Kubernetes Experts in Berlin

Workflow-automation SaaS for operations teams (Berlin, 120 people); full-time freelance engagement reporting to the CEO: an initial 12-month interim mandate, extended twice through the AI build-out; owned product for one squad and coached the other product managers on process.

• Led generative AI (LLM) integration into the core product: from LLM-powered steps to natural-language workflow authoring and step-level automation suggestions, plus AI-managed dynamic workflows, shipped behind eval gates with human-in-the-loop fallbacks: AI-drafted workflows grew to 31% of all new workflows, and median time-to-first-workflow fell from 3 days to 4 hours.
• Packaged the AI capabilities as a usage-based add-on priced on executed automation steps, working with sales and marketing on positioning: ~€800K added ARR in the first year, and adopting accounts churned 1.8 pp less.
• Owned the roadmap end to end: replaced feature-request-driven quarterly planning with an outcome-based rolling roadmap built on quarterly bets and explicit kill criteria, presented monthly to the executive team and quarterly to the board.
• Rebuilt the product-management operating system: weekly customer-discovery cadence incl. workshop facilitation, RFC/decision-doc reviews and a single quarterly metrics narrative; coached four product managers, one promoted to senior during the engagement.
• Closed the engagement as scoped: hired and onboarded the permanent VP Product, handed over the process playbook and roadmap, and exited on schedule in June 2026.

• Joined the initial development team and helped transform an n8n prototype into a production-ready 0-to-1 product in a fast-paced environment.
• Owned delivery across CRM and Twilio integrations, customer communication workflows, and administrative interfaces.
• Collaborated on AI evaluation, microservice architecture, and other cross-functional product and engineering topics.
• Supported the CEO across VC communications, customer acquisition, product positioning, onboarding, documentation, pricing, and sales.

• 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

• 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.

• ▶ Built real-time voice assistant (STT → LLM → TTS pipeline) benchmarking and evaluating multiple STT providers including faster-whisper and Azure Speech. achieved sub-3s latency, Groq API (Llama 3) with multi-turn memory - directly handling edge cases in dictation, names and passcode recognition.

• 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.

• Creation, maintenance and hardening of Kubernetes clusters employing Ansible and ArgoCD
• Keywords: Ansible, AWX, Kubernetes, NetApp, Prometheus, CI/CD ArgoCD, SSO, Fluent-bit, HAProxy, Calico, Keycloak, oauth2-proxy, SealedSecrets, kubeseal, Aqua kube-bench, CIS-Benchmarks, Aqua Trivy operator

• Led the end-to-end delivery of enterprise full-stack web applications by driving requirement analysis, solution design, frontend and backend development, database design, API integration, code reviews, team coordination, Agile execution, CI/CD deployments, production support, performance optimization, security implementation, and stakeholder collaboration to deliver scalable, high-quality software solutions.

• Founded an AI-powered scheduling and business-management SaaS for SMBs, owning technology strategy, architecture, product development, UX, billing and go-to-market execution.
• Architected and shipped a multi-tenant platform with REST APIs, RBAC, CRM, billing and notifications, powering the manager dashboard, admin console, booking experience and iOS/Android applications.
• Led and mentored 7 software engineers, 1 DevOps engineer, 1 QA engineer and 1 UX/UI designer, while remaining hands-on across backend, frontend and product delivery.
• Built AI voice and chat agents using Python/FastAPI, OpenAI and Anthropic APIs, RAG, pgvector and tool calling; integrated Twilio, Google Calendar/Meet, Stripe and Firebase.
• Owned production infrastructure and automated delivery across separate environments using Docker, Nginx, GitHub Actions and Grafana; represented the company at accelerators and international startup events.

Selected stack: Python, FastAPI, Node.js, Vue 3, React/Next.js, React Native, PostgreSQL, Redis, Docker

• Designed and deployed enterprise Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) applications using LangChain, LangGraph, vector databases, embeddings, and open-source LLMs served through vLLM on GCP GPU infrastructure.
• Built agentic AI workflows using LangGraph with planning, reasoning, tool execution, persistent memory, session management, and Human-in-the-Loop approval mechanisms.
• Developed LLM-powered automation systems integrating BigQuery, SQL pipelines, and external advertising APIs including Meta, TikTok, Amazon, Snapchat, Google, and Pinterest, reducing manual operational workflows.
• Architected multi-agent AI systems for enterprise analytics and decision-support workflows, enabling autonomous task execution and intelligent data interactions.
• Implemented retrieval optimization strategies including multi-retriever architectures, semantic search, context optimization, and query improvement techniques, improving response relevance by approximately 40%.
• Engineered structured prompting strategies, function-calling schemas, and validation workflows to improve reliability of multi-step LLM applications.
• Designed scalable AI services using Python, FastAPI, Cloud Run, Pub/Sub, BigQuery, Docker, and cloud-native deployment architectures.

• 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

• Led development of RunBot AI assistant autonomously using LLM-powered workflow automation (React, TypeScript, Java, MongoDB, NATS)
• Architected TMS platform providing unified transportation management and real-time logistics visibility with AI processing pipelines
• Designed event-driven microservices architecture supporting marketplace
• Drove architectural decisions and technical leadership across full-stack platform development

• 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

• Led development of 15+ microservices (Java 17, Spring Boot) driving customer interactions; migrated from on-prem to GCP Kubernetes, improving scalability and reducing infra cost by 20%.
• Optimized user services with CouchDB caching and API refactoring, cutting response times by 35% and enhancing customer experience.
• Implemented canary deployments, FluxCD GitOps, and CI/CD optimizations in GitLab, reducing release lead time by 25% and enabling zero-downtime rollouts.
• Set up Grafana health checks and Anodot alerts for latency, error, and throughput monitoring, reducing MTTR by 40%.
• Built secure APIs using OAuth2, DPoP, and Gatekeeper, integrated REST and GraphQL, and achieved 90%+ test coverage with unit and E2E tests.
• Mentored junior developers, promoted Agile best practices, and collaborated cross-functionally to deliver high-impact, reliable customer-facing features.