Jira Expert in Cologne

• 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

Transformation assignment: IT Operating Model and Governance

• Management of the operationalization of a new IT operating model for a service- and customer-oriented organization in the managed services and Microsoft 365 environment.
• Translation of the target organizational model into concrete roles, responsibilities, organizational elements, decision-making paths and collaboration principles.
• Design and operationalization of a layered model with autonomous delivery teams, supporting units and clearly defined governance functions.
• Design of governance for Service Delivery Management, People Leads, Global Service Owners (GSO), operational teams, clusters and management committees.
• Structuring of the transformation rollout into ramp-up, implementation, hardening and operations, as well as development of kick-off, communication and feedback formats.
• Further development of PMO and office structures as well as portfolio and workforce management to create transparency around resources, risks, dependencies and decision requirements.
• Facilitation of cross-functional workshops and decision-making meetings, and translation of different stakeholder interests into actionable principles, rules and measures.

Interim assignment: IT Service and Operations Management

• Assumption of operational responsibility for Citrix and AD/Access, including incident, escalation, transition and quality management in day-to-day operations.
• Clarification of operational interfaces and clear separation of responsibilities between internal units, Service Delivery Management and external service providers.
• Conduct of structured GAP analyses of existing service descriptions, preparation of make-or-buy decisions and clarification of roles with KPI integration.
• Management of conflicting objectives, dependencies and escalations in complex customer, operations and transformation situations.

Selected results

• The transformation target model was translated into directly applicable roles, governance rules, organizational elements and rollout formats.
• Decision-making paths, responsibilities and interfaces between operational delivery, supporting functions and management were described transparently and bindingly.
• The foundations for self-organized teams, standardized service descriptions and reliable portfolio, resource and management transparency were established.

Methods: Operating Model Design, Governance Design, RACI, GAP Analysis, Stakeholder Analysis, Workshop Facilitation, Change Communication, Risk and Escalation Management, KPI and Service Management

Analysis and optimization of end-to-end processes in various business areas such as sales, procurement, order processing, and logistics. Redesign of the ERP system. Identification of optimization potential, especially in areas with media discontinuities and manual activities, as well as creation of a prioritized transformation roadmap with clear business cases and implementation recommendations. Management of automation initiatives. RPA at the production site in China. Evaluation and introduction of relevant AI use cases, as well as building basic AI capabilities within the organization. Training internal project team members and supporting them throughout the transformation process to develop a culture of continuous improvement. Close collaboration with IT and external implementation partners, with reporting to senior management.

Main responsibilities and achievements:

• Analysis of business processes and design of automated processes
• Training and support for employees in China and Germany
• 20% cost savings in logistics
• Regular status reports to senior management

• Built and validated SupportPiloten, an AI-powered content operations service; won the first paying pilot customer
• Tested agentic workflows with Claude Code and Codex for analysis, research, documentation, and prototyping
• Continued developing my own AI product; training in AI governance, AI compliance, and the EU AI Act (ongoing)

• Development of AI-enabled workflow concepts for marketing and product teams
• Consulting on automation, AI tool integration & process optimization
• Project management for personalized digital products (audio/AI-powered MVP)
• Tool evaluations including rollout plans, requirements mapping, and training design.
• byBianca: Digital product for personalized audio coaching — orchestrated 10+ systems, from idea to go-live in 5 months.

• Further development of the existing e-commerce platform based on SAP Commerce (Hybris) to meet the growing demands of digital commerce.
• Ensuring the scalability and performance of the backend, so the platform remained stable and efficient even under heavy user load.
• Development and integration of new OCC REST APIs and services for modular extensions and flexible adjustments, to implement new features quickly.
• Optimization of data flows and interfaces, which significantly improved platform efficiency and system performance.
• Ensuring a maintainable and scalable code base by using Clean Code principles, proven design patterns, and a future-proof architecture.
• Reduction of errors through extensive testing with JUnit, Mockito, and load tests with Gatling, supported by the introduction of automated test processes.
• Improved system performance through targeted refactoring measures and efficient database queries, especially to handle peak loads.
• Use of modern cloud and monitoring tools such as Kubernetes, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Grafana to ensure a stable and monitored infrastructure.
• Clear improvement in efficiency, scalability, and reliability of the platform, which now meets the demands of a dynamic and growing e-commerce market.

With project PRIZMA, DB will modernize its infrastructure on the one hand, and develop a fail-safe IT landscape on the other hand, which can be restored quickly and securely in case of a disaster.

• Capture current architectures of existing systems as well as methodical consulting and development of target architectures
• Deepen and maintain the building plan / target IT landscape
• Implement technical architecture concepts & architecture descriptions
• Implement migration concepts for updating and further developing the platform and information systems
• Assess submitted improvement suggestions as part of the project
• Capability management: identify capability gaps, develop target visions, and support transformation planning within the enterprise architecture.
• Create a compatibility matrix of the components in use and compare dependencies of specific versions
• Create an IT concept for extending the platform with the following topics: hardware and software requirements, security, licensing, high availability, load balancing, backup & recovery, update strategy, monitoring integration, etc.
• Coordinate with business architects as well as technical architects from the cross-functional architecture area of the PRISMA program for the topics (backup, Active Directory, monitoring, Citrix, and business applications ...)
• Status meetings and alignment of project planning with the Release Train Engineer / Project Manager
• Advise the Release Train Engineer / Project Manager in identifying project risks
• Advise the System Architect Engineers in steering the implementation of the concept
• Implement the IT concept
• Document the infrastructure

Label: MS Project, LINUX, Windows, ORACLE, Java, REST, SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, UML, Enterprise Architect, BPMN, AZURE, AWS, V-MODEL, Micro Service, VisualStudio, SAP S/4HANA, SCRUM(SAFE), ESB (TIBCO), Python, Innovator, LeanIX (TOGAF), Ansible, Ansible Tower, Ansible Automation, ROBOT, SpringBoot

Successful delivery of projects on behalf of customers:

• -> 2023 – present: Project management for the consolidation of sites/data centers for a large telecommunications provider (infrastructure project, customer: Telefonica)

• Opening and preparing new sites

• Application migrations

• Decommissioning and handover of old sites

• -> 2021 – 2022: IT multi-project management for a large car leasing company (customer: Athlon)

• Migration of applications to the cloud and to another data center

• Additional projects to expand and optimize the application landscape

• -> 2021: Project management for the development of a platform providing internet access on aircraft operated by various airlines (customer: m3Connect/German Telekom)

• -> 2017-2020: Responsible management of an IP network consolidation (infrastructure project, customer: Cisco/Vodafone) at a large telecommunications provider

• Planning and coordination of migrations and their rollout

• Team leadership and integration of different teams (network operators, hardware and service providers)

• Planning and implementation of a migration strategy for master and transaction data for the continuous loading of a cloud-independent database
• Creation and pilot implementation of a company-wide Business Data Model for customers, suppliers, contracts, products, prices, consumption, invoices, and dunning
• Concept and consulting for a Data Governance Framework incl. definition of committees, roles, processes, and metadata model
• Operationalization of the Data Governance Framework with definition of data standards
• Sub-project management in two pilot projects (PoCs) for Data Governance systems (ErwinDIS and Atlan)
• Training and coaching the data team in migration, data quality, and data modeling

• Project: ESU Windows and SQL Server consolidation / Configuration Management in ServiceNow
• Creation of an as-is analysis of all servers worldwide
• Creation of an as-is analysis of all SQL servers worldwide
• Creation of requirements analyses for SQL and server migrations
• Coordination of requirements with partners for migrations to Hyper-V (on-premises) or Azure Cloud
• Moderation of jour fixe meetings
• Creation of roadmaps and solution models for server migrations
• Setup of test scenarios
• Moderation of workshops for the introduction of a Global Admin Team
• Creation of data models (CMDB) in ServiceNow
• Conducting workshops for the CMDB data model
• Creation of solution models for the CMDB
• Creation of seamless configuration and work documentation for the CMDB
• Creation of reports for license management
• Creation of KPIs for data quality in ServiceNow
• Creation of a service catalog
• Moderation of workshops for creating service requests
• Interface between needs analysis and 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

• Coordination and planning, execution, documentation, and analysis of test cases
• Development of test concepts considering best practices (e.g., test pyramid) with a focus on reliable, automatable test runs
• Implementation and maintenance of test cases according to the test concepts
• Technologies: Citrix Workspace, Shopify, Jira, Xray, MS Teams, MS SharePoint, Confluence, MS Office 365

• Supporting the DevOps team in Terraform-managed, multi-region AWS infrastructure to achieve environment parity.
• Developed end-to-end CI/CD pipelines using AWS CodePipeline, CodeBuild, and CodeDeploy, automating the build and deployment.
• Maintained pre- and post-deployment scripts to automate critical tasks such as database schema migrations and environment sanity checks.
• Implemented CI/CD flow specifically for hotfixes via separate Git branches, managing back-merge activities from feature branches to release branches to ensure code integrity through automated conflict resolution.
• Deployed a dedicated, lightweight sanity check application hosted cost-effectively on Azure Container Apps to run automated health and basic functional checks as a post-deployment activity triggered via pipeline.
• Investigated production incidents through code changes and AWS CloudWatch logs.
• Coordinated integration of Dynatrace APM and its APIs for monitoring purposes.
• Full stack QA strategist for a high-traffic e-commerce platform built on a layered architecture for the back-end testing of core platform services, especially the order management system in Zed and Glue layers.
• Managed automation activities, testing process, and refactoring practices.
• Responsible for framework migrations, setup, and training for new automation frameworks.
• Promoted a shift-left approach within the QA team and created the test concept.
• Participated in meetings with IT managers, business owners, product owners, and team members.
• Designed and implemented contract testing to validate API schema compatibility between the order management system and the Zed and Glue layers, reducing production-relevant breaking changes by approximately 3%.
• Led the migration to a multi-environment framework that enabled test execution across 4 country configurations from a single codebase.
• Integrated automated unit and functional tests directly into the GitLab CI/CD pipeline, reducing pipeline runtime by 32%.
• Coached and trained 5 QA engineers across Germany and Hungary in test automation, framework architecture, and best practices.
• Architected a layered backend test automation framework separating business logic, API request builders, and the database layer.
• Piloted AI-assisted testing with Playwright Agents, the Playwright MCP Server, and GitHub Copilot for automated test generation, execution, and self-healing Playwright scripts.

• Interim PO for a DiGA-listed digital therapy platform, ensuring compliant product development in a highly regulated SaMD environment (BfArM, BSI) while maintaining delivery pace.
• Challenge: Regulatory complexity combined with hands-on delivery responsibility and only one week of onboarding time.
• Impact: Introduced AI-assisted product development workflows with clear quality standards and reinstated regular short release cycles for faster, more precise delivery. Currently optimizing product development workflows and reducing AI-generated bloat in tickets and documentation.

• SAP ERP/ECC, SAP S/4 Hana
• Analysis and documentation of SAP FI/CO, PSM, PSCD customizing
• Analysis, consulting and documentation of S/4 Hana apps for defining and preparing statutory reports
• Clarification of the prerequisites for using S/4 Hana apps to define and prepare statutory reports
• Analysis and documentation of customizing for in-house developments
• Consulting on the integration of SAP FI/CO as well as PSM, PSM-FM (Funds Management), Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable (PSCD)
• Consulting and documentation of customizing adjustments in SAP FI/CO, PSM, PSM-FM and PSCD for the introduction of new company codes and other organizational structures
• Consulting and documentation of required process adjustments