Citrix Expert in Frankfurt

MOVE-ZPD – Strategic Infrastructure Project | Total Program Budget 48 Mio. € | Data Center Migration Hannover → Hamburg

Responsibility for a central subproject for migrating business-critical specialist applications to a highly available data center architecture.

• Management of a central subproject for migrating business-critical specialist applications to a highly available data center architecture.
• Independent management of around 30 of approximately 100 business-critical specialist applications, including Exchange (approx. 30'000 users), LDAP, DNS and cross-state applications.
• Management of project structure, milestones, dependencies, risks and escalations, as well as coordination of the required business and technical stakeholders.
• End-to-end coordination of the managed migrations, from planning and structuring through environment provision, testing and acceptance to production deployment and go-live.
• Stakeholder management between business units, Product Owners, data center operations, program organization and external service providers.
• Development and implementation of a standardized server request and change process to speed up VM provisioning and reduce manual coordination.
• Management reporting as well as preparation and moderation of steering and decision-making bodies and workshops.

Technologies & Tools: MS Project, MS Teams, SharePoint, Oracle APEX, CA Automation Manager, Visio, MindManager

• Designed and specified the technical network integration of a new business critical application system (MUREX) in the capital market area in a complex interface and outsourcing environment.

• Created component specifications, catalog of measures and implementation plan.

• Ensured proper integration of developed results in accordance with the bank’s framework: IT compliance, IT security, change and release management.

• Selected and integrated a new service provider for the bank; moved critical bank applications to the provider.

• Designed, implemented and supported the new Cisco network and Fortinet security setup at the service provider data center.

• Acted as technical interface between bank, service providers and consulting partners.

• Supported and further developed the network and security infrastructure (clients, servers, networks); performed error analysis and implemented solutions within agreed service levels.

• Analyzed and diagnosed all security and network failures, glitches and malfunctions.

• Initiated continuous enhancements to guarantee efficient resource utilization and acceptable response times to users.

• Provided network support in financial service organization and operational change preparation on production banking network infrastructure for both large and small projects within strict change management discipline.

• Designed, defined, tested, governed and improved engineering standards.

• Performed role of network architect for medium-large projects involving team resources.

Self-employed consulting, implementation, and support of IT infrastructures with a focus on IT security, network and server administration, virtualization, backup & recovery, IT documentation, asset management, and business continuity management.

• IT security consulting and implementation of technical protective measures
• Windows server and client support, patch management, user support
• M365 – Entra ID – MS Azure administration
• Planning, installation, and operation of LAN, WAN, WLAN, and VLAN infrastructures, Cisco, HP, Netgear, Sophos, Securepoint
• Support of virtual systems based on Hyper-V, VMware, and Proxmox
• Backup and recovery concepts including test recovery, documentation, and handover
• Introduction and maintenance of IT documentation, asset management, and inventory tracking
• Implementation of measures related to IT baseline protection, emergency manuals, and BCM
• On-/offboarding concepts with a focus on permissions, devices, data access, and handover processes

Security awareness and practical sensitization of users and IT staff

• Software distribution to notebooks via Active Directory and image installation
• Support of iOS and Android devices, including switching from SIM to eSIM via QR code
• Scheduling appointments and setup during employees' initial registration
• Ticket processing via ServiceNow

• Recognition of national notified bodies
• Preparation of cybersecurity competency reports
• EU Radio Equipment Directive

• General CTO responsibilities (architectural design, operational setup, external runtime product evaluation, investor buy-in, regulatory compliance).
• Software development oversight (implementation on deep-dive-in) plus workflow design.
• Product co-ownership.
• Tech/tools/frameworks: proprietary software (Java, JavaScript), Kubernetes, Postgres, MiniIO, Ollama (internal), several xAI API (external), OpenTofu (Terraform), Keycloak, Kafka, Prometheus, ELK Stack, GitHub, GitHub Workflows, Argo CD, ISO 27001, BSI-ISM, EU AI Act.

• Testing the SekIDP and related components
• Test design, execution and automation, microservices, GitHub Enterprise, Eclipse, Katalon Test Platform, API Testing, Confluence 8, JIRA/Xray, Draw.io, Swagger/OpenAPI, Postman, Docker, Kubernetes, Podman, PuTTY, E-Health, Telematik, Gematik standards, EPA, E-Rezept, sektoraler IDP, encryption, XaDES, PaDES, DICOM, HL7, FHIR, IHE, ICD, SSO, SAML/Shibboleth, OAuth, smartcards, JWT, two factor authentication Android and iOS, Wireshark, BrowserStack, Cypress, gRPC, REST, SOAP, WS-Security, Linux Shell, PowerShell, SSH/SSL, Java, Kotlin, Cordova, Gradle, Groovy, Python, TypeScript

• Highly successful role as lead data analytics expert at a US consulting startup.
• Managed stakeholder expectations by ensuring team delivery velocity using Agile and Lean practices.
• Trained and assembled international offshore data science teams of DevOps engineers, BI developers, and technical support specialists.
• As Sparecodes' data analytics experts, we improved our clients’ business outcomes through requirements management, dashboard and report development, migration, automation, and production support using IBM Cognos, AWS, SAP, Oracle, Teradata, CRM, ERP, Confluence, and Microsoft.
• Provided effective coaching and mentoring for international, multicultural teams in a remote environment, covering new tools and techniques, Agile best practices, internal and external communication, and presentation skills.
• Coordinated technical processes efficiently, including managing and implementing project changes and control processes.
• Promoted strong team engagement and supported employees’ career development, including business change management through coaching.
• Enhanced project status reports by providing insights into team productivity, predictability, and backlog burn-down, leading to improved project outcomes.
• Successfully led the coordination and implementation of software solutions for clients in mechanical engineering, including automation system integration and customization to meet client needs.

• Business analysis of payments for the introduction of Wero EPI in Germany.
• Analysis and optimization of merchant processes in the context of acquiring and issuing.
• Analysis of interfaces for instant payments.
• Analysis of SCT-Inst processes, settlement mechanisms and reporting processes.
• Identification and clarification of gaps in merchant processes.
• Analysis and documentation of clearing and settlement processes.
• OSPlus process analysis and documentation.
• Coordination and alignment with scheme management as well as various payment service providers and financial institutions on merchant processes.
• Preparation and follow-up as well as active participation in EPI meetings on technical coordination and regulatory topics in payments, including content familiarization and prioritization.
• Preparation and documentation of project and steering committees in the EPI environment.
• Creation of status reports for the subproject.
• Maintenance and structuring of Confluence pages for project documentation.
• Coordination and alignment with the issuing teams on individual customer processes as well as aligning with bank processes and acquirer processes in the Wero environment.
• Communication with payment service providers regarding merchant and bank processes in the Wero environment.
• Organizational support for project management in special tasks in the EPI and Wero environment.
• Digital filing and documentation in Confluence and Microsoft Teams.
• Planning, implementation and tracking of work packages and steps.
• Quality assurance and project control.
• Consulting on IT strategy, IT architecture and interface management in the EPI and Wero environment.
• Technical environment: Jira, Confluence, XML, JSON, MS Office (Word, Excel, Teams, PowerPoint), SharePoint, Draw.io, Innovator, 3rd-level support, ITIL, creation and updating of software documentation, interface management, OSPlus, Scrum, KYC, payment, European Payments Initiative (EPI), Wero, Microsoft Loop, Instant Payments, SCT-Inst.

• Support and optimization of incident, change & problem processes based on ITIL for >10,000 users.
• Problem-solving for >1,000 complex cases/year across different service towers (File Services, Identity, Citrix, ANF).
• Work in the security cluster: vulnerability analysis and firewall change coordination.
• Governance & migration of file services to Azure NetApp Files (M365, Citrix, PowerShell), including data optimization.
• Creation and maintenance of business-critical process & operational services, enterprise documentation.
• Focus on stabilization, security (endpoint hardening), and optimization through AI solutions.

• Implementation of specified DevOps solutions to automate infrastructure (Terraform, Bicep, CloudFormation, Ansible) on-premises datacenter (Ovirt, Proxmox, Ceph Cluster, MinIO) and private cloud.
• Administration, configuration and implementation of CI/CD DevOps pipelines (GitLab, GitFlow) to support development process (Artifactory, Prometheus, Istio, service mesh, Helm Chart, OpenShift (Red Hat Enterprise) / Kubernetes cluster), Red Hat Satellite.
• Administration, setup, monitoring and patching of Linux infrastructure based on Red Hat Enterprise for Dev, Test and QA.
• Use of Scrum and Kanban methods.
• Administration, configuration and implementation of security standards for deploying on Dev, Test, QA and Prod stages of the new ePA applications.
• Development of new plugins and add-ons needed on current infrastructure.
• Database support.
• Data analytics support (Python, Spark, Pandas, Power BI, Splunk Enterprise).
• Implementation of best practices for DevSecOps and BizDevOps using GitOps (ArgoCD), Streamlit framework, Semaphore Ansible UI.
• Configuration and testing of iperf, uperf, sysbench using benchmark-operator for external source data and IoT/MDM devices, creating reports via ELK / OpenSearch.
• Building a new Databricks platform to collect and analyze big data from different sources and IoT devices into Hadoop framework (Python, Pandas, PySpark, Power BI, Apache Airflow).
• Building backend data aggregation and processing to automate configuration deployment between different OpenShift clusters and big data framework (Python, Pandas, PySpark, Apache Spark, PostgreSQL, Django 2, Ansible Automation, Jira JSM).
• Building a new ML pipeline platform using Kubeflow, TensorFlow, KServe.
• Data extraction, transformation and loading from different data sources including structured and unstructured data to analytic DWH / big data cluster using Python, Pandas, Polars, Power BI, Django backend and PostgreSQL.
• Setup of new DevOps Test and QA HashiCorp Vault cluster for PKI and IAM.
• Configuration and testing of automated patching based on CVSS score, SIEM-integrated CVEs.
• Use of Nexpose and InsightVM to scan vulnerability events in network, host, container and application.
• Design and implementation of secure and scalable AWS architectures including VPC, EC2, S3, RDS and Route53 and similar setups on Azure and GCP.
• Automated system provisioning and deployment using CloudFormation templates.
• Configuration of IAM roles, policies and permissions to ensure secure access control.
• Patch management, backup automation and disaster recovery setup on AWS infrastructure.
• Monitoring and optimization of system performance using AWS CloudWatch and AWS Trusted Advisor.
• Support of VMware services (vSphere, Aria, Horizon) and the virtual desktop environment.
• Development and maintenance of CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD and AWS CodePipeline with interface to Nutanix.
• Configuration of AWS CloudWatch to monitor application performance and system events.
• Planning and execution of migration of on-premises applications to AWS cloud platforms.
• Deployment of containerized applications using Docker and Kubernetes in AWS environments.
• Deployment of internal software packages between availability zones using AWS CodeDeploy.
• Building and deploying ML models using Scikit-learn, XGBoost and Spark MLlib including hyperparameter tuning, model evaluation and production deployment.

• Product Owner for stakeholder management, backlog prioritization and sprint organization (refinements, planning, testing, release) in agile team (8 developers, 2 testers)
• Scaled according to SAFe by introducing sub-teams and leading retrospectives for team development
• Developed central DVAG commission system from batch to near-real-time processing (Kafka) including data migration and structure hierarchy
• Specified functional, technical and quality requirements in close coordination with lead developers
• Modeled complex business processes (BPMN) and interfaces (Kafka, REST, GraphQL)
• Supported authentication (Keycloak), frontend development (Angular) and test automation (CI/CD, CDCT)
• Accompanied cloud migration of microservices to Azure; created workbooks, dashboards and KQL queries for system monitoring
• Analyzed and optimized database systems (CosmosDB, MongoDB, SQL) and reported via Power BI to manage commission competitions
• Applied industry expertise in sales and structured sales model including overseeing financial products to market release

• Newly developed an ASP.NET web application for mortgage financing
• Maintained and enhanced it both functionally and technically (expanded to other loan types, connected to various services, developed custom web services)
• Analyzed business requirements in close cooperation with business units
• Created IT concepts and technical documentation
• Developed backend and frontend
• Designed and implemented automated build, deployment, and testing processes
• Created scripts to automatically generate data access layers (C# classes and SQL scripts) and integrated them into build and deployment processes
• Languages: C#, PowerShell, JavaScript
• Technologies: ASP.NET, Windows Forms, XML Web Services, Windows Services, MS SQL Server, Entity Framework, unit testing, automated build, deployment, and testing processes
• Tools: Visual Studio 2005–2015, Team Foundation Server, DevExpress, Rational ClearCase, Rational ClearQuest, CruiseControl.net

• Stakeholder management
• Documentation of progress
• Communicating progress and regular status reports to relevant stakeholders
• Creating and reviewing timelines to ensure the schedule is met
• Change management
• Ensuring a solid knowledge base for new users
• Organizing and coordinating training sessions
• Technologies: MS Office, ITSM, MILES, Citrix