OpenVMS Experts in Germany

• Deployment and scaling of existing ML initiatives, including demand and cash flow forecasts.
• Building robust monitoring with mlflow for data stability, model performance, and drift detection, as well as implementing additional ML use cases.
• Further development of an Agentic AI chatbot for transparent and easy-to-understand model explanations.

• Regulated environment within a German banking group (approx. 8,500 employees, hybrid cloud strategy).

• Responsible for operating, provisioning, and continuously securing business-critical platforms – including a GenAI chat application, a big data/AI platform, and data science workspaces based on Azure Virtual Desktops and VMs. Ownership of Azure DevOps projects for ShaiHulud and React2Shell, as well as BSI alerts – Security Operations improvements across the SDLC.

• Deployment responsibility for the GenAI chat application, big data/AI platform (BDAI), and data science workspaces (AVD/VM-based) in the respective landing zones.

• Deployment & release management: end-to-end responsibility for deploying portal and service applications across multiple Azure landing zones, including technical approvals, compliance with development team deployment guidelines, and ensuring ITIL-based change and release processes via ServiceNow.

• Azure landing zones & network architecture: design, provisioning, and operation of Azure landing zones for 3-tier web applications with enhanced network segmentation, VNet peering, hub-and-spoke architectures, private endpoints, and firewall integration across separate subscriptions and tenants.

• Azure DevOps governance & operations: ownership of the Azure DevOps organization, including projects, repositories, and CI/CD pipelines; implementation of governance requirements such as branch policies, approval gates, permission models, and audit-ready operating structures.

• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform): design, implementation, and operation of a modular Terraform architecture for standardized cloud infrastructure deployment, including state management, provider versioning, reusability, and policy-as-code approaches.

• CI/CD pipeline engineering: design, operation, and optimization of complex YAML-based CI/CD pipelines with multi-stage deployments, template standardization, self-hosted agents, integrated secret management, and automated quality and security checks.

• Git migration & platform consolidation: planning and execution of repository and pipeline migration from Azure DevOps to GitLab CI/CD, including automated scripts, full Git history transfer, pipeline porting, and platform consolidation.

• Container & platform operations (AKS): operation and security assessment of containerized workloads on Azure Kubernetes Service, centralization of on-premises container registries for ACR.

• OpenShift (OCP) security reviews: security assessment of code baselines, build pipelines, and deployment processes for on-premises OpenShift clusters with critical applications, and derivation of specific hardening recommendations.

• Shift-left security & DevSecOps transformation: introduction of a company-wide shift-left approach for early security integration in development and deployment processes, enabling developers to perform self-led security checks and sustainably reduce vulnerabilities before production (IDE integrations, pre-commit hooks, local scanners).

• Software supply chain security: analysis and mitigation of supply chain risks in NPM- and Yarn-based applications through dependency audits, CI/CD pipeline hardening, token rotation, and restriction of risky build and lifecycle mechanisms.

• Frontend & framework security (React / Next.js): security assessment and coordination of critical vulnerability remediation across platform applications and web frameworks, including coordination and complementary technical mitigations with all teams following BSI alerts.

• Software composition analysis (SCA): introduction and operation of automated vulnerability scans for container images, pipelines/artifacts, and third-party dependencies, including SBOM exports within CI/CD pipelines.

• SAST/DAST integration: design and piloting of static and dynamic application security tests in close collaboration with security architecture and development teams, for continuous improvement of code and runtime security, and establishing operational acceptance tests.

• Artifact & registry consolidation: analysis and consolidation of all package and container repositories for service applications and AKS workloads, aiming for a centralized, secured registry strategy with centralized vulnerability scanning and governance.

• Dependency-Track & SBOM strategy: advising the compliance board on introducing a central SBOM and vulnerability management platform to increase enterprise-wide dependency transparency and accelerate CVE response capability.

• CI/CD pipeline hardening: security analysis and cleanup of the existing pipeline landscape by removing unused pipelines, improving secrets hygiene, implementing least-privilege principles, and isolating build agent environments.

• Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) optimization: analysis and tuning of existing Azure WAF rules (OWASP Top 10 Core Rule Set, DSR/SDC, custom rules) to defend against known vulnerabilities and exploit patterns, including reducing false positives and improving threat detection.

• Documentation & stakeholder communication: creating and maintaining technical documentation, runbooks, and architecture overviews in Jira and Confluence, as well as active knowledge transfer between operations, development, security, and compliance stakeholders.

• Situation: Increasing demand for privacy-compliant AI solutions for clients in the KRITIS and mid-market sector that need to analyze sensitive media content (audio, video, documents) without sending data to public cloud LLMs.

• Task: Design, deployment, and secure operation of a fully self-hosted AI infrastructure including a custom-built digital management platform for automated media analysis.

• Action: Architected and implemented a multi-tier platform on hardened Proxmox infrastructure with frontend (Nuxt 3, Vue 3, TypeScript, Tailwind 4), backend (Laravel 13, PHP 8.4, Sanctum), data storage (PostgreSQL 16, MongoDB 7), caching/queuing (Redis 7, Laravel Queue), AI workers (Python 3.11, Whisper, DeepFace, Librosa), scheduling (Laravel Scheduler/Cron), and local LLMs (Gemma, DeepSeek, Qwen, Mistral, LLaMA, Phi) via OpenWebUI with segmented network access, API hardening, and audit logging following BSI recommendations.

• Result: Fully GDPR-compliant, on-premises AI platform with zero data leakage to third parties.

• Task: Overall responsibility as an external Head of Cyber Security / CISO-as-a-Service for the design, implementation, and continuous improvement of ISMS according to ISO 27001, BSI IT-Grundschutz, and NIS2.

• Action: Built and managed Cyber Defense Centers (CDC) with SOC operations, integrated SIEM solutions (Splunk, Graylog), established risk-based vulnerability management (Qualys, Nessus, OpenVAS), and conducted regular infrastructure, application, and physical penetration tests.

• Result: Audit-ready ISMS for multiple clients and a 60% reduction in critical vulnerabilities within 90 days.

• Task: Design and execution of NIS2 assessments and operational roll-out plans for KRITIS operators.

• Action: Developed an online assessment tool for automated identification of individual weakness profiles, implemented ISMS optimizations, penetration testing, awareness programs, GRC suite deployment, and delivered C-level presentations.

• Result: Accelerated the consulting process by 50% and successfully prepared multiple clients for NIS2 compliance.

• Task: Incident commander for crisis response, forensics, and business recovery in ransomware attacks and APT campaigns.

• Action: Coordinated with state and federal police (LKA, BKA), performed forensic analysis (OSForensics, Wireshark, Kali Linux), executed disaster recovery and BCM strategies, and developed BTC extortion response strategies.

• Result: 100% recovery rate within defined RTO windows and sustainable post-incident security architectures.

• Action: Planned, built, and operated a hardened multi-VM infrastructure (Proxmox, 15+ VMs) with web and mail servers, Graylog, OPNsense firewalls, CRM/ERP and LLM instances, network segmentation, DDoS mitigation, automated patch management, and backup strategies.

• Result: >99.5% uptime over 20+ years and zero compromises.

• Action: Designed coordinated phishing campaigns with five levels of difficulty, developed e-trainings and webinars in a PDCA cycle, and led red and blue teams.

• Result: Phishing click rate reduced from 35% to under 5% within three campaign cycles.

• Development and introduction of operational processes
• Preparation of complete documentation packages (including emergency management and operations) to meet compliance requirements
• Introduction of a workshop on IaC (Infrastructure as Code)
• Professional consulting for the project's security concept (ISMS)
• Installation and operation of Kubernetes clusters on AWS, on-prem, and Azure
• Design of hybrid cloud architecture (on-prem, Hetzner, AWS)
• Analysis and resolution of incidents and system outages
• Network changes to firewall rules, gateways, OpenVPN settings, and IPsec tunnel (pfSense)
• Professional 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

• Architected and deployed end-to-end machine learning pipelines across classification and prediction datasets, ensuring robustness and reproducibility through MLOps best practices.
• Contributed directly to LLM model output accuracy improvement by designing and engineering specialised prompts grounded in end-to-end ML and SciML pipeline logic.
• Developed training data for large language models by formulating coding problems that models could not resolve and subsequently documenting the correct solutions.

• Optimization of the transmission media of the data links in the Ruhr area
• Configuration/expansion of switches and routers for an autonomous system AS
• Improve the network protocols used Layer 2/3 (OSI model), RSTP, broadcast, etc.
• Laying cables, crimping, antennas, routers, switches
• Maintenance, expansion, selection and prioritization of troubleshooting measures for network monitoring (PRTG, The Dude)
• Organization and new connection of another BGP peering, data center, NGN fiber optic
• VPN IPSec site connections for 6 sites with PFSense, Fritzbox
• Configuration of WLAN devices (Mikrotik, UBNT

Label: TCP/IP, VLAN, BGP, OSPF, MPLS, VPLS, routing protocols, WLAN, EoIP, PPPoE, routing, SNMP, DHCP, DNS, NAT, native IP, VLAN, Ethernet, VoIP., switches and routers from: Nortel, Cisco, MikroTik, UBNT., network management systems: The Dude, PRTG, UISP

• Consulting and project management to build an AI-based automation platform for market data analysis
• Automated testing of financial data
• Market data automation with Python and N8N
• AI data integration and AI learning
• Use of Ollama and Qwen
• Data organization and database management

• Sourcing contractors, temp labour and direct-search suppliers
• Advisor to procurement and HR on a change project

• Assessment of a modernization concept for IT infrastructures including client workstations
• Development of an alternative concept focusing on data sovereignty and reducing provider dependencies
• Selection of suitable alternative open-source products and solutions
• Design of a proof of concept approach for incremental evaluation of the options

• Leading the subproject Test & Acceptance & Quality Assurance
• Project/program management according to Prince2
• Create and update subproject plan
• Resource management
• Creating and carrying out tests, creating tests in Azure DevOps, MS Dynamics etc.
• Process modeling
• Documenting project progress with PowerPoint and SÖREN (in-house development)
• Acceptance of the respective tests by the end customer
• Monitoring and reporting for the subproject
• Budget: N/A
• Team: 4 people

• Technical leadership and architecture for enterprise clients (including LR Health & Beauty, Deutsche Bahn, Trusted Shops)
• Cloud migration, microservices architectures, CI/CD optimization

• Agile project "PEPSi annual vacation planning MVP Lite" (digitalization project).
• Definition of state transitions for the JUP Lite functionality.
• Creation of user stories for login/logout and registration.
• Quality assurance of the business-side concept.
• Preliminary analysis for the transformation from the old PersPlan to DigiPEP.
• Tools used: Signavio, MS Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint), Jira, Confluence, Mural, Miro, Conceptboard, MS Teams, Mattermost.

• Manage and coordinate site design, deployment, new Core/DWDM implementation, and optimization of a robust and scalable fiber optic network infrastructure
• Create high-level design (HLD) and low-level design (LLD) documents for core and aggregation network
• Define scope of network elements and establish operational and deployment guidelines
• Determine core-site strategy, integrate voice and ISP systems, and swap core components of 60 existing sites
• Develop site design, execute proof of concept, and deploy additional core sites

• Design, planning and execution of complex acceptance tests for a document exchange platform for the German justice authorities.
• Validation of decrypted and certificate-based message exchange via web platform, mobile app, and Java API.
• Documentation of test cases, execution steps, and test results.
• Technologies: Windows 11/10, Ubuntu, iOS, Android, Bash for Windows, Java 17, IntelliJ, Git, Jira, Confluence, Citrix Server, xJustiz standard implementation, specific justice software.