GitLab Experts in Germany

• Analysis, documentation, and alignment of requirements. Conducting stakeholder analyses, interviews, and workshops for requirements gathering and validation. Carrying out requirements reviews and working closely with business units and development teams.

Techniques & tools: requirements engineering, stakeholder management, workshop facilitation, system context modeling, requirements reviews, quality scenarios, Miro, Jira, Confluence

• Proactive support of management in business field development & innovation management

• New development of a suite of business applications for analyzing valuation, P&L, and market price risk data

• Automation of all internal and external business and work processes

• Development of AI-based and AI-supported ETL processes as well as data analysis

• Business use-case development

• Business and work process optimization

• Enterprise architecture management

• Sales data analysis and forecasting as well as capture

• Inventory management & reordering

• Supplier management and communication

• Customs processing & clearance

• Shipping handling & warehouse coordination

• Interface management

• Technologies used: Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Teams, JTL-Wawi, JTL-WMS, OTTO Partner Connect (OPC), Amazon Seller Central, DHL Global Forwarding, Jira, Draw.IO, Java (8,17,21,25), Jenkins, SonarQube, Git, Gitea, Spring Boot, Spring Batch, Vaadin, H2, PostgreSQL, Docker, Local LLMs, Postman, JasperSoft Studio, JasperReports

• Development of cloud native applications to provide a multi-vendor marketplace for different digital assets (e.g. NFTs)
• Design and operation of a microservice architecture using Nest.js, MySQL, Redis, Hasura, Algolia, Docker and Serverless
• Design and operation of a streaming data architecture using Kafka (with JSON Schemas)
• Creation of CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions for automated deployment of applications
• Testing and evaluating new technologies for more stable, faster, safer and more sustainable application development
• Building the full infrastructure with Terraform in AWS
• Integration of Stripe to handle international payments
• Use of Algolia for real-time search of digital assets on the platform
• Presenting results to stakeholders and running internal meetups
• Federation of services with GraphQL and Hasura
• Discussions about architecture decisions in the IT landscape and their impact
• Use of message queues for app-internal communication and component encapsulation
• Advising internal staff on the implementation of business and technical requirements
• Test Driven Development: unit, integration and E2E testing using JUnit
• Use of Next.js/React with SASS/SCSS for frontend applications
• Use of Vue.js with SASS/SCSS for frontend applications
• Integration of security-related mechanisms (JWT tokens with Auth0, OAuth, OIDC, IP guards, BOLA, secret vaults)
• Creation of microfrontends using Retool for fast prototyping and testing of functionality
• Use of nx monorepo with nrwl

• A recurring problem in my own AI-supported projects: requirements analysis, use cases, and architecture decisions can be created quickly with AI support, but they remain hard to trace and scattered across Markdown files – knowledge is lost as soon as it is no longer in the context window. arknet turns requirements engineering and architecture knowledge into structured, verifiable data instead of plain text: requirements, use cases, and architecture decisions as a continuously linked knowledge graph, traceable from the requirement to the architecture decision – queryable for both people and AI agents alike. Technically based on RDF/OWL and its own MCP server.

• Result: MCP daemon running, Docker image automatically published on GHCR, nine hexagonal modules, eleven ADRs (including an open-core licensing model). Requirements engineering and ubiquitous language hexagon active. Publicly available since 07/2026 as a Community Edition under Apache-2.0 (github.com/kogn-io/arknet), together with the Claude Code plugin and the GHCR image; open-core model.

• Label: Java, Maven, RDF, RDF4J, OWL, SPARQL, Model Context Protocol, Spring AI, Docker, GitHub, Git, Claude Code, Obsidian, DDD, Hexagonal Architecture, ArchUnit, JUnit, AssertJ

Subproject management in an agile IT environment

Leading a software development team (10 employees)

• Leading a software development team with 10 employees
• Budget responsibility approx. 3 million Euros per year
• Conducting employee and job interviews
• Responsibility for resource planning (budget and employees)
• Digitalization of a web interface
• Regular reporting to clients and stakeholders (C-level)
• Product management: developing and implementing product strategies; defining requirements to steer product development
• Designing product development & continuous testing efficiently to quickly incorporate feedback & compliance points
• Close collaboration with stakeholders & various teams to understand requirements, define priorities, ensure rollout, and increase user-friendliness
• Project experience in an energy industry company, including the functioning of energy markets, the basics of energy generation and distribution, as well as current challenges and developments in the industry
• Project experience in the railway sector - including the structure and operation of railway systems.
• Project experience within the 16.7 Hz traction power sector including knowledge of regulatory processes
• Formulating the subproject charter and the project profile according to the project standard together with the project management
• Steering performance delivery according to the project charter
• Planning and steering human resources including budget planning for the subproject
• Ensuring the working capacity of subproject participants, e.g., by requesting access rights and documents for the subproject team
• Planning and steering for the respective subproject (Time, Scope, Budget) including the creation of necessary documents
• Coordinating with the department and Product Owners to plan the subproject scope and the corresponding implications
• Conducting milestone planning according to the agreed process model
• Effort estimation and support of subproject controlling as well as overall project controlling in forecasting and planning
• Reporting subproject status (according to status slide template) including progress (according to progress measurement)
• Analyzing, preparing, and addressing needs for action and decisions
• Escalating subproject issues to project management
• Creating and managing Change Requests (CR)
• Quality assessment of completed task packages from a project management perspective (Time, Scope, and Budget)
• Steering the implementation of cross-cutting specifications and requirements in the subproject, supported by cross-functional roles on the business and technical side.
• Identifying, steering, documenting, and communicating opportunities, risks, and dependencies within and across subprojects
• Supporting project management in creating the overall project plan and overall status reports
• Preparing and steering commissioning including required documents and protection requirements assessment

Scrum Master in an agile IT environment supporting a software development team in the fullstack area (7 people)

• Close collaboration with stakeholders & various teams to understand requirements, define priorities, ensure rollout, and increase user-friendliness
• Introducing the selected Scrum method, including the required events, meetings, artifacts (Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Burndown Charts), metrics, and conducting required training in an agile IT environment
• Preparing Scrum events such as Daily, Retrospectives, Review, Sprint Planning, Estimation, and Refinement (agile way of working)
• Facilitating retrospectives and removing impediments to drive the team and product forward
• Preparing action points and retros via Whiteboard and Figma
• Applying and improving agile methods such as Kanban, Scrum, SAFe, or Scrum of Scrums
• Tracking the "Definition of Done" and "Definition of Ready" for all work results of the development team
• Advising on information flow and communication improvements between Product Owner and project team
• Experience with automation, validation such as mandatory field checks, notification functions, creating filters, boards, and reports via JQL, and setting up Cycle Time
• Using Jira & Confluence
• Setting up progress measurement for project management to transparently map planned vs. actual team capacities and actual effort for user stories
• Measuring team progress: creating team KPIs: "Velocity", "Burn-Down Chart", "Throughput", "Costs", "Quality", "Scope"
• Evaluating agile metrics, process management, and process modeling methods (BPMN, EPC, UML)
• Communication and moderation know-how
• Proven methodological competence in conflict resolution discussions

• Optimizing and accelera­tion of our Gitlab CI pipeline

• Conceptual work for the PoC of the Zero Trust system

• Extension of the policy-engine backend in Go

• Extension of the policy-testing mechanism in Python

• Architectural design of the PEP component of Zero Trust

• Documentation of the product

• Technologies: Zero Trust, Go, Python, Gitlab CI, Docker, JWT, Domain-Driven Design

Project goal: Carrying out system tests and validating industrial communication and control systems, including requirements definition and verification.

Responsibilities:

• Test planning, test execution
• Test strategy, test cases, and test specifications
• Requirements analysis
• Ensuring traceability between requirements, test cases, and defects
• Carrying out regression and integration tests
• Defect analysis
• Simulation and validation
• NetSniffer Wireshark
• Supporting test automation (Python, CI/CD)
• Reporting
• Stakeholder coordination and agile collaboration (Scrum / SAFe / Kanban)
• V-Model
• CI/CD automation with Python, Groovy, and frameworks (Selenium, PyTest)

Technologies:: CAN, Modbus, Ethernet, PLC, PROFINET, Codebeamer ALM, Scrum, SAFe, MS Teams, Git, CI/CD with GitLab CI and TeamCity, Windows Batch, FAS, Wireshark, Python, Enterprise Architect (EA), AI tools (e.g. ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot), VS Code, Tia Portal, SCL, Python (Selenium, PyTest)

• Analysis of affected business processes taking numerous stakeholders into account
• Interface analysis, architecture and system design
• Communicating and coordinating various subprojects and interface partners
• Creating epics and user stories, maintaining the backlog, workshops and review presentations
• Support during implementation between business departments and development
• Test management including strategy and approach definition
• Test case definition, execution and approval
• Cross-team organization of integration and acceptance tests
• Support of test environments
• Technologies and tools: Java, Angular, Kubectl, REST, AWS SNS/SQS, Kafka, S4/HANA, Bruno

• Building a data integration platform for high, medium, and low voltage assets for contextual analysis of time series with master data from the SCADA control system (IEC 60870 104), INIS, and SAP.
• Responsibility for the architecture and implementation of the solution, as well as sparring partner for the Product Owner.
• Use of Kotlin, Spring Boot, Maven, TimescaleDB, PostgreSQL, liquibase, Elements IoT, Docker, Kubernetes, Grafana, Python, jupyter, and various API gateways.

• Development of a browser-based platform for no-code deployment and cluster management in Kubernetes
• Implementation of a CLI tool in TypeScript to provision resources directly from the browser interface into the cluster
• Development of a expression parser in Go and delivery as a microservice to extract Helm expressions from values files
• Use of LLMs to turn user intent into Kubernetes diagrams
• Technology stack: Java, Go, OpenAI API, React, Azure, Next.js, Strapi, Stripe Connect

• Team leadership: Prioritization and coordination of four cross-functional teams.
• Platform strategy: Development and implementation of strategies to optimize existing IT platforms.
• Stakeholder management: Active management of expectations and communication with internal and external stakeholders.
• Program and innovation management: Prioritization and coordination of cross-department projects as well as innovation initiatives.
• Product Owner consulting: Advising Product Owners with a focus on product development and continuous product improvement.
• Organizational development: Improving communication and decision-making structures across all organizational levels.
• Change management: Implementing best-practice change management methods to ensure continuous optimization and innovation.
• Quality assurance: Ensuring high quality standards in processes, services, and deliverables.

• 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 the Yatta Integration Layer – a config-driven integration platform on Java 25, Spring Boot 4 (WebFlux), Temporal, gRPC and Kafka, enabling new third-party integrations (e.g. AVS fulfillment) via declarative JSON configs with zero code changes.
• Designed and implemented Tink integration with 0Auth IBAN verification to enhance fraud prevention and account validation workflows with Adyen payByBank.
• Architected and implemented an OpenFGA-based authorization model for centralized management of users, groups, and fine-grained access control in the vendor portal.
• Architected and led delivery of the Yatta API Gateway platform using GraphQL Federation, providing a unified enterprise API layer across distributed microservices with centralized authentication, authorization and request orchestration.
• Replaced NGINX + NLB with Istio service mesh and AWS ALB; rolled out WAF, OAuth (Cognito), IP whitelisting and RBAC across environments.
• Migrated CDC from Confluent Cloud connectors to a self-hosted Kafka Connect + Debezium stack, reducing operational cost by ~80% across multiple environments.
• Implemented the Transactional Outbox pattern with Debezium for reliable, exactly-once event publishing to Kafka with Avro and Schema Registry.
• Migrated dunning/payment-recovery workflows from Airflow to Temporal, achieving 99.9% reliability for settlement handling.
• Optimised Apache Airflow with deferrable sensors to handle 1000+ concurrent DAG runs without scaling the worker pool.
• Refactored a monolithic Terraform codebase into 3 modular projects, cutting deployment time by ~45%.
• Stood up full observability with OpenTelemetry, Tempo, Prometheus and Loki; automated dev/staging/prod with ArgoCD, Image Updater and Helm.
• Collaborated with product, operations and engineering stakeholders to define scalable platform architecture and integration standards aligned with long-term business and operational goals.

• A digital system made up of special software and hardware components. The overall system replaces the traditional process with job slips and handwritten notes and enables more efficient order intake. Orders and work steps for the violin-making company’s projects can now be recorded, processed and logged in real time directly on the workshop’s touchscreen PC, by mobile phone or on the desktop. This gives customers a more transparent view of the work on their instruments and allows them to track the status and progress of their instrument through their customer account.

Tech stack: next.js, React, Flutter, Dart, Raspberry, Linux, Directus