Microsoft Azure Experts

In-house consulting provider and transformation driver within the group, in a multi-stakeholder environment and working with C-level leaders.

Realigned and stabilized a cross-functional transformation and scaling program across the group. Refined the vision, priorities, and portfolio of initiatives, and established robust governance, planning, and management structures. Structured roles, responsibilities, and strategic initiatives, incorporating AI and IT automation opportunities.

• Designed program realignment and project portfolio management

• Developed a strategy model and vision for IT projects

• Structured the portfolio, roadmap, and priorities

• Established governance and regular meetings

• Developed an operating model for flagship projects

• Assessed AI and automation opportunities

• Clarified roles and responsibilities

• Implemented change initiatives

• Designed, facilitated, and evaluated workshops

• Brought 17 initiatives into a management framework

• Improved transparency and decision-making

• Strengthened accountability in program management

• Sharpened the operating model

• Integrated three top-5 institutions

• Engaged over 80% of stakeholders

• Governance

• Portfolio management (PPM)

• Change Management

• Artificial intelligence

• Workflow automation

• AI use case assessment

• Confluence

• Jira

• Stakeholder management

• Bringing the IT perspective into project documentation (e.g., proposed solutions, effort estimates, timelines)
• Translating business requirements into technical specifications for the IT teams involved
• Coordinating IT resources and aligning budget use with Sales IT portfolio management
• Contributing to and supporting solution development in collaboration with business departments and project leads
• Acting as a sentinel within the project portfolio to prevent information gaps and ensure Sales IT is involved in a timely manner
• Setting up and maintaining shared workspaces in Confluence, MS Teams, and Azure DevOps
• Ensuring compliance with established IT project processes (project initiation, solution design, validation)
• Creating and maintaining structured documentation (solution outlines, effort and resource plans, risks, decisions)
• Documenting and providing transparency on roles, budget requirements, test management, and resource overviews
• Supporting the planning, coordination, and management of complex IT initiatives in the Sales IT environment (PowerBase, PowerDE, PowerNL, PowerFR)
• Serving as the link between Business and IT: consistently translating business requirements into technical specifications
• Contributing to budget planning, SAP variance analyses, resource management, and project governance
• Conducting requirements analyses, coordinating change requests, and actively contributing to PMO processes
• Working closely with stakeholders across countries within the Power@Sales program

• Conducted security assessments for supplier qualification, business unit onboarding, and ongoing reviews of service providers and partners (Ongoing Assurance).
• Assessed technical and organizational measures (TOMs) against GDPR and information security requirements.
• Handled security reviews and approval processes in the Global Approval Navigator (OneTrust).
• Advised business units and IT on information security, security requirements, and risk-appropriate measures.
• Supported the development of SOC/SIEM processes and tools as part of the ISMS in line with ISO/IEC 27001.
• Analyzed cyber threats and coordinated security objectives and measures to address Security Findings with the SOC team.
• Monitored and assessed current security advisories and security-related metrics (KPIs).
• Reviewed, assessed risks, and approved exception requests (Security Exceptions).
• Independently analyzed and handled Security Events and supported the handling of security incidents.
• Planned and supported awareness initiatives to strengthen security awareness.
• Created, implemented, and reviewed information security policies and standards.
• Conducted protection needs analyses and gap assessments to identify security gaps and risk deviations.
• Defined and reviewed technical and organizational risk treatment measures.
• Advised on Third Party Governance with consideration of DORA, ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 27005, ISO/IEC 42001, and BCM in line with ISO 22301.

Financial reporting as an MVP. Follow-up assignment.

• Reports on profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow
• Budget and personnel metrics (FTE)
• Implementation as an MVP with a fixed scope

• Founder of CheironX: AI-supported GRC management (ISO 27001, BSI IT-Grundschutz, TISAX, DORA)
• Strategic focus on Agentic AI and GenAI for modern IT Governance, Risk & Compliance Management
• IT interim management and strategic consulting

Agile Transformation: introducing agile principles and transforming traditional IT departments into Scrum and Kanban teams

IT Operating Model: redesigning the IT organization and introducing modern delivery structures and roles

Flight Levels: building up Flight Levels practices within IT to align strategy, coordination and operational execution

Leadership & Coaching: recruiting Agile Coaches and coaching Scrum Masters and IT leaders

ERP Operations: acting as Interim Product Owner for the existing ERP landscape and ensuring business continuity

ERP Transformation: reorganizing and supporting the ERP migration as a Project Manager; Phase 1 (financial accounting) live since October 2025

Operational Core (ERP): establishing dedicated teams for ERP Support, Feature Development, and ERP Migration

Modern Workplace: initiating the transition towards a Microsoft 365-based cloud workplace environment

Integration: establishing a dedicated team to drive integration and connectivity initiatives

Warehouse Operations: building a cross-functional team to support logistics and warehouse-related capabilities

Maintenance & Operations (M&O): introducing a dedicated team for system engineering, security, stable operations and continuous improvement

AI Initiatives: identifying and promoting practical Artificial Intelligence use cases across the IT department

As Interim Head of IT for a German medium-sized industrial distributor, I am responsible for 31 IT employees and lead the digital and organizational transformation, reporting directly to executive leadership. I took over an IT department with almost no basic structures – no clear roles, processes, documentation or ticket system – and with significant technical debt that tied up most of its capacity. Introduced agile principles and ways of working in the IT organization and transformed the traditionally structured IT department into cross-functional Scrum and Kanban teams focused on transparency, collaboration, and customer value delivery.

Redesigned the entire IT organization by establishing a modern operating model, introducing new roles such as Product Owner, Scrum Master and Solution Architect and strengthening the organization through strategic hiring and targeted capability development. Recruited and onboarded Agile Coaches to accelerate the transformation and personally managed and coached Scrum Masters as well as IT department leaders to foster servant leadership, self-management and a culture of continuous improvement.

Aligned IT-internal planning across eight teams to three Flight Levels based on Klaus Leopold (strategy, coordination, team), laying the foundation for later company-wide portfolio management. Consolidated the backlog of more than 10 workstreams and prioritized it by business value and cost of delay. Introduced a ticketing system to increase transparency and enable data-driven decision-making, flow-based work management, and greater accountability at all levels.

Established and supported multiple cross-functional teams, including the Operational Core (ERP) domain with dedicated streams for Support, Feature Development and ERP Migration, as well as teams responsible for Warehouse Operations, Maintenance & Operations (M&O) including system engineering and security, Modern Workplace, Data Quality and integration initiatives. Worked closely with Agile Coaches to support team development, remove impediments, and continuously improve delivery effectiveness.

Acted as Interim Product Owner for the operation and enhancement of the existing ERP landscape while supporting the ERP migration as a Project Manager. Reorganized the project organization and had the already negotiated contract with the implementation partner realigned with a focus on approach and overall responsibility; Phase 1 (financial accounting) has been live since October 2025. Collaborated with the selected implementation partner to design and establish the project organization and target operating model for the ERP transformation, introducing agile delivery structures and ways of working. Facilitated the alignment between business, IT and the external vendor and played a key role in negotiating the contractual framework and delivery model to ensure a sustainable foundation for the transformation program.

Initiated the strategic modernization of the workplace environment through the adoption of Microsoft 365 cloud capabilities, establishing the foundation for enhanced collaboration, scalability and future digital services.

Launched AI initiatives to identify practical business use cases and promote the responsible adoption of Artificial Intelligence across the IT department. Encouraged self-management and empowered teams to take ownership of decisions, delivery and continuous improvement.

• Architected, Deployed and Supported hosted email solutions in Linux and Windows environments with enterprise-grade anti-spam and security architecture for service-provider environments.
• Managed Microsoft Azure environments including Virtual Machines, VNets, Storage, VPN, and Firewall configuration.
• Administered Microsoft Exchange Server (2010-2019), Microsoft Exchange Server SE, Active Directory, PKI, Hyper-V and Zimbra environments with disaster recovery planning and operational support.
• Led Microsoft 365 onboarding and migration projects from Exchange, IMAP, and Zimbra platforms to Microsoft 365.
• Prepare security and compliance to support Microsoft 365 Copilot.
• Implement information protection and data loss prevention by using Microsoft Purview.
• Implement retention, eDiscovery, and communication compliance in Microsoft Purview.
• Integrated Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS), and Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS).
• Delivered secure hybrid infrastructure solutions integrating Microsoft Windows Server and Linux-based enterprise environments.
• Supported enterprise integration projects involving Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Red Hat, Barracuda ESG, Qmail and Zimbra Platforms.

• Creating concepts and architecture for domain integration (SEAT into the VW structure)
• Domain trusts and administration
• Operation and administration of Windows 2022/ 2025 servers and domains
• Domain restructuring
• GPO and SG editing and migration
• DNS restructuring and migration

Technologies: Windows 2022, Active Directory, ADFS, AD Azure Connect, DHCP, DNS, GPO, VMWare vSphere, Hyper-V, Powershell, Jira, MS Office 365,), SCCM, VSAN Fileservices, Approximately 800 servers, 400 users

• Investigate the relationship between Eddy Current Testing (ECT) signals and microstructural properties
• Detect latent patterns in ECT data that reflect intrinsic material characteristics
• Develop and validate predictive models for microstructural classification and quantification, using hardness and case depth as benchmarks
• Apply Bayesian Structural Equation Modeling for advanced data analysis

• Integrated highly regulated countries such as China and South Korea into a company-wide M365 tenant.

• Technical point of contact for integrating specific requirements for the board and German subsidiaries subject to BaFin compliance requirements.

• Subproject management.

• Coordinated requirements as part of the overall architecture.

• Designed the use of DLP features from Microsoft Purview.

• Designed special access restrictions using Entra Id Conditional Access.

• Supported the design of provisioning Teams teams and SharePoint sites with enhanced compliance requirements.

• Provided technical support for implementing information classification with Sensitivity Labels for SharePoint Online and Teams.

• Provided technical support to the subproject for introducing CoPilot for M365.

• Skills: M365, Purview, DLP, Entra Id, Sensitivity Labels, CoPilot, Teams, SharePoint Online.

AI phone assistant platform

Claude Code, Google AI Studio, Python, LLM / Voice-AI, PostgreSQL

• Designed and hands-on developed an AI-powered phone assistant platform (Voice-AI / LLM)—from idea and architecture through to MVP/product.
• Built agentic workflows and end-to-end automations with Claude Code and Google AI Studio.
• Also supported AI-powered delivery in client engagements: using Claude Code for governance documentation, requirements drafts, and automations.

Project – Evaluation and development of databases for a new product line for a measuring equipment manufacturer

• Current-state analysis
• Requirements analysis of the data storage layer
• Writing benchmark tests
• Design of the new database schema
• Database migrations
• Development of audit logging and Part11
• Creation of backup and recovery concepts
• Design of the persistence layer API
• Writing unit tests
• Creating requirements in Azure

Tools: C#, Visual Studio 2022, Azure DevOps, SonarQube, Git, RestSharp, WebServer, PostgreSQL, MS SQL, SQLite, MinIO, Podman, Docker, DataGrip, SQL Management Studio, HeidiDB, pgAdmin

Working Environment

• Insurance / Claims Management (Property, Liability, Automotive)
• REST-based ClaimAPI with Guidewire ClaimCenter

Scope

• Further development of the internal REST-based ClaimAPI with Guidewire ClaimCenter as the backend and various portals/front-end offices as clients, and with the following objectives: + increased AI-supported claims processing outside of Guidewire ClaimCenter + and support for all lines (property, liability, automotive).
• Further development of automated claims processing

Activities

• Interfacing IT & Business
• Design activities with documentation in Confluence, Jira: + Requirements engineering (functional and non-functional) + Design of REST endpoints and coordination with interface partners (esp. AI-colleagues) + Identification, design and evaluation of alternative solutions (moving away from a monolithic approach toward fine-grained endpoints, with code reuse across all lines if possible) + Creation / refinement of product backlog items in Jira, i.e. epics, user stories and tasks, incl. alignment with developers & POs during (pre-)refinement sessions + Using AXA Secure GPT when creating / refining user stories (description, acceptance criteria) and designing REST endpoints + Estimation and prioritization of user stories and tasks during Sprint Planning sessions + Coordination and support during the implementation of Product Backlog items + Driving decision making with preparation and presentation of decision-making documents
• Quality assurance: + Test management, including test case creation using Xray in Jira + Test execution using Bruno as REST client and in Guidewire ClaimCenter + Submission of test artifacts for PO approval + Analysis of production bugs

Methods Big Room Planning (aka PI-Planning in SAFe), Scrum, BPMN, EPK, UML, ERM, DDD

Tools / Tech Stack Teams, Confluence, Jira with Xray, OpenAPI/Swagger, REST, JSON, XML, MS Office, Bruno, GitHub repository (reading), Guidewire ClaimCenter, AXA Secure GPT (AXA's in-house GenAI solution based on Azure OpenAI)

• Developed browser based platform for kubernetes no-code deployment and cluster management
• Developed CLI in Typescript to deploy the resources in the cluster without leaving the browser UI.
• Implemented DevSecOps pipelines: image scanning, SBOM, policy enforcement, supply-chain security and used Kyverno. Implemented IAM integration for the command line utility tool.
• Designed role & permission models for Keycloak, oAuth/OIDC, social login flows.
• Used LLM to convert user intent into the diagram.
• Worked on integration with multiple Sovereign Cloud like stackIt, Hetzner, CIVO, UpCloud plus public clouds like AWS, GCP, Azure
• The technology stack includes Java, SpringBoot, Kubernetes, OpenAI, Kubernetes multi-tenancy using vCluster, Karpenter, RBAC for CLI, Helm, React