Azure DevOps Experts in Germany

Agile Transformation: introducing agile principles and transforming traditional IT departments into Scrum and Kanban teams

IT Operating Model: redesigning the IT organization and introducing modern delivery structures and roles

Flight Levels: building up Flight Levels practices within IT to align strategy, coordination and operational execution

Leadership & Coaching: recruiting Agile Coaches and coaching Scrum Masters and IT leaders

ERP Operations: acting as Interim Product Owner for the existing ERP landscape and ensuring business continuity

ERP Transformation: reorganizing and supporting the ERP migration as a Project Manager; Phase 1 (financial accounting) live since October 2025

Operational Core (ERP): establishing dedicated teams for ERP Support, Feature Development, and ERP Migration

Modern Workplace: initiating the transition towards a Microsoft 365-based cloud workplace environment

Integration: establishing a dedicated team to drive integration and connectivity initiatives

Warehouse Operations: building a cross-functional team to support logistics and warehouse-related capabilities

Maintenance & Operations (M&O): introducing a dedicated team for system engineering, security, stable operations and continuous improvement

AI Initiatives: identifying and promoting practical Artificial Intelligence use cases across the IT department

As Interim Head of IT for a German medium-sized industrial distributor, I am responsible for 31 IT employees and lead the digital and organizational transformation, reporting directly to executive leadership. I took over an IT department with almost no basic structures – no clear roles, processes, documentation or ticket system – and with significant technical debt that tied up most of its capacity. Introduced agile principles and ways of working in the IT organization and transformed the traditionally structured IT department into cross-functional Scrum and Kanban teams focused on transparency, collaboration, and customer value delivery.

Redesigned the entire IT organization by establishing a modern operating model, introducing new roles such as Product Owner, Scrum Master and Solution Architect and strengthening the organization through strategic hiring and targeted capability development. Recruited and onboarded Agile Coaches to accelerate the transformation and personally managed and coached Scrum Masters as well as IT department leaders to foster servant leadership, self-management and a culture of continuous improvement.

Aligned IT-internal planning across eight teams to three Flight Levels based on Klaus Leopold (strategy, coordination, team), laying the foundation for later company-wide portfolio management. Consolidated the backlog of more than 10 workstreams and prioritized it by business value and cost of delay. Introduced a ticketing system to increase transparency and enable data-driven decision-making, flow-based work management, and greater accountability at all levels.

Established and supported multiple cross-functional teams, including the Operational Core (ERP) domain with dedicated streams for Support, Feature Development and ERP Migration, as well as teams responsible for Warehouse Operations, Maintenance & Operations (M&O) including system engineering and security, Modern Workplace, Data Quality and integration initiatives. Worked closely with Agile Coaches to support team development, remove impediments, and continuously improve delivery effectiveness.

Acted as Interim Product Owner for the operation and enhancement of the existing ERP landscape while supporting the ERP migration as a Project Manager. Reorganized the project organization and had the already negotiated contract with the implementation partner realigned with a focus on approach and overall responsibility; Phase 1 (financial accounting) has been live since October 2025. Collaborated with the selected implementation partner to design and establish the project organization and target operating model for the ERP transformation, introducing agile delivery structures and ways of working. Facilitated the alignment between business, IT and the external vendor and played a key role in negotiating the contractual framework and delivery model to ensure a sustainable foundation for the transformation program.

Initiated the strategic modernization of the workplace environment through the adoption of Microsoft 365 cloud capabilities, establishing the foundation for enhanced collaboration, scalability and future digital services.

Launched AI initiatives to identify practical business use cases and promote the responsible adoption of Artificial Intelligence across the IT department. Encouraged self-management and empowered teams to take ownership of decisions, delivery and continuous improvement.

Project – Evaluation and development of databases for a new product line for a measuring equipment manufacturer

• Current-state analysis
• Requirements analysis of the data storage layer
• Writing benchmark tests
• Design of the new database schema
• Database migrations
• Development of audit logging and Part11
• Creation of backup and recovery concepts
• Design of the persistence layer API
• Writing unit tests
• Creating requirements in Azure

Tools: C#, Visual Studio 2022, Azure DevOps, SonarQube, Git, RestSharp, WebServer, PostgreSQL, MS SQL, SQLite, MinIO, Podman, Docker, DataGrip, SQL Management Studio, HeidiDB, pgAdmin

AI Readiness - Part 3: Creating an e-book on the use of AI in software testing

• Designed and created an e-book on the sensible and safe use of AI in software testing from the perspective of an experienced test expert.
• Used generative AI (ChatGPT, Perplexity Pro) as a sparring partner for structuring, wording suggestions and creating variations, with all content finally reviewed and approved using my own expertise.
• Developed practical insights into the opportunities and risks of AI in testing, with a special focus on collaboration between testers and AI instead of “tester vs. AI”.
• Title: “11 starke Gründe: Dream-Team statt Rivalen - Tester und KI sind gemeinsam unschlagbar”
• Subtitle: “Wie Mensch und Maschine im Softwaretest das perfekte Team bilden – und warum reines KI-Testing riskant ist.”
• Planned use of the e-book as a basis for workshops, customer meetings or internal training.
• Technology: Generative AI, ChatGPT, Perplexity Pro, Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, many years of hands-on professional testing experience, common sense.

• Create and lead roadmap forecasting of support opportunities, including colleague training, process design and improvement, and new hire onboarding.
• Collaborate seamlessly with cross-functional teams including Professional Services, Support, Product, Sales, and Solution Engineering.
• Manage business and financial KPIs in alignment with overall business objectives.
• Industrial IT & Data Integration: Implement, configure, and integrate OT/IT systems and data flows, connecting control-layer sources (DCS, PLC, SCADA) to historians, data platforms, and enterprise systems through APIs and standard interfaces.
• AVEVA PI & Historian: Configure, maintain, and extend AVEVA PI (PI Data Archive, Asset Framework, interfaces/connectors) to capture, contextualize, and serve real-time and historical operational data.
• Alarm Management: Support and optimize alarm management systems – e.g. Honeywell Alarm Management – including alarm rationalization, classification, and the analysis of alarm performance, critical alarms, and alarm floods.
• Connectivity & Protocols: Set up and troubleshoot industrial connectivity using OPC UA and OPC A&E, including the configuration of tunnelers / wrappers to bridge OT data sources securely and reliably.
• Production Data Flow: Ensure seamless, secure, and well-structured data flow across the industrial IT landscape, transforming raw operational data into meaningful information for operations and decision-making.
• System Support & Troubleshooting: Provide ongoing support for OT/IT applications, troubleshooting issues across networks, software, and data integrations to keep systems running efficiently.
• Knowledge Management & Best Practices: Contribute to internal documentation, best practices, and troubleshooting guides, and help continuously improve how we deliver industrial IT and data solutions.

Tools & Software: Aveva PI, Salesforce, Active Directory, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Jira, Microsoft, Scrum, DevOps, Docker, CI/CD, Jenkins, GitHub.

Further Development of the Integrated Capacity Management Platform InKa

Rail Infrastructure

• Power BI shared datasets and reports via DirectQuery on Amazon Redshift (timetable, construction and capacity data)
• Automated report testing with Playwright in Docker containers, version control with GitLab
• Concept and implementation of user communication (information page, changelog, known bugs)

Initial Situation:

The integrated capacity management platform (InKa) is a monitoring and analysis platform for data from timetable and capacity management: customer orders, infrastructure, timetable operations, construction, as well as route capacity and width. The data is stored and linked in a structured data warehouse. This makes it possible to create complex KPIs across different source systems and display current and future route utilization as well as construction activity across the network. The goal is to improve strategic, medium-term and intra-year planning and provide users with easy access to capacity management analyses.

Measures:

• Enablement: Introduction of Power BI with training and workshops for development teams.
• Consulting & Design: Problem analysis, concepts and solution consulting for reporting requirements; implementation of reporting solution plans.
• Data Model: Development of shared datasets with DirectQuery on Amazon Redshift and import tables; DAX measures for utilization and capacity KPIs.
• Development: Data analysis, data transformation and visualization in Power BI; extension and migration of business applications to Power BI; AI-supported development in VS Code with GitHub Copilot.
• Test Automation: Automated testing of Power BI reports with Playwright; setup of the test environment in Docker containers.
• User Communication: Concept and implementation of a central information page with hot news, changelog and known bugs, access from reports with report filters, updates via Power Automate.
• Deployment: Management of Power BI Deployment Pipelines across the DEV, TEST and PROD environments.
• Agile Working: Work in an agile team according to SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework); refinement of user stories and features including effort estimates in Jira; version control with Git and GitLab.
• Quality & Documentation: Reviews for quality assurance, error analysis and resolution, technical documentation in AsciiDoc and Confluence.

Technologies: Power BI, DAX, Power Query, DirectQuery, Amazon Redshift, Git / GitLab, Deployment Pipelines, Playwright, Docker, AsciiDoc, Power Automate, Jira, Confluence, VS Code with GitHub Copilot, SAFe

Results:

• Capacity management KPIs from multiple source systems combined on one platform
• Transparency regarding current and future route utilization and construction activity across the network
• Easy access to analyses for users
• Automated regression testing of Power BI reports
• User communication implemented: central information page with hot news, changelog and known bugs, directly accessible from the reports

• Electronics – Surface Solutions | Carve-out of IT, data and system landscape*

• Separation of a full business division's IT, data and system landscape following divestment across cloud, on-premises and connected laboratory systems; centrally governed investment envelope in the three-digit m€ range

• Laboratory notebook and laboratory analytics platform stream: Palantir Foundry, Snowflake, Signals Notebook, Power BI and connected laboratory instrumentation; SharePoint and JIRA; site transition completed without interruption to laboratory operations

• Decision authority and escalation point for business, IT infrastructure, IT security and vendors; separation executed across globally distributed users and systems and handed over on schedule, avoiding a contractual penalty for the client

• Fundamentals of electronics measurement, electropneumatic circuits & protective measures according to DIN-VDE
• Installation, wiring and commissioning of PLC-controlled Systems

• Development of scalable backend applications with C#/.NET and Java
• Design and implementation of distributed microservice architectures
• Development and integration of REST APIs for industrial applications
• Development of modern web applications with React, Angular, and TypeScript
• Implementation of MQTT-based communication solutions
• Integration of industrial protocols such as OPC UA and Modbus TCP
• Development of batch, process control, and HMI components
• Containerization and deployment of applications with Docker
• Conducting code reviews and supporting architecture decisions
• Close collaboration with Product Owners, QA, and interdisciplinary teams
• Analysis of business requirements and implementation of technical solutions
• Further development of existing software architectures with a focus on maintainability and performance

Technologies: C#, .NET, ASP.NET Core, Java, C++, React, Angular, TypeScript, Vue.JS, MQTT, OPC UA, Modbus TCP, Docker, GitLab, MariaDB, MySQL, Linux

• Architected an enterprise Fabric-based data-product governance framework, authoring data contracts and schema-validation KPIs to enforce completeness, freshness and SLA standards across reporting data products.
• Operationalized pipeline observability by integrating Dagster orchestration data into automated data-health reporting, proactively validating data integrity and pipeline reliability before production reporting layers refresh.
• Established BI-as-Code and end-to-end governance through Git-based version control, CI/CD and Alpha→GA release management, strengthening lineage, schema-drift detection and production change traceability.

Analysis and structuring of business and technical requirements for the further development of the LS One checkout system. Designing solution proposals and translating them into precise implementation tasks for international development teams. Prioritizing and coordinating requirements from a functional perspective, taking business and legal requirements into account. Quality assurance through reviewing, testing and evaluating the implementation based on defined acceptance criteria. Functional support for international deployments and rollouts, as well as analysis of feedback from locations for release planning.

Additionally: Supporting the integration of Anybill to provide digital receipts, as well as coordinating business and technical requirements within the existing POS environment.

• Taught ML, BI, and Big Data to Master's students.

Tech: Python, Power BI, SQL, ML, SnowflakeDB, databricks, MS Fabric, MongoDB, LLM

Design, development, and market launch of digital products and platforms – from strategic alignment and agile implementation to Go-to-Market and Go-Live, integrating AI into processes and products

• Completed the integration of log sources into Microsoft Sentinel, including GCP workloads – centralized consolidation of all security-relevant events from Azure and GCP environments for complete end-to-end telemetry and comprehensive compliance evidence
• Developed custom rules and use cases based on the GFG Use-Case Library and the MITRE ATT&CK Matrix to cover company-specific threats and GFG-relevant scenarios with precise, mapped detection rules
• Tuned detection rules to minimize false positives, optimized detection thresholds, and modeled exceptions – enabling the SOC to work with relevant, prioritized alerts while reducing Mean Time to Detect/Respond
• Built SOAR capabilities in Sentinel by developing playbooks to automate recurring response processes such as containment, user and host isolation, and ticketing – shorter response times and 24/7 scalability
• Designed and built a log transformation solution to normalize and enrich incoming raw logs (GeoIP, CMDB, threat intelligence) and convert them into a consistent schema for high-performance KQL queries, use case logic, and correlations
• Managed Azure security through Azure Policies to enforce security and compliance standards, prevent drift, and continuously remediate deviations
• Operated the Defender XDR portal to link endpoint, identity, email, and SaaS signals with Sentinel findings, enable holistic incident triage, and orchestrate measures directly from XDR

Technologies: Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender XDR, Azure Policy, KQL, GCP, MITRE ATT&CK

• 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