Software-Defined Networking Experts in Germany
from over 15,000 CVs with precise AI matchingHire experts who design programmable network fabrics, automate traffic policies and integrate OpenFlow, controllers and cloud infrastructure. FRATCH connects you with vetted, available freelancers whose skills match your project quickly and precisely.
Meet FRATCH Experts in Germany, who have recently used Software-Defined Networking
Rudolf E.
Last position:
Datacenter Engineer, Network & Security Administrator at International insurance group
Operation and further development of the network and security infrastructure.
Monitoring, analysis and resolution of network and security incidents.
Cross-department collaboration with other specialist teams for operations, further development and reporting.
Firewall vulnerability analysis.
Firewall rule approvals.
Troubleshooting IP communication issues in the network and firewall infrastructure.
Security-critical IT infrastructure, processing of personal data, compliance with legal regulations.
Products: Palo Alto Networks Firewalls, Cisco ACI, Checkpoint Firewalls, F5
Technologies: SDN, SDWAN, Cisco EPIC, Cisco ACI
Waseem S.
Last position:
Solution Architect / Subject Matter Expert at FRMCS terminal device manufacturer
Participation in the EU-funded MORANE-2 project to validate the Future Railway Mobile Communication System (FRMCS) in real-life use cases: creation of the requirement specifications for TOBA as well as the associated test specifications.
Technologies: 5GS (Radio & Core), FRMCS, MCx (MCPTT, MCData, MCVideo), MC Gateway UE, MCx Priority/Security/QoS Management, ETCS, SIP, IMS
Farah S.
Last position:
Management Consultant & Interim Executive at Freelancer
- Interim & Business Management: Strategic consulting and operational leadership of business units and large projects with a focus on profitability (P&L), growth, and portfolio development.
- Business Case & Strategy: Development of complex business models (e.g. 5G campus networks, platform business) and execution of strategic market studies for international clients.
- People & Leadership: Many years of experience in disciplinary leadership and development of large teams (>100 employees), building competence centers, and coaching managers in agile environments.
- Partner & Vendor Ecosystems: Management and negotiation of high-value framework agreements (T&M, fixed price) as well as steering multinational supplier and partner relationships.
- End-to-End Project Governance: Responsibility for the full lifecycle management of large technical projects (mobile core network, integration, rollout) while meeting the highest quality and security standards.
Enrique G.
Last position:
Security Architect at Capgemini
I implemented a Zero-Trust architecture for robust, military-grade maritime container mini data centers based on VMware & Tanzu to support containerized GIS workloads for ground forces. The main focus was on securing communications, workload protection, and data access in contested electronic battle environments affected by jamming, interception, signal manipulation, and constantly changing operational conditions. I designed and architected use cases so that every element of workload, identity, and system could continue to operate independently and securely even in degraded or disrupted scenarios. In parallel, I defined the enterprise and solution security architecture with LeanIX, Bizzdesign, and HOPEX as enterprise architecture, repository, and governance platforms to maintain architecture inventory, relationships, traceability, target pictures, and security governance in complex environments. For the architectural designs, I used Sparx Enterprise Architect to describe formal architecture views, interfaces, trust boundaries, and system architecture in both IT and OT environments. IriusRisk was used for threat modeling of the solution to identify architecture-driven risks, derive security requirements, and detect countermeasures and design gaps directly from the solution models. Risk and compliance management was supported with Archer. Architecture decisions, control gaps, and operational risks were translated into controlled governance and auditable compliance measures. For documentation, collaboration, and visual design, I used Confluence to maintain Architecture Decision Records, Security Blueprints, and workflows. I used Lucidchart and draw.io to create design artifacts tailored to stakeholders. I also defined OT security concepts with support from electrical and mechanical engineers in the areas of oil, vehicle onboard systems, rail, power plants, pharma, gas turbines, and nuclear technology. I created the end-to-end OT security strategy, starting with global policy, developed into standards and procedures, and finally aligned with Bell-LaPadula, Purdue Model, SABSA, TOGAF ADM, CENELEC 50701, IEC 62443, and NIST standards. In addition, I worked with engineering team leads to identify critical KBP assets and place them under protective measures that segmented SCADA, PLC, and HMI assets. I drove collaboration between Security, IT, and OT teams to create standardized workflows and use cases for the OT security solution catalog, while integrating Defense-in-Depth and Zero-Trust principles into operational environments. A key part of my work was integrating multidisciplinary engineering, security, and operations stakeholders into a unified security blueprinting strategy and ensuring that architecture, threat modeling, governance, and documentation were technically strong and operationally practical.
Mahmoud T.
Last position:
Strategy Consultant, Organizational Developer at Netcom BW / EnBW
- 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
Taner M.
Last position:
Founder at FixHub
- System design for problem solving and task allocation for demand infrastructures using modern enterprise solutions and SDLC principles
- SaaS and PaaS development, problem solving, and cloud computing
- Infrastructure-as-code implementations for development, Q&A, and production environments
- Terraform, AWS, Azure, GCP, MongoDB, OpenStack, Cisco, OpenShift
Lothar H.
Last position:
Solution Manager for PoC investigation and for replacing and refining an existing cloud and IoT power plant control system at Shell AG and NEXT Kraftwerke GmbH
- Investigating the PoC and replacing and refining an existing cloud and IoT power plant control solution for certificate management of renewable energy plants (solar, wind, biomass, etc.) for the largest European renewable energy network operator, including examining the field IoT devices and their integration and network connections, aiming for automated PKI key management.
- Messaging with Kubernetes for large API-connected enterprise applications
- Risk and attack vector analysis, software quality & bug assessments
- Agile workload scheduling via Jira & Confluence
- Evaluation of pub/sub message streams for MQ and Kafka.
- Various tests with “best design approaches” for resilience patterns like circuit breaker designs, throughput measurement and monitoring, bulkhead governors – for robust EA design
- Integration of API management with IBM's API Connect to Kubernetes for platform-agnostic microservices API management designs. Google Apigee
- Solution health check approaches for load burst situations + remedy
- Research and evaluation of potential sub-service providers in the coordinating role as solution manager. CIS20 controls.
- DREAD and STRIDE security assessments.
Tony R.
Last position:
Network Expert at Self-employed
- Consulting and execution of migration from Cisco AireOS to Cisco IOS-XE controller
- Solution design
- Configuration and staff training
- Products: Catalyst Center, Cisco controllers and IOS and COS access points, 9800-40, 5520, 8510, 9120, 9136, 9166, Catalyst switches, Aruba Clearpass
- Keywords: Tags, profiles, SSIDs, 802.1X authentication, captive portal, Identity PSK (iPSK), VLANs, troubleshooting, automation, RESTCONF, NETCONF, YANG
Tom H.
Last position:
Network Architect / System Engineer at Teleperformance
Professional focus: Fortinet rollout / site standardization / cloud / ISP migration
- Network analysis, design and optimization, change
- ISP changes
- Commissioning of service providers and decentralized IT support teams
- Setting up a central management platform
- Routing optimization for dynamic routing
- Optimizing and creating firewall rules
- AWS connection / design
- MS Azure connection / design
Technologies / tools: Fortigate, Palo Alto, WAN, SDN WAN, VPN, BGP, OSFP, Fortimanager, Panorama, Meraki, Alcatel, AWS, MS Azure, Network Architecture
Andreas A.
Last position:
Project Manager for Network and Infrastructure Project Migration EU/US/MEX at Klöckner & Co SE
- Implementation of a Network Access Control (NAC) security system at 106 locations in the USA, Mexico, and three European countries to safeguard facilities against cyberattacks.
- Management of infrastructure renewal in the core network in the USA and Mexico, transitioning to a new hardware provider.
- Optimization of LAN, WAN, and WLAN infrastructure, including division of network topology into dedicated VLAN segments for IT and OT separation.
- Development of project scope definition considering technical and organizational business requirements.
- Integration of local IT resources and external suppliers to capture functional, temporal, and financial requirements.
- Specification of work packages for US/EU NAC system implementation and modernization of the US core network.
- Acquisition of necessary approvals for project execution and budgeting from the board.
- Creation of rollout plans, inventory data collection, data validation, and drafting detailed project definitions.
- Development of a central project control application.
- Execution of pilot implementations to test developed solutions.
Stephan K.
Last position:
Migration Coordination at ITZBund
- Analysis and assessment of government business processes with regard to migration capability
- Definition and preparation of the technical framework conditions in the new master data center
- Development and optimization of migration procedures and processes
- Transformation of existing solutions to new technical standards (technology refresh)
- Coordination of architecture and technical cross-cutting topics
Tan P.
Last position:
DevOps Engineer in the DevOps Team at Rise-World
- 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.
Martin F.
Last position:
IT Security Consultant at Freelance
Mohamed A.
Last position:
Senior Multi-Cloud Solution Architect at 35X GmbH
- Analyze of customer’s requirements and design architectural solutions for customer projects
- Design and implementation of cloud infrastructure and services: AWS, Azure and OpenStack
- Consulting for cloud architectures and operating concepts
- Data Center migration accompaniment and coordination with developers and Stakeholders
Hans K.
Last position:
Senior IT-Operations Specialist at Carl Zeiss Digital Innovation
- Technical and strategic support for the task force to build a globally available service unit focused on Microsoft Azure Cloud under the Follow the Sun principle and SAFe
Discover over 15,000 top freelancers
Statistics of experts using Software-Defined Networking
Aggregated from the professional profiles of matched freelancers.
Experience
26 years
Position duration
2.4 years
Positions per freelancer
16
Top business areas
Information Technology, Project Management, Operations
Top industries
Information Technology, Telecommunication, Banking and Finance
Certification focus areas
Information Technology, Project Management, Accounting
Bachelor's degree or higher
85%
Master's degree or higher
62%
Doctorate
15%
Certifications per freelancer
7
Most common languages
German, English, Spanish
Speak two or more languages
100%
Based on our profile pool as of 19 Sep 2026.
Daily rate distribution
The chart shows how the daily rates of freelancers in this technology in Germany are distributed, based on recent contracts on our platform. Each bar covers a rate range — its height shows how many freelancers charge within that range.
Average rates of experts in Germany using Software-Defined Networking
Rates are based on recent contracts and do not include FRATCH margin.
The average daily rate is the mean of all daily rates from recent contracts of comparable freelancers on our platform.
The median daily rate is the middle value of all daily rates — half of comparable freelancers charge less, half charge more. Unlike the average, it is barely affected by outliers.
Calculated based on our freelancers’ daily rates as of 19 Sep 2026. Actual rates may vary depending on seniority level, experience, skill specialization, project complexity, and engagement length.
Software-Defined Networking experts industry focus
See which industries our matched freelancers work in most often — every figure is calculated live from the freelancers on FRATCH.
- Information Technology (100%)
- Telecommunication (65%)
- Banking and Finance (53%)
- Manufacturing (53%)
- Government and Administration (47%)
- Automotive (41%)
- Energy (35%)
- Insurance (35%)
Please note that freelancers can work across multiple industries, so percentages overlap.
About the technology
What SDN does
Software-Defined Networking, commonly called SDN, separates network control from packet forwarding. Centralized or distributed controllers define policies through software, while switches apply those decisions across physical, virtual and cloud environments. This makes complex networks easier to program, observe and change.
Systems it supports
SDN is used to build adaptable data center fabrics, campus networks, wide area networks and telecom infrastructure. It supports segmentation, service chaining, traffic engineering and policy-based access. Network virtualization can create logical environments without changing every underlying device.
Ecosystem and tooling
Professionals may work with OpenFlow, NETCONF, REST APIs, gNMI and vendor controller interfaces. Common surroundings include Kubernetes networking, Open vSwitch, Linux, EVPN, VXLAN, BGP and cloud networking services. Strong specialists understand both controller logic and the switching, routing and security layers beneath it.
When companies need specialists
Companies often bring in freelance expertise when a network must become programmable or when automation has to replace manual configuration. Typical assignments include:
- Designing controller-based network architecture
- Migrating from legacy switching to an SDN fabric
- Automating configuration, segmentation and policy rollout
- Connecting data centers, clouds and security services
Delivery and collaboration
A project may require discovery, architecture, proof of concept, rollout and operational handover. Experts define failure domains, test controller resilience and document rollback paths before production changes. In Germany, remote collaboration often works well for design and automation; on-site access can still matter for hardware migrations and regulated environments.
What strong experts bring
The best professionals connect high-level intent with reliable packet flows. They can troubleshoot controller decisions, routing behavior, latency and failures across heterogeneous equipment instead of treating the controller as a black box. Look for clear diagrams, repeatable automation, security awareness and evidence of safe changes in live networks.
Frequently asked questions
Before you brief your next project: the most common questions about Software-Defined Networking.
Software-Defined Networking is used to control network behavior through software policies rather than configuring every device independently. Companies apply it to data centers, campus networks, WANs, telecom environments, segmentation and automated traffic management.
SDN separates control decisions from packet forwarding and exposes programmable interfaces for automation. Traditional management often relies more heavily on device-by-device configuration, while SDN can provide a shared policy view across many switches and routers.
SDN and network virtualization are related but not identical. SDN governs how network behavior is controlled and automated; virtualization creates logical networks or services over physical infrastructure, and the two are frequently used together.
A strong SDN freelancer usually understands routing and switching, Linux, APIs, infrastructure automation and network security. Experience with BGP, EVPN, VXLAN, Open vSwitch, Kubernetes or cloud networking can be important depending on the project.
Software-Defined Networking projects need a specialist who has worked with the relevant controllers, protocols and hardware or cloud environment. A proof of concept may need narrower expertise, while a production migration calls for experience with resilience, observability, testing and rollback planning.
SDN design, controller development, automation and documentation can often be handled remotely with secure access and a well-defined lab. On-site work may be needed for cabling, hardware replacement, maintenance windows or environments that restrict remote access; German or English collaboration should be agreed early.
A capable SDN professional can explain control-plane behavior, forwarding paths, failure handling and operational trade-offs in clear terms. Ask for an architecture example, test strategy, automation approach and plan for reverting changes without exposing confidential client information.
OpenFlow is a protocol associated with early SDN controller-to-switch communication. It remains useful for understanding SDN concepts, but modern projects may rely more on vendor APIs, NETCONF, REST interfaces, gNMI, intent-based systems or controller-specific mechanisms.
The average hourly rate of freelancers in Germany who have used Software-Defined Networking in their recent projects is 114 €, which corresponds to a daily rate of about 914 € based on an 8-hour working day.
Of the freelancers in Germany who have used Software-Defined Networking in their recent projects, 85% hold at least a Bachelor's degree, 62% hold at least a Master's degree, and 15% hold a doctorate.
On average, freelancers in Germany who have used Software-Defined Networking in their recent projects have 26 years of professional experience, with a single engagement typically lasting around 2.4 years.
The most common languages among freelancers in Germany who have used Software-Defined Networking in their recent projects are German (100%), English (100%), and Spanish (35%).
The most common industries among freelancers in Germany who have used Software-Defined Networking in their recent projects are Information Technology (100%), Telecommunication (65%), and Banking and Finance (53%).
The most common business areas among freelancers in Germany who have used Software-Defined Networking in their recent projects are Information Technology (100%), Project Management (94%), and Operations (88%).
Main locations of FRATCH Experts, who have recently used Software-Defined Networking
Our freelancers and interim experts are at home across the DACH region — available on-site in the major business hubs or fully remote. Choose a location to discover matched specialists, local market insights and up-to-date availability.
Berlin Hamburg Munich Cologne Frankfurt Stuttgart Dusseldorf Leipzig Dortmund Essen Bremen Dresden Hanover Nuremberg Request a free demo
Get in touch with the FRATCH team and we will get back to you within 4 hours.
Would you rather directly get in touch?
We always have the time for a call or email!
Philipp Thomaschewski
FRATCH CEO
