Datadog Expert in Berlin

• Led migration to GCP using Terraform, GKE, and GitOps, improving deployment consistency and scalability
• Implemented Datadog observability stack via Terraform and datadog-operator
• Established automated end-to-end tests and on-call processes, improving incident response and service reliability
• Migrated from NGINX Ingress Controller to Kubernetes Gateway API (NGINX Gateway Fabric)
• Migrated stateful services (PostgreSQL and Redis) to GCP, improving scalability and operational reliability

• Designed, built, and launched an internal event planning web application used by over 100 department leads for a large event, despite having no dedicated testing phase.

• Ensured smooth, failure-free operation during first production use, leading to the tool being adopted for future events.

• Automated catering calculations and related workflows, significantly reducing email communication and manual computation effort for meal planning.

• Managed deployment and hosting on a Linux server using Coolify, including application setup and runtime operations.

• Hired and guided a communication designer on UX while independently owning all technical decisions and implementation.

• Developed and deployed microservices in Kotlin and Spring Boot, integrated AWS Secrets Manager to secure credentials and decreased network calls using Spring cache.
• Refactored Kafka consumer using Spring Kafka with semaphore-based backpressure to cap records and keep heap memory stable under spikes; switched to batch upserts to cut down on database invocations; added Testcontainers integration tests for Kafka and database to pave the way for future changes.
• Automated the financial reconciliation workflow in Spring Boot (Kotlin) using Spring Scheduler, transactional boundaries, JPA/Hibernate on MySQL, and Flyway migrations, saving the accounts team 16+ hours per week.
• Designed and dockerized payments end-to-end test framework in Robot (Python) with reusable keyword libraries and profiles; integrated with GitLab CI (JaCoCo XML and HTML reports) to accelerate releases and lift code coverage to 80%.
• Implemented end-to-end observability on Datadog by instrumenting services with Datadog APM, correlating metrics and logs, provisioning dashboards, and creating monitors with burn-rate alerts and anomalies to harden reliability and give stakeholders clear visibility.

• Building independent projects in the AI/developer tools space.
• Experimenting with product ideas, rapid prototyping, and go-to-market validation.
• Designing AI-native operating model—leveraging agentic pipelines, living context schemas, and rigorous eval harnesses to multiply individual contributor leverage and eliminate implementation bottlenecks.

• Drive migration of enterprise authorization platform from Styra DAS to open-source OPA via Skipper (Zalando's Golang-based ingress proxy) integration
• Optimise k8s resources and integrate native Prometheus metrics with OPA
• Migrate from internal monitoring solution to Prometheus CRs + Dash0

Tech Stack: Java/Kotlin, Golang, Python, Spring Boot, AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, OpenTofu, Prometheus, Grafana

• Fractional leadership; consulting growth-stage startups and scale-ups on data strategy, ML products, and platform foundations
• Building decisioning systems for growth, personalization, & product experimentation, across e-Commerce, Digital Health, Energy, and Logistics
• Exploring Agentic AI & LLM-based tooling for production readiness patterns

• Consulting an NGO in the field of data center sustainability in publicly funded projects (BMUKN with NADIKI and Umweltbundesamt with SIEC)
• Development of Python APIs and web applications, deployment on AWS/ECS with Terraform
• Collecting power consumption metrics for servers, CPUs, GPUs running AI workloads
• Technologies used: AWS, EC2, ECS, Fargate, CloudMap, VPC, Route53, Lambda, EventBridge, CodeBuild/CodePipeline/CodeDeploy, Terraform, Docker, Linux, Bash scripting, Python, Flask, SQLAlchemy, SQL, MariaDB, InfluxDB, Telegraf, Prometheus, Zabbix, Kubernetes, Letsencrypt, certificate management

• Freelance product owner, scrum master and agile coach in various projects spanning from local agencies to multinational corporations in diverse industries.

• Last projects:

• Adevinta: Technical Project Manager responsible for coordination of several sub-workstreams building the world’s largest classifieds multi-tenant platform.

• Aroundhome (a ProSiebenSat.1 company): Product Manager implementing and verifying on the business side a concept for digital qualification of user requests for matching service providers.

• Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf: Product Manager Mobile advising on and guiding the rebuild of Android and iOS apps.

• Visual Meta GmbH (an Axel Springer company), Berlin: Director Product co-leading the Product & Engineering department together with the Director Engineering.

• Responsibilities at Visual Meta GmbH:

• Define and deliver a 3–5 year horizon product strategy including a product vision & mission connecting to existing company strategy and strategies from adjacent departments.

• Refine an existing OKR process together with OKR master and directors of other departments to increase focus and outcome.

• Support the Director Engineering in creating a platform transformation strategy to transform a monolithic on-premise tech stack into a service-oriented, cloud-based architecture and establish a domain-based organizational setup.

• Accountability for a motivated and talented team of 5 head-level colleagues and 17 operational team members from product management, data and UX/UI design.

• Key achievements at Visual Meta GmbH:

• Defined and delivered a 3–5 year horizon product strategy including a product vision & mission.

• Increased focus within OKR process by moving from 10 company-level objectives to 2 and from several hundred team-level key results to a few dozen.

• Created a career path framework for the product team defining roles and responsibilities from junior to head level positions.

• Overhaul of the entire design and implementation of new UI/UX aspects using React
• Planning of the software architecture and structuring of the project for long-term scalability using Git for version control

• Bootstrapping a CloudOps team and building a multi-cloud provider backend for a low-code Internal Developer Platform (IDP) with env zero

• Introducing user story mapping, ADRs, milestones, and backlog management

• Designing and developing core APIs, setting up CI/CD pipelines, OpenTofu/Terraform scripts

• Representing and communicating the team with third-party stakeholders (e.g. env zero)

• (Cross-)team coaching on DevOps, software design, Terraform, Golang, and agile practices

• Led stakeholder management, reported to the CPO, and partnered with engineering to ship CMS improvements, including user support, bug resolution, user interviews, market research, and competitor analysis.
• Drove Agile/Scrum ceremonies and roadmap planning, contributing to product vision, discovery, and strategic decision-making; created feature documentation, collaborated with developers, and led CMS QA, functional testing, automated testing, and UAT.
• Owned roadmap and prioritization using funnel analysis and commercial impact assessments; executed hypothesis-driven experiment loops to improve conversion and CTR.
• Managed product development of the couponing CMS, supporting issue resolution and assisting users with shop, coupon, campaign, gift card, and affiliate network deeplink setup; integrated AI technologies.
• Created scalable processes, SOPs, and workflows to standardize CMS usage across markets, reducing support tickets; spearheaded the Autopilot project to fetch deals and coupons via automation and AI.
• Drove CX improvements across coupon and gift card features for Condé Nast (WIRED, CN Traveller, Glamour), LA Times, and GQ; achieved a 10% increase in clickout conversion rate, a 19% increase in CTR, and a 16% reduction in drop-off at the coupon copy step.

• Executing the roadmap for LMS/LXP platform with 550+ enterprise clients and 4+ million users
• Led the 0-to-1 development of a conversational AI role-play product with the AI team
• Led GTM for the AI Roleplay, creating a new ARR stream, acquiring 15+ enterprise customers in Q1
• Led the development & GTM of a conversational AI Mentor product
• Serving on the strategic leadership team, contributing to long-term product and business strategy

• Lead a climate tech consultancy end to end, coordinating cross-functional teams, owning client strategy and project management, and delivering ESG strategies and AI-first products.
• Stay hands-on across discovery, analytics, roadmapping, architecture, and QA to safeguard execution quality.
• Designed, developed, and launched Jody, an AI travel planner (demo credentials provided).

• Refactored the mobile app by reimplementing stores, models, API client, screens and components using Typescript
• Added performant on-device storage for stores as preparation for offline mode
• Integrated RNUILib to achieve a minimal and modern UI design quickly
• Implemented native packages to provide additional features such as displaying of caller IDs
• Planned feature development and UX improvements following initial refactoring and redesign