OpenStack Experts in Germany

Support for Transformation Projects:

• Expert CTO advisory and enterprise architecture consulting for several short-term transformation projects, ensuring measurable improvements in project outcomes and technical business alignment.
• Supporting strategic IT initiatives for diverse clients, driving digital transformation and optimizing technology operations to increase business value and operational efficiency.

• Owning RAG, LLM-System, ML-ops-Pipelines for various startups in Insurance, Banking, Energy (KRITIS)

• Worked as freelance Senior DevOps Consultant on-site for IBM at a European Union Agency, operating in a highly secure, air-gapped environment managing classified systems.
• Led automation and DevOps initiatives for a large-scale OpenShift platform (>400 nodes), driving deployment efficiency, GitOps adoption, and operational automation using Ansible, Python, and Bash while ensuring compliance with security requirements.
• Spearheaded automation of release and deployment workflows in a private cloud environment hosting 400+ OpenShift nodes, significantly improving deployment speed and reliability.
• Migrated existing playbooks, roles, and templates from Ansible Tower to Ansible Automation Platform (AAP), ensuring full compliance with fully-qualified collection names (FQCN) and preparing custom Execution Environments (EE) for containerized automation.
• Implemented GitOps Agent for AAP Controller Configuration as Code, enabling automated synchronization (CRUD) of Ansible Controller objects based on repository-stored configuration definitions using GitHub webhooks.
• Designed and automated complex multi-step operational workflows including environment cleanup, Helix cluster component re-creation, Kafka topic management, and OpenShift object lifecycle management across ~100 environments.
• Achieved a reduction of multi-day manual operations to under a few hours through automation improvements spanning multiple AAP clusters and OpenShift environments.
• Integrated Ansible Automation Platform with Thycotic (Delinea) Secret Server via lookup plugin to enhance secure credential management in automated processes.
• Managed deployment tasks, platform troubleshooting, and Istio network configurations while adhering to stringent EU PSC security and compliance standards.
• Collaborated with infrastructure and application teams to refine deployment procedures, develop naming conventions, and continuously improve automation coverage in an air-gapped, classified environment.

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Scope:

• Operation and configuration of the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, including network, storage, and security design.
• Implementation of centralized observability solutions (Prometheus, Grafana, alerting).
• Development of CI/CD pipelines, GitOps workflows, and automation frameworks.
• Training and enablement of operations and development teams.

Result: Accelerated service delivery, transparent operational metrics, and sustainable knowledge transfer.

• Short description: Lead a group-wide project to establish standardized cloud governance for Microsoft Azure, including policies, security and compliance controls, automation, and cost and operations control while preserving the autonomy of decentralized business units within regulatory boundaries.

• Tasks and activities:

• Overall responsibility for the design, setup, and implementation of an enterprise-wide cloud governance structure (Azure), incl. target picture, roadmap, and operating model.

• Management of internal and external stakeholders (C-level, IT, Security, Compliance, Cloud Architecture, DevOps) incl. decision-making and escalation management.

• Planning and facilitation of workshops on cloud strategy, governance principles, and the design of areas such as Identity, Connectivity, and Platform Management.

• Definition, implementation, and rollout of cloud policies (Azure Policy / custom policies), security standards, and compliance requirements (including GDPR, ISO 27001, BSI C5).

• Building a cloud governance framework aligned with the Azure Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF), incl. landing zone and guardrail concepts.

• Introduction of automation solutions for governance, security, and cost control (policy/control automation, IaC, CI/CD-based control mechanisms).

• Implementation of cloud security and compliance monitoring mechanisms as well as continuous improvement processes.

• Establishment and operationalization of FinOps in an enterprise environment (central and decentralized FinOps teams), incl. cost management strategies, reporting, and guardrails.

• Integration of governance policies into DevOps processes (e.g. CI/CD principles for security and compliance checks, GitLab Runner concept in spokes, GitLab CI/CD for CAF landing zones).

• Implementation of access concepts incl. RBAC design and "break glass" mechanisms (emergency access) as well as certificate automation (ACME / step-ca).

• Achievements:

• Created a unified, auditable governance and control set for Azure (policies, standards, compliance mapping) and thus laid the foundation for scalable cloud usage in a regulated environment.

• Established repeatable automation for governance, security, and cost control (IaC + CI/CD), reducing manual effort and implementation risks.

• Improved operational and decision-making capabilities across central and decentralized units (clearer roles, responsibilities, escalation paths, balance between autonomy and group requirements).

• Significantly increased workload compliance for lift-and-shift migrations.

• Technologies used:

• Microsoft Azure Policy, custom policies.

• Terraform, OpenTofu, Terragrunt.

• step-ca (ACME).

• Entra ID.

• Azure Firewall.

• Azure networking, hub-and-spoke architecture.

• Azure vWAN (evaluation).

• Azure Front Door, Azure Application Gateway.

• Azure ExpressRoute.

• Azure Key Vault.

• NetBox.

• GitLab (on-premises).

• Infrastructure, concepts used:

• Cloud shared responsibility model.

• Hub-and-spoke connectivity / central shared services (from a hub-spoke context).

• Central governance with decentralized delivery (business unit autonomy with guardrails).

• Methods used:

• Scrum.

• Stakeholder management (C-level to engineering).

• Cloud governance, Azure Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF).

• DevOps, CI/CD.

• Cost and FinOps approaches: tagging/chargeback models, budget/alert concepts, reserved instances/savings plans vs. on-demand scenarios, sensitivity analyses.

• RBAC, "break glass" concepts.

• ACME / certificate automation.

• GitLab Runner concept in spokes, GitLab CI/CD pipelines for CAF landing zones.

• Co-built a full e-signature and identity verification platform in a two-person team with a senior backend developer, with no designer or PM: all product, UX, and scope decisions made jointly.

Next.js / TypeScript

Oracle Project Management and Automation

As part of the project, the operation of an Oracle infrastructure was automated by developing and enhancing Puppet modules and migrating existing Bash scripts to a standardized configuration management solution.

The aim of the project was to standardize and automate administrative processes, improve the maintainability of the Oracle platform, and increase the efficiency and traceability of infrastructure management through the use of Infrastructure as Code.

• Analysis and migration of existing Bash shell scripts to a Puppet-based automation solution
• Development and enhancement of Puppet modules for Oracle environments
• Automation of installation, configuration and operational processes using Infrastructure as Code
• Standardization and optimization of configuration management for Oracle systems
• Creation and maintenance of technical and operational documentation
• Planning, coordination and professional support during project implementation
• Operation and automation of Oracle systems on x86-based Linux server platforms
• Testing and quality assurance of the developed Puppet modules
• Analysis and resolution of technical errors as part of the automation and migration
• Close coordination with specialist departments and infrastructure teams to implement automation requirements

Technologies used: Puppet 7/8, SLES 15, Oracle 19, Oracle Grid, SVN, Windows Server, Confluence, VS Code, Ruby, Bash, Pass

• Development and introduction of operations processes
• Preparation of complete documentation packages (including incident management and operations support) to meet compliance requirements
• Introduction of a workshop on IaC (Infrastructure as Code)
• Technical consulting for the project security concept (ISMS)
• Installation and operation of Kubernetes clusters on AWS, on-prem, and Azure
• Hybrid cloud architecture design (on-prem, Hetzner, AWS)
• Analysis and troubleshooting of incidents and system outages
• Network adjustments for firewall rules, gateways, OpenVPN settings, and IPsec tunnels (pfSense)
• Technical consulting on Bitbucket, Jenkins, and GitLab CI/CD pipelines
• Consulting on Ansible deployments and infrastructure automation
• Consulting on building a scalable system in the cloud (AWS / Azure)
• Technologies / Tools: Ansible, Terraform, AWS, Azure, VPN, pfSense, Jenkins, Bitbucket, Kubernetes, GitLab Runner, ISMS, Golang, Prometheus, Grafana, S3, Lambda, RDS, ECS, Cognito, OIDC, Harbor, MinIO, Postgres, Redis, Keycloak, Ceph, Proxmox, CloudFormation, PostgreSQL, Flux CD, Hetzner, IONOS, Sonatype Nexus Repository, Entra ID, Dex IdP, Pulumi

Task:

• Design and build a proof of concept (PoC) for a future-proof virtualization platform, taking secure system architectures into account
• Assess the current state of existing infrastructures and develop selection and evaluation criteria for the right OS virtualization platform
• Carry out the requirements analysis and then create and prioritize tickets in the ticket system
• Complete and continuously update a tool evaluation matrix based on PoC results
• Support team knowledge building through clear documentation of the approach and results in Confluence
• Enterprise analysis of existing hardware (creating different BoMs)

Technologies: Vmware, Vmware Aria Operations, Osism, Canonical OpenStack, FishOs, Linux, Terraform, Ansible, Confluence, Alma

• 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)

• Adaptation, optimization, configuration, and administration of a multi-stage GitLab instance with over 250 users
• Setup, adaptation, expansion, and optimization of infrastructure, configuration, and monitoring
• Provisioning of services and handover to production
• System environment: DependencyTrack, GitLab, Grafana, Hedgedoc, Kubernetes, Oauth2 Proxy, Openstack, Prometheus, Syseleven

• PRISMA project
• Ansible automation
• Windows third-level support for Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows 2013, Windows 2016, Windows 2019

• Pioneering work in personalized AI: developing a framework for “Interactive Content” (RAG) for novels, lectures, expert debriefing
• Successful launch of Einbug, the Pantopia chatbot, with media coverage (SZ interview)
• Creating compelling AI personalities: AI blog ([link] 100% personalized learning environments, Perry Rhodan, among others.

• Identification of requirements (legal, organizational, and technical)
• Design of solution architectures
• Evaluation of concepts and technologies
• Preparation of decision templates
• Architectural Decision Records (ADR)
• Coordination of implementation
• Review of implementations
• Documentation