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions, PostgreSQL, Kafka