Born and raised in Munich moved to Nuremberg and eventually Berlin. Before creating my first game with Shockwave in Lingo my interest was in 3D modelling and waiting for a render to finish in Maxon Cinema 4D. But with the experience of how powerful programming can be I started learning HTML then Javascript and moving to the backend side of things and onto PHP, memcached, MySQL and Ruby on Rails. And from there it never stopped. When I am not using a computer to create something I like playing badminton, eating delicious food, traveling, and reading up on topics related to psychology, philosophy, investing, and business building.
Through my 12 years of experience, ambition and hard work I acquired a wide array of skills that allowing me cover, and work with traditional and modern cloud application architectures as well as building and leading agile teams and processes that deliver high value with confidence and low error rates. My main superpowers are making things possible by envisioning a brighter future and taking the path less beaten - which has proven to move the needle on established products and new ones. I bring visibility into strategic efforts with data and make goals and visions crystal clear through workshops and clean-cut communication. Last but not least, I help companies becoming faster at delivering value by aligning technical capabilities with business goals.
Open Source was and has always been an integral part of why I learned to program and whenever possible I try to give back by, for example, fixing migration code in Django or improving the python buildpacks for Zeit. According to GitHub I was among the top 5% contributors of 2019 in Germany.
Helping companies track their leads and users across products and services to understand and optimize the customer journey and ad spend.
Also interviewing and evaluating candidates for technical positions.
Tools: Gitlab CI/CD, Docker, Jupyter, Python, Django, Postgres, Flask, MySQL, Google Analytics (Measurement Protocol), Google Tag Manager, Jira, Confluence
At M2. I am responsible for two business units Managed Services and M2 Solutions. Managed Service includes running and maintaining the client’s AWS environments with Terraform according to the agreed SLAs and closely monitoring profitablility. Solutions include the development and selling of a webserver-based Tableau Extension. I also introduced a goal framework for the company in order to surface, structure, and align all business units to agreed-upon goals. Apart from that I prepare and lead internal management workshops as well as client projects and sales pitches. In order to build a better-performing company, I have created a structured resource planning process as well as setting up reflection session to help my current team and colleagues.
Tools: Tableau, AWS, Terraform, Bitbucket, Jira, Confluence, Miro, PHP, Java, Docker
After my second endeavor (Bitspark) did not solve a problem significant enough for customers to pay us, I started to explore different avenues of interest. Among which, I wrote two Pitch Decks, designed and build multiple proof of concepts, created a business model simulation, ran a design thinking sprint, and launched three websites. For more information head over to the projects.
And since I am never satisfied with what I know, I persued three more certifications during this time.
Tools: Wix, Figma, Adobe XD, HTML, CSS, XLS, Google Script Engine, Facebook Ads, Powerpoint, Vue, Typescript, Python, Flask, Terraform, Ansible, Github CI, Docker, Asana, Trello, Notion
We were building a visual programming language with the runtime and user interface separate. I conceptualized and implemented a multi-tenant microservice architecture using Redis-streams, flask, AWS Lambda and Vue with TS. Also introduced a CRM and various marketing integrations gaining more visibility into our potential customers. Created goal framework and product roadmap. Wrote WebSocket server in Golang enabling more product features for our own product. Prepared and held demos, pitches, and presentations to potential customers, investors, and partners. However, due to running out of funds, we decided to part ways. During that time, I helped and coached one of my co-founders to make his next career move.
Tools: Golang, Typescript, Vue.js, Python, Flask, Postgres, now.sh, Airtable, Zapier, Circle CI, Ansible, Lua, OpenResty, Redis, Terraform, Digital Ocean, Kubernetes, Cloudflare, Trello, Miro
Took responsibility for a BI-Team of four and their products. I changed the internal mission to be more in line with business enablement, introduced agile processes with the goal of getting feedback earlier and delivering more value. Educated employees about Machine Learning with innovation projects and external workshop. Reduced number of outages and faults in the reporting infrastructure. Introduced new KPIs to the business to gain companywide visibility into strategic actions, for instance the Time-to-First-Response for Customer-Services. Architected Prediction- and Enrichment-APIs to automatically score incoming leads and prioritize operational sales work to be more effective and boosting conversion rates up to 10%.
Tools: Percona, MSSQL, SSIS, Pentaho, Gitlab CI/CD, Docker, Jupyter, Python, Django Postgres, Flask, MySQL, Jenkins, Ansible, Delta Master, Keras/Tensorflow, Google Analytics (Measurement Protocol), Google Tag Manager, Jira, Confluence
Led an agile team responsible for mission-critical ERP systems turning over €4.5M per month. Also reduced delivery time of changes to the production systems. Introduced systematic approaches to deal with technical debt resulting in steadier levels thereof. Moved development from VMs to Docker shorting onboarding times from days to minutes and enabling much faster branch-building up to 400% in some cases. Changed IT Architecture to Tier-Based and narrowed strategic focus on enabling the business with the effect of higher team engagement and velocity.
Coached my team to become the best version of themselves with different feedback formats and 1:1 workshops to discover their self-confidence and clarity of thought. Pioneered Innovation Management and developed multiple DevOps product ideas using Design Thinking and Design Sprints. Evangelized the company on numerous events as attendee and speaker at DevOps Camp and Webweek, making the company more visible to the community and potential candidates. Coled the introduction of companywide OKRs forming a tag-team and coordinating “war-rooms”.
Tools: Python, Javascript, Gitlab CI/CD, docker, Kubernetes, Cloudflare, statsd, Redis, HA-Proxy, Django, Percona, Buildbot, Jenkins, Ansible, AWS Lambda, Travis Ci, MySQL, Jira, Confluence
Led, designed and developed several critical software components for instance the symmetric cryptographic activation mechanism for PRTG, a product with 200k customers. Added goldilocks pricing strategy which alone led to ~3% more revenue.
I also developed tools to find abandoned shopping carts that resulted in recovering seemingly lost sales opportunities boosting conversion on followups. Maintained and optimized our infrastructure for these projects using Ansible, statsd and PRTG to deliver more throughput and consume less resources. Successfully introduced Scrum and carefully refined it to fit our needs through many iterations and retrospectives. Furthermore did I migrate a large repository from SVN to Git and Gitlab w/o service interruption, setting the groundwork for the rest of the company to eventually switch from Mercurial to GIT and reap in huge benefits from easier Continuous Integration.
Tools: Python, Javascript, Django, Flask, Gitlab CI, docker, SVN, Git, Buildbot, Ansible, Confluence
Among other smaller projects I built a web-based image archive software for a internationally renowned photographer using BDD and Ruby on Rails. Worth emphasizing is a cascading category-based navigation, a lightbox-based cart, a live translation tool and a drag and drop image uploader. In addition to that I implement an administration interface to manage the entire application.
Tools: Ruby, Rails, Google Cloud, Javascript, Gherkin, Git, Capistrano
Inspired by friendfeed we took the concept and adapted it to the German market and eventually sold to Mr.Wong. The application was written in Ruby on Rails 2.0 together with a background processing queue that pulled in the content from all the linked services.
Tools: Ruby, Rails, Git, HTML, CSS, Javascript, jQuery
Rewrote a large portion of the web application at ibusiness.de so it would resemble a modern MVC app more closely. Then redid the Database-Abstraction-Layer, reimplemented all the affected controllers and wrote a new template parser. Designed and applied a way of organizing files inside the project by domains. This brought down development time and error rate significantly.
Tools: BOIL, C, Javascript, CSS, HTML, SVN, jQuery
September 2020
July 2019
August 2017
