GitLab Experts

• Impact: Structured requirements analysis and quality assurance as a foundation for the further development of a software solution.
• Analysis, documentation, and coordination of requirements. Conducting stakeholder analyses, interviews, and workshops to gather and validate requirements. Conducting requirements reviews and working closely with business departments and development teams.

Techniques & Tools: Requirements Engineering, Stakeholder Management, Workshop Facilitation, System Context Modeling, Requirements Reviews, Quality Scenarios, Miro, Jira, Confluence

Remote freelance role focused on Agentic AI strategy, secure application patterns, and reusable agentic workflows for a government agency.

• Development and implementation of an open-source Agentic AI strategy for a government agency, with a focus on GDPR, security, and self-hosted solutions
• Development of reusable agentic workflows and business applications that enable non-technical employees to solve business problems independently
• Implementation of nine business applications with Single Sign-On (SSO) and Azure PostgreSQL integration on Hetzner Linux servers

Techstack: Python, Streamlit, Anthropic SDK (Claude), Azure, Linux, PostgreSQL, MS SQL, Angular

• Analysis of existing microservice structures and integration into the event-driven architecture
• Design and implementation of prototypes
• Introduction of structured workflows and integration into a solid testing strategy
• Team: Small specialized team (3-5 people) from analysis through implementation readiness
• Documentation of architectural decisions and definition of interfaces
• Integration of the event-driven pipeline into the existing landscape
• Technologies: Kafka, Docker, Microservices, Event-Driven Architecture, Java, Liquibase

• 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

• Functional requirements management for DIVID, the Umweltbundesamt platform for administering the single-use plastics fund. Focus: entitled parties, sub-entitled parties, and benefit reports.
• Consolidation and analysis of specifications, Jira, Confluence, functional concepts, and UX designs. Independent structuring and delimitation of requirements, as well as identification of contradictions, gaps, and dependencies.
• Creation and quality assurance of implementable user stories with clear, testable acceptance criteria. Preparation of decision alternatives and coordination with business, development, UX, and QA through team refinement.
• Conducting manual and technically assisted accessibility tests. Coordinating findings with QA and the Product Owner for further planning and implementation.
• Result: more consistent requirements, clearly defined processes and stories, and transparent open decisions. Separation of assumptions from confirmed requirements; better basis for implementation, refinements, and QA test cases.

Tools used: Jira, Confluence

• 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

• Development of an agent-based governance platform for the automated assurance of EU AI Act compliance and ODA-compliant orchestration of AI services in complex enterprise environments.

• Design and implementation of an agent-based "Mission Control" framework (Aletheia Conductor) for autonomous state monitoring and process control.

• Development of "Compliance-as-Code" (CaC) solutions based on OPA/Rego for system-wide enforcement of regulatory guardrails.

• Integration of TM Forum ODA standards (TMF630, TMF622, TMF642) to ensure interoperability and standardization.

• Building a highly available event-driven architecture using Redpanda and CloudEvents v1.0 for near-real-time event processing.

• Implementation of an audit-proof "Evidence Chain" through cryptographic linking of trace logs in preparation for automated audits.

• Tech Stack: Java 21 (Quarkus Native), TypeScript (Next.js), Redpanda (Kafka API), CloudEvents v1.0, OPA (Open Policy Agent) & Rego, TimescaleDB, ZincSearch, Redis, TM Forum ODA, Git, GitHub, Clean Code Development, Like-C4.

Project: Defect Generation on Test-Bench Images of Metal Surfaces Environment: Automated Visual Inspection (AVI), Metallurgy & Manufacturing

• Objective & Implementation: Designed, architected, and trained Generative Adversarial Networks (Pix2PixHD / SPADE) for image-to-image transformation. Targeted generation of synthetic material defects (e.g., cracks, inclusions, scale) on rough metal surfaces under real test-bench lighting conditions for privacy-compliant and efficient dataset expansion (data augmentation).
• Technical Design: Implemented robust Generative AI and computer vision pipelines in Python and PyTorch. Used semantic segmentation approaches for mask-controlled defect synthesis and subsequent evaluation with EfficientDet object detection models.
• Business Impact: Massive dataset upscaling (10x) without time-consuming and costly physical test-bench runs, while significantly improving the detection performance of automated inspection systems.

Technologies & Skills Used: Python | PyTorch | SPADE | Pix2PixHD | EfficientDet | Machine Learning | Semantic Segmentation | Computer Vision

Maturing their API practices on both a business and technology level. My role covers strategy, architecture, developer advocacy as well as hands-on software engineering, enabling both technical teams and business leadership to adopt and act on API-centric principles effectively. Coincidentally, we also establish GitOps, DX and platform best practices with this project.

Highlights:

• Aligning executives with the initiative by clarifying strategy, replacing misconceptions and myths with facts, clarifying the value of existing assets and enabling informed decision-making
• Formulating a way forward for API Lifecycle Management at OTTO
• Driving platform progress and fostering developer engagement by hands-on engineering work towards strategic goals

API Lifecycle Management, Team Topologies, Organizational Evolution, Regulatory, Platform Advocate, Developer Platform, Communities of Practice, Terraform, Kotlin, Kafka, Kong, WSO2, Apigee, Gravitee, Backstage, AsyncAPI, OpenAPI, API Design, AWS, React, Node.js, TypeScript, Redocly, reactive programming, CDC, Golang, Gin, GitOps, DX (developer experience), stakeholder management, roadmaps, workshops, discovery.

• 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

• Supporting the International Web Presence of the BA (IntWeb) project in the area of quality management, with the aim of taking responsibility for the quality of processes and project results while considering BA standards. The main objectives of the project are to give professionals abroad a quick overview of their opportunities for moving to Germany and to enable them to take the necessary steps consistently and with digital support by providing access to services.

• Defining the general guidelines in the QA handbook

• Summarising test results in QA reports for PLA

• Analysing project results for improvement opportunities

• Quality management of requirements analysis (particularly processes, methods, and tools)

• Ensuring compliance with SERA requirements

• Creating a cross-project test concept

• Agreeing on sprint completion reports

• Formal review of work results in accordance with requirements and/or the project plan

• Contact person for internal audit, external audits by auditors, or BRH (Federal Court of Audit)

• Technologies: JIRA, Confluence, MS Office, GitLab, Kubernetes

• Implementation of a full-stack application with Angular as frontend framework and Java as backend language
• Use of the Swagger OpenAPI specification for REST communication between frontend and backend applications
• Control of a card printer via the Nexus Card SDK framework
• Design and implementation of card management software with web interface and JavaFX module for printer monitoring
• Use of Cucumber tests for test automation and creation of test artifacts for testing outside the development environment
• Use of Wireshark for network investigations to analyze the API of a third-party product and to check the REST API of the self-developed software

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