Software Composition Analysis Experts in Germany

Project: SCS (Settlement / Clearing Services)

Settlement platform serving multiple trading and clearing venues — counterparty risk safeguarding, settlement volume reduction, central risk management, and post-trade anonymity.

Technologies: Java 17, Spring Boot 3, Microservices, Spring Data JPA, SonarQube, Fortify (SCST), Mockito, Jenkins, OpenShift, Maven, Podman, GitHub, JIRA, Liquibase, Swagger, AMQP, Apache Camel, Terraform, PostgreSQL, Instana, Graylog.

• Identified and remediated CVEs in third-party libraries using SCA tooling, strengthening the security posture of production components.
• Maintained 90% code coverage with SonarQube, improving code quality and reducing production defects.
• Enabled mTLS for database authentication and message broker connections, enforcing encrypted, certificate-validated communication.
• Designed and deployed microservices with asynchronous, REST-based communication between components.
• Optimized a high-volume REST API (~200K requests) by reducing response time from 3s to 2s (33% improvement), boosting throughput and reliability under production load.
• Automated build and continuous integration pipelines using Maven and Jenkins.
• Orchestrated containerized workloads on Podman/OpenShift and governed schema evolution with Liquibase, ensuring reliable, repeatable deployments across all environments.
• Optimized Java code and implemented EHCache-based caching, improving application performance.
• Streamlined release management by governing application images, JAR versions, and dependencies through DBAG Artifactory, ensuring version consistency and audit traceability across environments

• Perform secure code reviews and provide secure-coding guidance across the application and platform architecture.
• Engineer infrastructure security and design security-monitoring architecture, incident-response playbooks and Security-by-Design controls.

• 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.

• Successful implementation of vulnerability management with DefectDojo
• Consulting and implementation of technical and process-related aspects of vulnerability management with DefectDojo
• Consulting on the implementation of a secure software development lifecycle
• Skills: Gitlab, DefectDojo, Vulnerability Management, SCA, SAST, DAST, Python, Kubernetes, ArgoCD, Docker, AWS, Azure, Whitesource/Mend, Greenbone

• Defined and executed a comprehensive security roadmap: integrated Shift-Left Security, CNAPP, and DevSecOps principles to streamline secure product development and reduce risk exposure.
• Established a robust threat modeling framework: embedded security into design processes, enabling early identification of vulnerabilities and reducing potential risks.
• Developed a scalable Vulnerability Management program: accelerated detection and remediation of new vulnerabilities, significantly shortening the risk response cycle.
• Enhanced cloud and container security: leveraged advanced tools such as Tetragon to achieve deeper visibility and implement a defense-in-depth strategy.
• Automated security controls within CI/CD pipelines: integrated security measures into the development lifecycle to maintain continuous delivery with robust safeguards.
• Championed cross-functional collaboration: partnered with developers and infrastructure teams to prioritize threats and align remediation efforts, fostering a unified security culture.
• Ensured regulatory compliance and audit readiness: collaborated closely with the InfoSec team to adhere to internal policies and successfully support audits for standards like PCI-DSS and SOC2.

• Maintained a SaaS billing platform on AWS as part of the Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team.
• Played a key role in an AWS cloud migration project, implementing Terraform (IaC), creating CI/CD processes and pipelines, hardening images, upgrading tool versions, and developing scripts.
• Wrote documentation.

AWS Cloud migration:

• Design and implement CI/CD for deploying AWS resources using GitLab CI, Terraform, and GitOps.
• Create and configure DevOps toolchain including Jenkins, Harbor, and Vault.
• Deploy billing application, microservices, and supporting infrastructure services to Nomad clusters.
• Re-designed TLS/mTLS certificate management using Vault and Lambda.

Security (Infrastructure Hardening & Patch Management & Vulnerability Scanning):

• Managed multiple AWS accounts for Consul/Nomad/Traefik clusters (10–20 EC2 instances/account, ASG) and DevOps toolchain accounts (Harbor, Jenkins, Vault).
• Created hardened AMIs via Packer based on CIS benchmarks for Nomad, Jenkins, Harbor, and Vault; deployed using Terraform.
• Integrated Trivy via Harbor plugin for container image scanning.
• Implemented strict AWS VPC security group rules.
• Developed and maintained patching process across environments using Qualys and Wiz.
• Deployed Qualys Cloud Agent to all EC2 instances, tracked CVEs and tested patches in lower environments before rollout.
• Automated patch deployment across all AWS accounts using Terraform and GitLab CI and verified patch compliance via Qualys/Wiz dashboards.