Proxmox Experts in Germany

• 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

• Analysis of requirements and the current situation
• Migration of an old domain structure and Tobit to Exchange 2019 with integration to MS365
• Evaluation of implementation paths and planning for securing sensitive data
• Planning regarding BSI basic protection, the German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG), and GDPR
• IT governance and IT security backtests
• Support with ERP setup and securing mail transfer
• Hyper-V 2016/2022, Microsoft Terminal Services Cluster, Microsoft Exchange 2019
• Office 365, Microsoft 365, Azure AD, Teams, Salesforce
• Cisco, Zyxel, and HP switches, Sophos firewalls/UTMs, SecurePoint
• Microsoft IIS 2022, IPv4/IPv6, Veeam, Wortmann online backup, NextCloud
• Services: DNS, DHCP, TCP/IP, subnetting, firewalling, routing, VoIP, Group Policy (GPO), SIEM, remote work, home office, high availability, failover, VLAN, PRTG

AI-supported development and PM acceleration with agentic workflows; deep reinforcement learning; fully automated 24/7 setup.

• 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

• Development of a SaaS platform for esports teams with roles, scheduling, statistics, and billing
• Planning and implementation of the architecture, external API integrations, and operations
• Stack: Laravel 13, React 19, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, Redis, and Stripe

• Expanding disk capacities
• Setting up and configuring new virtual machines
• Troubleshooting and resolution
• Synchronizing domain controllers
• Communicating with the business
• Creating and maintaining documentation

• Implementation of specified DevOps solutions to automate infrastructure (Terraform, Bicep, CloudFormation, Ansible) on-premises datacenter (Ovirt, Proxmox, Ceph Cluster, MinIO) and private cloud.
• Administration, configuration and implementation of CI/CD DevOps pipelines (GitLab, GitFlow) to support development process (Artifactory, Prometheus, Istio, service mesh, Helm Chart, OpenShift (Red Hat Enterprise) / Kubernetes cluster), Red Hat Satellite.
• Administration, setup, monitoring and patching of Linux infrastructure based on Red Hat Enterprise for Dev, Test and QA.
• Use of Scrum and Kanban methods.
• Administration, configuration and implementation of security standards for deploying on Dev, Test, QA and Prod stages of the new ePA applications.
• Development of new plugins and add-ons needed on current infrastructure.
• Database support.
• Data analytics support (Python, Spark, Pandas, Power BI, Splunk Enterprise).
• Implementation of best practices for DevSecOps and BizDevOps using GitOps (ArgoCD), Streamlit framework, Semaphore Ansible UI.
• Configuration and testing of iperf, uperf, sysbench using benchmark-operator for external source data and IoT/MDM devices, creating reports via ELK / OpenSearch.
• Building a new Databricks platform to collect and analyze big data from different sources and IoT devices into Hadoop framework (Python, Pandas, PySpark, Power BI, Apache Airflow).
• Building backend data aggregation and processing to automate configuration deployment between different OpenShift clusters and big data framework (Python, Pandas, PySpark, Apache Spark, PostgreSQL, Django 2, Ansible Automation, Jira JSM).
• Building a new ML pipeline platform using Kubeflow, TensorFlow, KServe.
• Data extraction, transformation and loading from different data sources including structured and unstructured data to analytic DWH / big data cluster using Python, Pandas, Polars, Power BI, Django backend and PostgreSQL.
• Setup of new DevOps Test and QA HashiCorp Vault cluster for PKI and IAM.
• Configuration and testing of automated patching based on CVSS score, SIEM-integrated CVEs.
• Use of Nexpose and InsightVM to scan vulnerability events in network, host, container and application.
• Design and implementation of secure and scalable AWS architectures including VPC, EC2, S3, RDS and Route53 and similar setups on Azure and GCP.
• Automated system provisioning and deployment using CloudFormation templates.
• Configuration of IAM roles, policies and permissions to ensure secure access control.
• Patch management, backup automation and disaster recovery setup on AWS infrastructure.
• Monitoring and optimization of system performance using AWS CloudWatch and AWS Trusted Advisor.
• Support of VMware services (vSphere, Aria, Horizon) and the virtual desktop environment.
• Development and maintenance of CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD and AWS CodePipeline with interface to Nutanix.
• Configuration of AWS CloudWatch to monitor application performance and system events.
• Planning and execution of migration of on-premises applications to AWS cloud platforms.
• Deployment of containerized applications using Docker and Kubernetes in AWS environments.
• Deployment of internal software packages between availability zones using AWS CodeDeploy.
• Building and deploying ML models using Scikit-learn, XGBoost and Spark MLlib including hyperparameter tuning, model evaluation and production deployment.

Self-employed consulting, implementation, and support of IT infrastructures with a focus on IT security, network and server administration, virtualization, backup & recovery, IT documentation, asset management, and business continuity management.

• IT security consulting and implementation of technical protective measures
• Windows server and client support, patch management, user support
• M365 – Entra ID – MS Azure administration
• Planning, installation, and operation of LAN, WAN, WLAN, and VLAN infrastructures, Cisco, HP, Netgear, Sophos, Securepoint
• Support of virtual systems based on Hyper-V, VMware, and Proxmox
• Backup and recovery concepts including test recovery, documentation, and handover
• Introduction and maintenance of IT documentation, asset management, and inventory tracking
• Implementation of measures related to IT baseline protection, emergency manuals, and BCM
• On-/offboarding concepts with a focus on permissions, devices, data access, and handover processes

Security awareness and practical sensitization of users and IT staff

• Responsible for Openshift/Kubernetes on-prem administration and developer support.
• Developed URP infrastructure automation with Python, Ansible, Kustomize and ArgoCD, Argo Workflow/Events stack.
• Wrote smoke and load tests for URP infrastructure utilizing Python, Kustomize and ApplicationSets.
• Helped to set up and deploy URP infrastructure in Google Cloud, GKE.
• Set up monitoring for URP and ArgoCD stack with Splunk Cloud.
• Performed system administration tasks across RedHat Linux, Kubernetes/Openshift, ArgoCD, GitLab, Bitbucket Enterprise, Kafka and MongoDB.

• 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...

• Analysis of the fiber optic market with a focus on FTTH
• Advising senior management on strategy planning for the next 10 years
• Reviewing product portfolios and services
• Identifying cost-saving opportunities
• Planning restructuring measures as part of a transformation program
• Designing a program structure "Fit For Profit" to implement the planned restructuring and meet strategic objectives

Infrastructure, automation, IT security

• Operation and modernization of business-critical Linux infrastructure for a public-sector client: RHEL migrations, Ansible automation, container rollout (since October 2025)
• Project lead for server upgrade from RHEL 7/8 to RHEL 9 in the financial sector: project management, stakeholder communication (May 2024 – Feb. 2025)
• Project support for IT security requirements in the financial sector: gap analyses, solution design with business units (March – May 2025)
• Setup of an IdM solution (FreeIPA/RHEL IdM) for a utility company (AT), including consulting and training (Apr. – Nov. 2023)
• IT infrastructure consulting for a research team: Proxmox, SSO architecture, data sovereignty, and local AI (since Feb. 2026)

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