PCI DSS Expert

• Standardization and further development
• Application monitoring
• Incident handling
• Change management
• Interface and integration operations
• Testing, acceptance and transition to operations

• Private Equity owned precision grinding machines for Auto, Military & Aerospace – 1200 Employees
• Acting as Interim Group CIO / CISO consolidating Global IT back to Europe – M&A consolidation
• Managed major Security event and post event cleanup – Reporting to regulators
• Performed Vendor & Contract Management – full assessment of capabilities
• Guided Infrastructure refresh & Security Hygiene assessments

As Germany’s only large integrated energy company, EnBW covers the entire value chain—from energy generation and distribution to serving customers. The company is expanding its renewable energy sources, working toward a socially responsible coal phase-out, and advancing key technologies such as the use of green hydrogen. A rapid energy transition and achieving climate neutrality by 2035 are priorities for EnBW.  Developing and implementing an end-to-end process view that takes both technical and organizational aspects into account  Ensuring end-to-end control of all IAM-related technical services  Establishing clear responsibilities and accountabilities across the IAM landscape  Working with various departments to identify and optimize an end-to-end architecture and act as the Single Point of Contact (SPoC) for Information Security  Introducing and monitoring governance policies to ensure compliance and security  Continuously improving IAM processes and systems through regular audits and service reviews  Taking part in external process audits as part of official audits against ISO standards  Further developing the policy that sets administrative requirements and procedures, and aligning it with administrative departments  Conceptually developing the KPI system for measuring process quality

• Goal/Motivation: PAYONE urgently needs a 360° view of its customers. PAYONE has not had an overarching master data strategy so far. It is not possible to identify customers across all relevant systems.

The organization should be enabled to identify customers across all relevant systems. Establishing the basis for master data management at PAYONE

• Challenge: Due to company acquisitions, the system landscape is very heterogeneous. The company is very dynamic and burdened with many system harmonization and integration projects, meaning resource shortages and changes in project priorities repeatedly make this an almost impossible task.

Due to BaFin findings, the project has a central task and role. The initial focus is on migrating all customers, including their AML/KYC data, from the master-data-leading backend systems to Salesforce. This is intended to resolve one of the largest findings and establish the relevant ODD/EDD processes.

In addition, customer data must be harmonized in Salesforce. Some customers were entered multiple times as a result of earlier migrations. The aim is for only one customer record to remain in Salesforce and for the relevant information from the backend systems to show which products the customer uses and in which processing systems they receive Payone services.

Project: ONE Customer

Budget: 1,5 Mio. €

Team: 10/30 employees (full-time/part-time); 4 vendors/providers

Integration: 8 (subsystems/interfaces)

Applications: Salesforce; SAP S4/HANA; in-house developments

Tools: MS Office; Jira, Confluence, Sharepoint

Methods: Hands-on; Agile (SAFe); Prince2

Carve-out and post-merger integration of two automotive engineering companies under Accursia Capital, 6 locations in Germany and Spain, 250+ employees after the carve-out. Reporting directly to the investor, with overall IT responsibility for both companies.

• Consolidation of the ERP landscape into one instance (replacement of SAP legacy)
• TISAX certification
• M365, identity and data center migration
• Replacement of end-of-life infrastructure
• Weekly investor reporting

Results:

• Critical infrastructure risk eliminated, backup and platform stabilized
• One IT organization established for both companies
• Weekly investor reporting successfully established

• Completed the integration of log sources into Microsoft Sentinel, including GCP workloads – centralized consolidation of all security-relevant events from Azure and GCP environments for complete end-to-end telemetry and comprehensive compliance evidence
• Developed custom rules and use cases based on the GFG Use-Case Library and the MITRE ATT&CK Matrix to cover company-specific threats and GFG-relevant scenarios with precise, mapped detection rules
• Tuned detection rules to minimize false positives, optimized detection thresholds, and modeled exceptions – enabling the SOC to work with relevant, prioritized alerts while reducing Mean Time to Detect/Respond
• Built SOAR capabilities in Sentinel by developing playbooks to automate recurring response processes such as containment, user and host isolation, and ticketing – shorter response times and 24/7 scalability
• Designed and built a log transformation solution to normalize and enrich incoming raw logs (GeoIP, CMDB, threat intelligence) and convert them into a consistent schema for high-performance KQL queries, use case logic, and correlations
• Managed Azure security through Azure Policies to enforce security and compliance standards, prevent drift, and continuously remediate deviations
• Operated the Defender XDR portal to link endpoint, identity, email, and SaaS signals with Sentinel findings, enable holistic incident triage, and orchestrate measures directly from XDR

Technologies: Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender XDR, Azure Policy, KQL, GCP, MITRE ATT&CK

As a Council Member at GLG (Gerson Lehrman Group), the world’s leading expert network, I provide organizations, investment firms, and consulting companies with expert discussions on demand – wherever specialized knowledge in information security, IT governance, and regulatory compliance is needed.

My assessments are based on many years of practical experience in highly regulated industries: from building and implementing information security management systems (ISMS according to ISO 27001), IT risk and vulnerability management, and business continuity (ISO 22301) to the practical implementation of European regulations such as DORA, NIS2, BAIT, and the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA).

The cooperation is project- and discussion-based. I provide decision-makers with a practical perspective gained from real-world experience on cyber risks, security governance, and operational resilience – exactly when it is needed.

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.

• Built and scaled a 35-member engineering team (Core Engineering, QA, and SRE) in 12 months, accelerating Midnight’s blockchain development on Parity’s Substrate framework.
• Defined strategic direction and aligned technology development with business objectives as a key member of the leadership.
• Optimized software development processes and implemented agile methodologies, enhancing operational efficiency and code security.
• Delivered projects in a fast-paced startup environment through effective project management and resource allocation.

• Led discovery phase and POC for Shopware to Shopify Plus migration across EMEA markets, evaluating platform suitability, technical architecture, and multi-brand/multi-country capabilities against business requirements.
• Designed reference architecture for Shopify Plus implementation incorporating headless front-end patterns (Vue.js, Nuxt.js), CMS integration (Magnolia), and Azure middleware (APIM, Functions, Logic Apps, Service Bus) for 11 EMEA markets.
• Defined migration strategy analyzing data mapping, cutover approach, and zero-downtime deployment patterns using Varnish caching, GitOps pipelines, and CI/CD orchestration across six vendor teams.
• Architected multi-tenant Shopify Plus governance model with centralized admin, localized storefront customization, and compliance controls (GDPR, data residency).
• Prototyped AI-driven search optimization (LLM.txt, JSON-LD) for product discoverability in Google AI results, demonstrating post-launch performance opportunities.
• Defined EMEA expansion roadmap for 15+ markets through C-level strategic workshops, identifying phased rollout, market-specific configurations, and resource requirements.
• Tech Stack: React, Nuxt.js, Vue.js, Magnolia CMS, Shopware, Shopify Plus, Azure (APIM, Functions, Logic Apps, Service Bus, Front Door), Varnish, SAP, MS Dynamics, Docker, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions, PostgreSQL, Kafka

CRM and revenue platform managing billing and subscription workflows.

• Scaled payments infrastructure across data products, direct debit expansion and automated abuse prevention, generating $416K in annualized operational savings ($8K/week) by eliminating redundant gateway calls.
• Owned backlog and sprint execution for autonomous checkout abuse detection pipelines, designing real-time risk guardrails and velocity heuristics that blocked card testing attacks.
• Architected enterprise billing migrator user stories and data reconciliation mechanisms, achieving zero-downtime subscription state transitions and cutting $60K in infrastructure overhead.
• Expanded European direct debit (SEPA) payment capabilities, managing cross-squad API dependencies and automated webhook error-handling to eliminate checkout friction.

• Temporary cover for an absent non-financial risk officer.
• Operational scope: incident intake and follow-up, internal control testing, and first-line reporting for the Belgian entity.

• Lead Product Owner role for the BFSG pilot journey “Search and Book” across web and app, focusing on digital accessibility, UX, conversion, and regulatory implementation.
• Created and prioritized the product backlog; derived user stories and acceptance criteria from legal standards (BFSG, WCAG 2.1)
• Developed a product vision that combines digital accessibility, user-centered UX, and conversion optimization for the booking journey
• Cross-stream release management and quality assurance across the entire web and app area, including go/no-go decisions, rollout, and user acceptance tests
• Coordinated and prioritized with Legal, Compliance, external BFSG consultants, UX, Development, Marketing, and Management
• Conducted user research as well as usability and accessibility tests (including screen readers and keyboard navigation) and prototyping with UX/UI
• Defined KPIs to measure accessibility, conversion, and user guidance
• BFSG pilot journey “Search and Book” successfully delivered: first accessible features rolled out and the foundation for a long-term BFSG-compliant booking journey established
• Established sustainable process integration through close collaboration with consulting partners and internal teams

In my role as Senior Cloud DevOps Architect for BP, an oil and gas company, I had the mission to migrate the Electric Vehicle Charging platform of the EV Division from on-premises and Azure to AWS cloud, resulting in a hybrid multi-cloud, multi-tenant SaaS solution.

Deployment with Kubernetes for the application layer meant provisioning Kubernetes clusters managed by EKS and AKS, with a focus on integrating them into a multi-tenant environment. This integration was achieved by using Kubernetes namespaces and access controls to ensure data isolation and privacy enforcement.

In the database layer, we chose an RDS instance with PostgreSQL to support the backend infrastructure of our applications. Tenants shared the same RDS instance, but each had a dedicated schema.

To ingest near real-time data from physical charge points (CPOs), as IoT devices, via the OCPI protocol, we ran into significant delays with batch processing. As a result, we built a real-time streaming data pipeline using Apache Kafka, while prioritizing an event-driven architecture.

Led collaboration across multiple internal teams, external vendors, cloud providers, and on-site partners to integrate over five systems into a unified solution.

Achievements:

• Successfully designed and implemented hybrid multi-cloud solutions, integrating multiple cloud platforms (AWS, Azure) with on-premises infrastructure, using Site-to-Site VPNs, Firewalls, and Load Balancing.
• Led the migration of on-premises infrastructure to multi-cloud, multi-tenant infrastructure, resulting in 30% faster processing times.
• Migrated workloads from VMware and Hyper-V environments to cloud-based VMs, leveraging cloud-native services to optimize performance, cost efficiency, and scalability.
• Designed a multi-tenant Kubernetes platform leveraging the Kubernetes ecosystem, using Karpenter for dynamic EC2 node provisioning, KEDA for event-driven pod autoscaling (e.g., Kafka message lag), and Rancher for centralized monitoring of multiple clusters (EKS, AKS, or on-prem K8s), replacing Microsoft-centric Azure Arc management service.
• Designed and implemented Python-based FastAPI microservices as part of the EV core-backend on AWS EKS application layer, powering data ingestion and customer analytics pipelines.
• Developed asynchronous, event-driven APIs (Python-FastAPI) for real-time integration with CPOs, supporting OCPI 2.3 and OICP protocols.
• Designed and implemented a secure, production-grade Azure Databricks platform using Terraform, ensuring scalability and cost efficiency.
• Migrated on-premises ERP to a hybrid Dynamics 365 architecture with ERP hosted locally and CRM running in Azure, integrated via Azure Arc.
• Automated CI/CD pipelines for Databricks notebooks and jobs using GitHub Actions & Databricks CLI, reducing deployment time. Reduced infrastructure provisioning time by 70% by automating cloud resource deployment with GitOps.
• Ensured compliance with internal audit and data governance standards (GDPR) through OAuth2/OIDC-based authentication and fine-grained role-based access controls.
• Developed a Zero Trust security model, enforcing least-privilege access and microsegmentation, enhancing security posture and compliance with GDPR and NIST.
• Built interactive analytics dashboards in Amazon QuickSight, integrating data from S3 and Redshift to deliver real-time business insights and visualizations with embedded access for multi-tenant users.
• Led cloud security assessments and full-lifecycle cybersecurity integration during M&A, covering AWS, Azure, IAM (Entra ID), and data protection, while aligning security posture with NIST, ISO 27001, and GDPR across hybrid and cloud-native environments.
• Reduced cloud costs by 64% for a client's dev environment by implementing automated start/stop schedules for EC2 and RDS instances via AWS CDK with EventBridge Scheduler or AWS Systems Manager.

Tech stack:

• Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, AWS CDK, Ansible.
• Containers: Kubernetes on EKS, AKS, Docker.
• Streaming Data Processing: Kafka to Confluent Cloud, after AWS MSK.
• Frontend: TypeScript, React, NextJS, Hooks, Styled Components.
• Backend: Python with FastAPI, also Node.js with NestJS.
• Database: Aurora on PostgreSQL with TypeORM, RDS on SQL Server, Azure Databricks full setup and administration, ETL Pipelines.
• CI/CD and GitOps: GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, ArgoCD.
• Monitoring and Observability: Prometheus and Grafana.
• Virtualization: Hyper-V, VMware Cloud on AWS, Azure Migrate.
• ERP Systems: Odoo, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central on Azure, integrated with Azure Arc.
• Networking: Site-to-Site VPNs, AWS Direct Connect, Azure ExpressRoute, Firewalls (AWS Network Firewall, Azure Firewall).
• Security: IAM, NIST Framework, Zero Trust Security, AWS WAF, AWS Shield, GuardDuty.