Disaster Recovery Experts in Germany

• Architected, Deployed and Supported hosted email solutions in Linux and Windows environments with enterprise-grade anti-spam and security architecture for service-provider environments.
• Managed Microsoft Azure environments including Virtual Machines, VNets, Storage, VPN, and Firewall configuration.
• Administered Microsoft Exchange Server (2010-2019), Microsoft Exchange Server SE, Active Directory, PKI, Hyper-V and Zimbra environments with disaster recovery planning and operational support.
• Led Microsoft 365 onboarding and migration projects from Exchange, IMAP, and Zimbra platforms to Microsoft 365.
• Prepare security and compliance to support Microsoft 365 Copilot.
• Implement information protection and data loss prevention by using Microsoft Purview.
• Implement retention, eDiscovery, and communication compliance in Microsoft Purview.
• Integrated Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS), and Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS).
• Delivered secure hybrid infrastructure solutions integrating Microsoft Windows Server and Linux-based enterprise environments.
• Supported enterprise integration projects involving Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Red Hat, Barracuda ESG, Qmail and Zimbra Platforms.

• Strategic planning, detailed technical preparation and operational management of an email gateway migration in a security-critical government environment.
• Preparation of the technical specification and development of technical concepts and migration approaches in line with BSI requirements.
• Technical requirements management with business units, information security and operations.
• Coordination of external service providers, integrators and implementation partners; maintenance of project plans, milestones, resources, risks and dependencies.
• Regular reporting to project management, the program environment and internal stakeholders.

As Germany’s only large integrated energy company, EnBW covers the entire value chain—from energy generation and distribution to serving customers. The company is expanding its renewable energy sources, working toward a socially responsible coal phase-out, and advancing key technologies such as the use of green hydrogen. A rapid energy transition and achieving climate neutrality by 2035 are priorities for EnBW.  Developing and implementing an end-to-end process view that takes both technical and organizational aspects into account  Ensuring end-to-end control of all IAM-related technical services  Establishing clear responsibilities and accountabilities across the IAM landscape  Working with various departments to identify and optimize an end-to-end architecture and act as the Single Point of Contact (SPoC) for Information Security  Introducing and monitoring governance policies to ensure compliance and security  Continuously improving IAM processes and systems through regular audits and service reviews  Taking part in external process audits as part of official audits against ISO standards  Further developing the policy that sets administrative requirements and procedures, and aligning it with administrative departments  Conceptually developing the KPI system for measuring process quality

• Requirements management, process planning, interface function, ISMS setup, and documentation
• Setup and establishment of an ISMS according to ISO 27001 and establishment of emergency management / ITSCM
• Coordination of the circumstances with the public-sector IT service provider
• Consideration of KRITIS relevance within the scope and implementation of a B3S
• Development of requirements for document control and the continuous improvement process
• Preparation of relevant project documents
• Analysis of existing processes and preparation of guidelines
• Requirements gathering for ISMS and ITSCM and coordination with the IT service provider, including definition of interfaces
• Analysis of communication processes and escalation paths
• Review of documents for risk management, ISMS, emergency preparedness, and emergency response
• Redesign of the complete documentation and preparation of new relevant documents
• Development of necessary rules, policies, and concepts
• Interface between customer and service provider to ensure document quality
• Coordination of protection needs with specialist departments, particularly regarding KRITIS relevance, and planning of resulting measures
• Development of preventive measures to minimize the risk of data center outages in scenarios such as pandemics or ransomware attacks
• Definition of the test strategy for IT emergency exercises
• Initiation of necessary awareness training measures for specialist departments
• External Information Security Officer
• Introduction of document control

• Project: ESU Windows and SQL Server Consolidation / Configuration Management in ServiceNow
• Prepared an as-is analysis of all servers worldwide
• Prepared an as-is analysis of all SQL servers worldwide
• Conducted requirements analyses for SQL and server migrations
• Coordinated requirements with partners for migrations to Hyper-V (on-premises) or Azure Cloud
• Facilitated regular status meetings (Jour Fixe)
• Developed roadmaps and solution models for server migrations
• Set up test scenarios
• Facilitated workshops for the rollout of a global admin team
• Designed data models (CMDB) in ServiceNow
• Led workshops for the CMDB data model
• Developed solution models for the CMDB
• Created end-to-end configuration documentation and work instructions for the CMDB
• Prepared reports for license management
• Defined KPIs for data quality in ServiceNow
• Created a service catalog
• Facilitated workshops to define service requests
• Acted as interface between requirements analysis and the ServiceNow development team
• Systems used: Windows 7, Windows 10, Microsoft Office 365/2010, Windows Server 20xx, SQL Server 20xx, SharePoint, Azure Cloud, Hyper-V, ServiceNow, various tools

• Functioned as a Fractional CIO for the GCC's largest gaming distributor, leading a complete IT transformation infrastructure upgrade and outsourcing of IT services and ERP applications
• Oversaw the development and rollout of two CEO-sponsored business systems with a $40 million budget, including the implementation of a comprehensive Hydrocarbon Accounting System (Tieto) and a Supply Chain Management System integrating seven multi-vendor applications across Qatargas, Rasgas, and Qatar Petroleum
• Led Schlumberger's global outsourcing, securing a $350 million deal over five years with a 15% cost reduction, managing a global team of over 30 and implementing operational models and frameworks for chargeback, procurement, and IT management
• Navigated technically intricate and organizationally demanding projects for prestigious companies worldwide across more than 30 countries, leading diverse teams and driving strategic innovation

Planning and updating the entire environment to Windows Server 2022 and 2025

• Hardening of DCs and servers, setup of event log forwarding
• Migration of all existing Windows 2019 servers (including Active Directory DCs, DNS and CA) to Windows Server 2022 and 2025
• Automation of security patches for the Hyper-V clusters via PowerShell (CAU)
• Network administration
• Continuous operation and support of the MS Hyper-V environments

As a Council Member at GLG (Gerson Lehrman Group), the world’s leading expert network, I provide organizations, investment firms, and consulting companies with expert discussions on demand – wherever specialized knowledge in information security, IT governance, and regulatory compliance is needed.

My assessments are based on many years of practical experience in highly regulated industries: from building and implementing information security management systems (ISMS according to ISO 27001), IT risk and vulnerability management, and business continuity (ISO 22301) to the practical implementation of European regulations such as DORA, NIS2, BAIT, and the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA).

The cooperation is project- and discussion-based. I provide decision-makers with a practical perspective gained from real-world experience on cyber risks, security governance, and operational resilience – exactly when it is needed.

• Expert in the company's architecture management area

• Support for standardizing the company's IT landscape

• Further development of architecture management

• Shaping the company's business architecture

• Restructuring, administration and maintenance of all IT assets

• Support in creating a unified software asset management and CMDB

• Creation of unified document management (e-file)

• Transition of documents into a central DMS structure

• Link between architecture management and the department's internal business process management

• Support in developing strategic and tactical development plans

• Organizing communication with key stakeholders

• Support in the conception, organization and coordination of the architecture office to be built up

• Accompanying and advising the entire architecture management process

• Advising the company's business units on architectural topics and their framework conditions

• MS Office, Windows 10, VBA

• ITIL, TOGAF, PowerBi, Kanban, Scrum

• Internal agency tools

• Open Touch Conversation, Webex, wire, bdbos

• MS Sharepoint, JIRA, Confluence

• ARIS, Archimate, BPMN

• Technical leadership across hardware, firmware, and software teams; scope: hardware/firmware team (4 people) and leadership group (5 people)
• Consolidated and documented a product family that had grown over more than 15 years and aligned it with CRA compliance — from the bare-metal I/O module to the cloud interface.
• Provided the most important customer product with the essential requirements and architecture documentation within two months — for a firmware landscape that had grown over more than 15 years. It now supports the customer’s modernization strategy.
• Established a monthly reporting line to the supervisory board and executive board within three months: nine meetings since 12/2025. The report itself is versioned and built from the CI pipeline; it is based on automatically collected activity and release data instead of assessments.
• Built a container-based CI/CD infrastructure from scratch: cross-compilation, host tests, and documentation builds in one continuous pipeline.
• Introduced declarative QA gates for DevOps and development artifacts — from the start using lefthook instead of pre-commit, executed in a dedicated container image.

Technologies used: arc42, req42, tpo42, docToolchain, PlantUML, ArchiMate, C4 model, ADR, C, C++ (GTest), CMake, Bare Metal (ARM Cortex-M3/M7), OCI containers, Jenkins, lefthook, Prometheus, Grafana, SBOM, CRA, OPC, SCADA, PLC integration, IPv6 migration, Zero Trust, Sociocracy 3.0, Cynefin

Built an international e-commerce platform for a multi-vendor marketplace for digital assets from scratch. Designed and operated cloud native architectures at enterprise scale.

• Designed and operated a highly scalable microservice and serverless architecture
• Built the complete cloud infrastructure with Terraform + AWS CDK in AWS
• Provisioned ECS/EKS clusters (Fargate), Application Load Balancers (reverse proxy), and Lambda functions
• Observability & tracing with CloudWatch, DataDog, Prometheus, and Grafana
• End-to-end setup with DataDog (formerly AWS CloudWatch), Prometheus, and custom Grafana dashboards
• Integration of advanced metrics (including ORM mapper) and distributed tracing with Jaeger
• Robust backup and disaster recovery strategies
• RDS Postgres backups and hourly snapshots
• Read-only, asynchronously synchronized replicas with automated master failover in emergencies
• Minute-level rollback capability through versioned Docker images on ECS and Git-based CI/CD pipelines
• Created CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions for automated multi-stage deployments (Dev, Testing, Prod)
• Integrated Stripe for international payment processing
• Built a marketplace payment system with multiple parties and payout routines
• Used Algolia for high-performance real-time search of digital assets on the platform
• Federation of services with GraphQL and Hasura
• Later migration to GraphQL Mesh
• Test Driven Development (TDD) - unit, integration, and E2E testing with Jest, Vitest, and Playwright
• Used Next.js / React for modern frontend applications in the nx monorepo
• Enterprise security architecture & access control
• Integration of JWT tokens with Auth0, OAuth, OIDC, IP guards, BOLA protection, and secret vaults
• Authorization concepts with RBAC, ABAC, and native Postgres Row-Level Security (RLS)
• Built internal microfrontends with Retool for fast prototyping and operational business processes

Technologies: ABAC, AWS CDK, AWS CloudWatch, AWS ECS, AWS EKS, AWS Fargate, AWS RDS, AWS S3, Algolia, Auth0, DataDog, Docker, GitHub Actions, Grafana, GraphQL, GraphQL Mesh, Hasura, JWT, Jaeger, Java, JavaScript, Jest, Kotlin, Kubernetes, Monorepo, Next.js, OIDC, Playwright, Postgres, Postgres RLS, Prometheus, RBAC, Redis, Retool, Serverless, Stripe, Terraform, TypeScript, Vitest

• Architected and deployed private cloud data platform on VMware vSphere, integrating Greenplum MPP, Apache Kafka, Kubernetes, and Apache Solr, and developed real-time ingestion pipelines with Kafka Connect and Schema Registry.
• Led Oracle Exadata to Greenplum migration, rearchitected data models, optimized storage, implemented RabbitMQ with Debezium for CDC, and deployed VectorDB for Generative AI.
• Designed and executed multi-cloud migration PoC across AWS, Azure, and GCP, defined KPIs for throughput, latency, and cost efficiency, executed bulk data transfers, validated analytics and streaming workloads, and delivered full-scale architecture recommendations.
• Assessed legacy on-premises infrastructure and designed modern cloud-native data platforms using Greenplum and containerized microservices, advising on scalability, disaster recovery, and high-availability.

• Worked as freelance Senior DevOps Consultant on-site for IBM at a European Union Agency, operating in a highly secure, air-gapped environment managing classified systems.
• Led automation and DevOps initiatives for a large-scale OpenShift platform (>400 nodes), driving deployment efficiency, GitOps adoption, and operational automation using Ansible, Python, and Bash while ensuring compliance with security requirements.
• Spearheaded automation of release and deployment workflows in a private cloud environment hosting 400+ OpenShift nodes, significantly improving deployment speed and reliability.
• Migrated existing playbooks, roles, and templates from Ansible Tower to Ansible Automation Platform (AAP), ensuring full compliance with fully-qualified collection names (FQCN) and preparing custom Execution Environments (EE) for containerized automation.
• Implemented GitOps Agent for AAP Controller Configuration as Code, enabling automated synchronization (CRUD) of Ansible Controller objects based on repository-stored configuration definitions using GitHub webhooks.
• Designed and automated complex multi-step operational workflows including environment cleanup, Helix cluster component re-creation, Kafka topic management, and OpenShift object lifecycle management across ~100 environments.
• Achieved a reduction of multi-day manual operations to under a few hours through automation improvements spanning multiple AAP clusters and OpenShift environments.
• Integrated Ansible Automation Platform with Thycotic (Delinea) Secret Server via lookup plugin to enhance secure credential management in automated processes.
• Managed deployment tasks, platform troubleshooting, and Istio network configurations while adhering to stringent EU PSC security and compliance standards.
• Collaborated with infrastructure and application teams to refine deployment procedures, develop naming conventions, and continuously improve automation coverage in an air-gapped, classified environment.

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Scope:

• Operation and configuration of the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, including network, storage, and security design.
• Implementation of centralized observability solutions (Prometheus, Grafana, alerting).
• Development of CI/CD pipelines, GitOps workflows, and automation frameworks.
• Training and enablement of operations and development teams.

Result: Accelerated service delivery, transparent operational metrics, and sustainable knowledge transfer.