MaRisk Experts in Frankfurt

• Head of the group-wide, international, and cross-functional IT Governance & IAM department within the central IT division of a large French-German private banking group. Disciplinary management of around 30 employees at five different locations within the group (Frankfurt, Paris, Tunis, Saarbrücken, Düsseldorf). Head of IT committees and key role in direct communication with management, the supervisory board, external stakeholders, and regulators.
• Definition and establishment of a state-of-the-art IT strategy process and related IT governance structures for the group's IT department with more than 600 employees (testified by the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority and the ACPR) and successful process run.
• Establishment of a new future-oriented process framework for IT and necessary governance structures (process squads) for the continuous improvement of IT processes with regard to new regulatory requirements (including DORA, EU AI Act, etc.).
• Establishment of stringent processes to close a historical backlog of findings (> 100 IT findings, 40 overdue findings in 2022) from internal and external auditors (WP, ACPR, BaFin). Successful reduction of stock of overdue findings to 0 at the end of 2025.
• Supporting more than 20 IT audits per year and establishment of regulatory monitoring processes. Introduction of ServiceNow to revolutionize regulatory change and IT compliance processes with advanced AI functionalities.
• Realignment of IT control processes in conjunction with the newly established ICT risk function under DORA and the three lines of defense concept using the TopEase GRC solution.
• Reduction of the application landscape, by systematically analysing the purpose with application and business owners, identifying duplicates while implementing a One-Tool Strategy throughout the group. Successful reduction of one third of the application landscape within the CMDB.
• Onboarding of all group applications into One Identity's group-wide IAM solution, as well as operation and further development of the solution in connection with segregation of duties (SoD), role-based access management (RBAC), etc.

2nd LoD/Change the Bank (CtB)

• CtB: External consultant and workstream lead for rectifying findings by BaFin following a special IT audit in the 2nd LoD, management of the work package for revising the ICT Risk Management & ICT Asset Classification in accordance with DORA Chapter 2, the processes for structural analysis, protection requirements, and control assessments (4 FTEs).

Project, Strategic Consulting – building the Data Strategy and Data Governance Policy for the German branch, client (private bank Julius Bär, headquarters Zurich), March 2026 – present

• Design and negotiation of the data strategy with key stakeholders, including obtaining board sign-off (strategic consulting) – in this context, regulatory advice on data regulations in the EU and specifically for Germany. The data strategy includes: Data Lifecycle Management: data capture, data storage, data usage, data retention policy, data quality incident management
• Definition of milestones and technical feasibility for implementing TOM for the data strategy, data quality checks, metrics, and a metadata inventory to ensure the bank’s compliance with DORA, BCBS239, and MaRisk requirements.

Core project data change, client: (ING Bank, Frankfurt am Main), March – December 2025

• Concept development and solution design for new end-to-end processes including technical interfaces
• Definition of synchronization logic and data flows between legacy and target systems (decommissioning of legacy systems)
• Analysis and validation of data models
• Stakeholder communication with product owners, feature engineers, UX designers, and operational teams for decision-making
• Analytics and impact assessments, e.g. to assess downstream effects and regulatory requirements
• Documentation and comments on technical and business requirements to support implementation in agile squads

Project digitalization of a user group, client: (ING Bank, Frankfurt am Main), as Interim Product Owner, Jan 2025 – present

• Co-shaping key decisions on data architecture and process logic in the context of historized data and user login functionality
• Development of business solution concepts for migration to the target system, including system integration and data flows
• Support with analytics and impact analyses, especially regarding the ability to provide information to law enforcement authorities
• Active coordination with stakeholders from different squads to support decision-making and ensure regulatory requirements are met
• Creation of test scenarios for operational teams and backend systems in the area of API management using Postman and Bruno.

• Platform established and running stably; deliberately reducing my involvement to refocus on an engineering mandate in the financial sector.
• Built an own SaaS learning platform from the ground up and scaled it to over 20,000 users (over 6,000 courses sold, B2C and B2B); end-to-end ownership from development through infrastructure to operations.
• Built a lab environment that provisions an isolated Linux container per user (Docker, Traefik, Go), including automatic provisioning and a dedicated subdomain per user.
• Integrated LLM features into the product and accelerated development end-to-end with AI-assisted workflows (Claude Code, Codex); CI/CD with automated tests.

• Management and optimization of a portfolio of about 100 projects (launches, in-field solutions, data & analytics, digital solutions, digital products)
• Optimization of the existing project standard (playbook) and alignment with the European and global organization (USA)
• Coaching project managers on setup, planning, cooperation with business, GDPR, GxP, data security and launches
• Preparing projects for works council information and project closeout communication
• Optimization of resource management (tracking, allocation, prioritization)
• Taking over individual project leads (off-/transboarding, event management, checking whether WhatsApp is allowed on a business smartphone)
• Supporting the hiring of external project managers
• Optimization of meeting structure, project controlling (KPIs), change and demand management
• Optimization of risk, issue, dependency and quality management and support during internal audits (GxP)
• Optimization of the portfolio steering tool (Smartsheet) on national, European and global level
• Design and implementation of a Business Value Complexity Scoring
• Building a strategic PMO with a sister department and optimizing cross-functional teams
• Reporting, communication and escalation at management level
• Leadership coaching for several future leaders (short-time assignment)
• Development of the concepts "PPM as a Service" and "Internal Customer Approach"
• Development and review of a concept "AI Data Governance" including roles and processes
• Selection and onboarding of the successor

• Delivery of ICT / DORA management training under DORA Article 5(4) at various banking institutions

• Teaching the key content of DORA requirements with a focus on ICT risks, third-party risk management, incident and problem management, and the information register

• Deriving implementation measures and recommendations for management and business units

• Supported the International Web Presence project of the Federal Employment Agency (IntWeb) in quality management, taking on responsibility for the quality of processes and project deliverables while adhering to BA standards. The project's main goals are to give professionals abroad a quick overview of their chances to move to Germany and to enable them to take the necessary steps in a consistently digital way.

• Set the fundamental guidelines using the QA handbook

• Summarized test results in QA reports for PLA

• Analyzed project outcomes for improvement opportunities

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

• Ensured compliance with SERA guidelines

• Created a cross-project test concept

• Agreed on sprint completion reports

• Conducted formal reviews of deliverables according to guidelines and/or project plan

• Acted as contact person for internal audit and external audits by auditors or the Federal Audit Office (BRH)

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

• Managing TPA Manager and a team of 10 Claims Operation Assistants.

• Designing and implementing processes and workstreams using Guidewire from the ground up with European claims teams across all lines of business.

• Establishing service level agreements (SLAs) and detailed key performance indicators (KPIs) with new business intelligence (BI) reporting, payment and performance analysis.

• Developing, steering and analysing 50+ strategic, operational and IT initiatives, driving digital change and AI automation in payments while meeting DORA, GDPR, ACM and BAIT MaRisk regulatory compliance.

• Increasing customer satisfaction scores by 80%.

• Attracting and mentoring market-leading operational and TPA talent.

• Demonstrating strong stakeholder leadership and swift decisional influence.

• Project manager controlling the update to ISO 27001:2022 (certification from ISO 27002:2013 to ISO 27002:2022) including gap analysis, project planning, preparation of internal and external audits, and creation and maintenance of required documentation.
• Coordination of adjusting existing measures and implementing new measures according to the new standard’s requirements, as well as continuous monitoring and adjustment of these measures.
• Regular reporting to management on progress and risks.
• Senior consultant supporting audit reviews with a focus on critical infrastructures (KRITIS), including resolving findings, creating and updating evidence documents, and amending provider contracts.
• Senior consultant reviewing all deliverables and responsibilities of the IT provider according to the existing contract: identification of over 1500 deliverables & obligations (D&O), setup of a D&O tracker (claim register), and joint expert review with service owners for various service descriptions (e.g. IT service management, workplace and print services, application and desktop services, endpoint management, email including archiving, file services, software packaging, certification, distribution).
• Senior consultant adjusting service scopes in existing service descriptions to enable end-to-end service responsibility of the provider, including identification and analysis of use cases, process analysis and optimization (incident, problem, change), as well as recording and documenting all software products in LeanIX and documenting the contract change.
• Focused services: managed software service, application and desktop service, workplace and print services, web server service, container service, M365, SAP/Oscare, output management systems (OMS), telephony and omnichannel management service.
• Project manager steering a benchmark based on the existing IT contract, including coordination of the entire benchmark process between the benchmarker, IT provider and client, review of benchmark results, and preparation and conduct of price negotiations with the IT provider.

Leading Jefferies’ DORA-driven operational resilience programme by strengthening ICT risk governance, control design, and regulatory readiness across key technology and outsourcing domains. Partnering with senior stakeholders to translate regulatory requirements into pragmatic governance, reporting, and assurance processes suitable for a global investment banking environment.

• Developed the Enterprise Register of Information (DORA Art. 28.3) to align with regulatory requirements.
• Defined and embedded ICT Risk Appetite and tolerance levels aligned to the Global Operational Risk Framework, strengthening decision-making and risk acceptance governance.
• Drove audit readiness by reviewing and re-drafting 50+ IT & Information Security policies, improving clarity, ownership, and control alignment.
• Oversaw the Operational Resilience Testing Programme (including penetration testing) and tracked remediation to closure, strengthening control assurance and reducing open findings.
• Aligned 10+ intra-group agreements with DORA regulatory standards.
• Enhanced executive-level decision-making with an enterprise ICT Risk Dashboard featuring KPIs/KRIs.

• The replacement of the existing archive system (document management system – DMS) on a host-based platform is well advanced.

• The internal audit is meant to ensure the company's quality standards.

• GDPR

• ISO 27001 ff.

• BSI

• DORA

• Patient data regulations

• Host / Cloud / S3 / Container / highly scalable / Nuxeo

• Budget: 50,000

• Team: 1

• Close collaboration with development teams to ensure alignment with project goals
• Assessment of in-scope assets, requirements definition and support of the public tender process up to vendor selection
• Creation and maintenance of UML sequence diagrams to document system interactions
• Intensive use of Agile/Scrum methodology and the Spotify model
• Development and implementation of cutover and rehearsal plans together with the application managers

• Interim project manager and requirements engineer in various client projects

• Final preparation for the defense to graduate with a Master's in Computer Science for the PhD