New Relic Expert in Germany

• Design and build of a fully isolated AWS offline environment with no outbound internet access for running a browser-based business application
• Design and implementation of a proxy and response service that terminates all external application calls inside the VPC and serves them from locally stored content; identification of the actual communication needs through measurement-based DNS query logging
• Creation of architecture designs and decision papers including a comparison of options (Application Load Balancer with Lambda and S3, reverse proxy on EC2, private API Gateway) assessed by operational effort, cost, and availability
• Transfer of the solution and operations documentation previously available only for Azure to an AWS target architecture, including reassignment of all services and operational processes
• Automated rollout as Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation) with CI deployment via GitHub Actions, plus setup of private DNS zones and an internal certificate chain for operation without internet access
• Creation of architecture, deployment, and operations documentation and handover to the customer
• Build-up of a private cloud platform on OpenStack at provider TelemaxX with Terraform, including FortiGate HA clusters, FortiManager, and Kubernetes
• Introduction of Policy as Code (Open Policy Agent, Conftest) as well as development of MCP servers (Model Context Protocol) to connect AI assistants to operations and project tools

Successes:

• Made the business application fully operable without internet access for the first time; the cause of the loading error was narrowed down systematically to missing CORS headers after the likely certificate issue was ruled out
• Fully transferred an existing Azure concept to AWS and replaced the manually created environment with a reproducible, CI-based rollout

Technology stack: AWS (VPC, Application Load Balancer, Lambda, S3, Route 53 private hosted zones and Resolver query logging, IAM, CloudWatch, EC2, CloudFormation), Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, Remote State), CI/CD (GitHub Actions with OIDC, Azure DevOps Pipelines), OpenStack, FortiGate, FortiManager, Kubernetes, Policy as Code (Open Policy Agent, Conftest), offline and air-gap architectures, PKI & certificates (internal CA, TLS, CRL/OCSP), DNS, network segmentation, Linux, Windows Server, Python, Bash, PowerShell, YAML, JSON, architecture design & decision papers, documentation (Confluence, Markdown), Generative & Agentic AI (Model Context Protocol, Agentic AI Coding Tools)

• Building independent projects in the AI/developer tools space.
• Experimenting with product ideas, rapid prototyping, and go-to-market validation.
• Designing AI-native operating model—leveraging agentic pipelines, living context schemas, and rigorous eval harnesses to multiply individual contributor leverage and eliminate implementation bottlenecks.

• Manage multiple Kubernetes clusters in Production with Ceph as storage layer.
• Implemented CICD pipelines for automating deployments with Gitlab CI
• Terraform for Infrastructure provisioning.
• Claude code
• Helm charts for deploying via ArgoCD
• Implemented automated incident notification pipelines in Kubernetes to align with NIS2 mandatory 24-hour early warning disclosure rules
• Configured Azure Policy and Logging guardrails aligned with BSI IT-Grundschutz (SYS.1.3 / OPS.1.1), ensuring continuous baseline compliance across 50+ cloud workloads

Environment: Gitlab CI, IONOS Cloud, Ceph, ArgoCD, terraform, Elastic cluster, Grafana, Alert Manager & Prometheus

• Contributed to the design of the new financial services integration layer and moderated the architectural discussions
• Oversaw the security concept and approval of the application
• Prepared infrastructure setup and best practices for the Kotlin backend

• Lead a cross-functional squad of backend, frontend, and ML/data engineers, balancing hands-on contribution (architecture, coding, reviews) with team leadership (mentoring, backlog prioritization, roadmap alignment).
• Designed and delivered ML-powered search and discovery features, including Learning-to-Rank (LTR), query expansion, and vector search, improving result relevance and user engagement.
• Implemented personalization and recommendation pipelines, using behavioral data and segmentation to increase customer retention and lifetime value.
• Established data-driven practices, building A/B testing and experimentation workflows (Odyn, MLflow) to measure feature impact on CTR, NDCG, and conversion.
• Owned the squad’s architecture and delivery roadmap, modernizing services with cloud-native microservices and event-driven systems (AWS, Pulumi, Terraform) to improve scalability and reliability.
• Improved reliability and operational excellence, introducing observability (Prometheus, Grafana, NewRelic), incident management, and postmortems that reduced downtime for customer-facing services.
• Mentored and supported engineers, fostering technical growth, collaboration, and a customer-first mindset through regular feedback, coaching, and code reviews.
• Worked closely with product managers, researchers, and business stakeholders to translate customer insights into technical solutions that improved discovery, engagement, and retention.
• Explored Generative AI/LLM use cases (GPT-4, LangChain, RAG), prototyping intelligent assistants and personalized discovery workflows that increased user satisfaction.
• Delivered tangible results: boosted engagement through personalization, contributed to revenue uplift, and reduced incidents by embedding resilience and observability.

• Built middleware service integrating EDI providers and marketplace partners with Microsoft Dynamics 365 to receive sales orders and communicate shipments, invoices, inventory, and price catalogues
• Utilized a mixture of REST APIs and event-driven data processing pipelines

• Building an independent enterprise IT setup — cloud strategy, network, AWS landing zone, security requirements, contract negotiations.
• Migration of all applications; avoiding high contractual penalties for the client.
• Onboarding and coordination o...

• Too Good To Throw (AI powered social impact webapp focused on reducing food waste in Nigeria):

• Integrated Paystack Split Payments to automatically route payments between the platform and partner vendors.

• Configured automated subaccount creation workflows so new businesses get a settlement account instantly.

• Setup a scalable cloud backend using Supabase.

• Implemented role-based access control (RBAC) for Users, Partners, and Admin.

• FaithFlow (AI powered webapp supporting Christian teens on their spiritual journey):

• Designed and implemented an AI-driven scripture search engine that interprets natural language questions and maps them to relevant Bible texts, commentary, devotionals, and cross-references.

• Designed a spiritual growth dashboard enabling users to track reading progress, prayer streaks, and devotional completion milestones.

• Overhaul of the entire design and implementation of new UI/UX aspects using React
• Planning of the software architecture and structuring of the project for long-term scalability using Git for version control

• Technical leadership & SW architecture: Conducted trade-off analyses for technology stacks and led the design and implementation of the software architecture, including mobile and backend solutions. Facilitated Event Storming workshops for DDD and SW architecture.
• Strategic direction & organizational development: Played a key role in defining the strategic direction of the product and organization, exploring new forms such as ownership responsibility.
• Lean Startup & Agile development: Introduced Lean and Agile principles, implemented Lean prototypes, and ensured compliance with Lean Startup processes, iteratively moving from Product/Solution-Fit to Product/Market-Fit.
• Team building & collaboration: Facilitated workshops, retrospectives, and futurespectives to collaboratively develop tactics and strategies.
• Technologies: Flutter, JS/TS, React, Google Cloud, Firebase, Android, iOS.
• Organizational methods: Lean startup, lean canvas, lean agile, event storming, retrospectives.

• Architecture and implementation of a fully digitalized closing flow for managing securities contracts within the DVAG infrastructure. The platform aims for maximum user-friendliness, modular extensibility and compliant handling of sensitive data.

• Implementation of a reactive UI structure with a focus on user guidance & accessibility.

• Dynamic control of form and closing processes including validation logic.

• Reactive state management via SignalStore (signals + selective effects).

• UX optimization through adaptive components and Playwright-based UI tests.

• Backend modularization to connect existing sales and contract logic.

• API stability and DTO design according to Clean Architecture principles.

• Collaboration with domain teams to define technical contracts and service boundaries.

• Management with GitHub.

• Unit tests with Jest, E2E tests with Playwright.

• Code reviews, CI-integrated test execution, iterative refactorings.

• Ensuring high coverage and UI stability in the closing flow.

• Technologies: Angular 18, RxJS, SignalStore, HTML5, SCSS, Spring Boot, Kotlin, REST, OAuth2, Jest, Playwright, Clean Architecture.

• Setup and operation of a multi-cluster AWS EKS platform for banking workloads with a unified network and security architecture across 45 AWS accounts.
• Developed and standardized a unified AWS network and security architecture for 45 AWS accounts, enabling consistent governance, connectivity, and compliance for enterprise customer environments.
• Developed and operated a multi-cluster AWS EKS platform to support production workloads, significantly improving scalability, availability, and operational reliability.
• Implemented a GitOps deployment model using ArgoCD and Helm, enabling fully automated, auditable deployments and reducing manual release errors.
• Automated infrastructure provisioning using Terraform and Terragrunt at scale, reducing environment setup time by up to 70% and eliminating configuration drift.
• Established enterprise-grade backup and disaster recovery strategies using Velero and AWS Backup, ensuring reliable multi-cluster recovery and business continuity.
• Introduced Rancher as a self-service Kubernetes platform, accelerating developer onboarding while maintaining centralized security and governance.
• Designed and implemented detailed AWS IAM concepts (roles, policies, trust relationships) to enforce the principle of least privilege for access to accounts, workloads, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Developed AWS Lambda-based pre-provisioning workflows for databases, automating initialization, configuration, and access setup to support secure and consistent application integration.
• Delivered consistent, high-quality results as part of a 5-person AWS Solutions Architecture team, resulting in three consecutive contract renewals.

• I lead a team of 10 engineers across EMEA split into 2 squads (ingest and query), focused on developing the next generation of logging systems.
• Leading the Loki team in Europe, overseeing the logging solutions at Grafana. I manage a diverse team of engineers, ranging from mid-level to principal, ensuring we deliver top-tier results.
• One of our key achievements has been the successful development and launch of ExploreLogs and AdaptiveLogs.

• Responsible for setting up and configure AWS Organizations and Control Tower on company's master organizational account
• Administer and maintain various AWS services, including EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda, VPC, IAM, etc.
• Monitor system performance, availability, and capacity planning to ensure scalability and reliability
• Implement and maintain infrastructure as code (IaC) using tools like CloudFormation or Terraform
• Work closely with development and operations teams to automate deployment processes using CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD)
• Develop and maintain scripts for automating routine tasks and infrastructure provisioning
• Implement automation for monitoring, logging, and alerting to ensure timely incident response
• Implement and enforce security company guidelines and best practices for AWS environments
• Configure and manage AWS security services such as AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS WAF, AWS Shield, etc.
• Collaborate with the Security Team to improve and update security policies and posture
• Collaborate with development teams to provide agile deployments and optimize application performance and reliability on AWS
• Provide technical support and guidance to internal teams on AWS-related issues and best practices
• Participate in cross-functional projects to enhance overall infrastructure and operational efficiency