I'm on a mission to build an empowering developer experience, so engineers can focus on shipping and operating great products; faster, more reliable, efficient, and secure.
*a greeting from North Germany
My principles are simple: remove every obstacle between engineers and shipping great products. I build high-trust, autonomous teams and invest in the platforms, tooling, and culture that make this possible.
I engineer the complete system by applying three principles: , , and .
With a background spanning DevOps, security architecture, and cloud platform strategy, I connect technical solutions to business outcomes. I specialize in creating tangible results through FinOps, modern and AI-native platform engineering, and organizational design using frameworks like Team Topologies.
Cloud spend had doubled to an annual spend of $3.5M+ with no corresponding footprint increase resulting in lacking visibility and accountability. Reduce the bill by $50k/month, implemented several cost-saving measures like cost-saving plans, rightsizing instances, reduced waste, architectural changes, and most importantly transform the engineering culture to also own the costs. Hired a senior engineer and empowered him to lead the initiative. I established proactive reviews and built a strong partnership with Finance to create shared accountability.
Exceeded goal, delivering over $1M in annualized savings and dramatically improving forecast accuracy from over 30% deviation (forecast vs actuals) to under 4%.
$1M+
Annualized Savings
$84,000+
Monthly Reduction
30% → <4%
Forecast Deviation
Engineering Manager for Cloud Platforms - Cloud Platform
Awin Global · Aug 2024 - Present
Leading a cross-cultural Cloud Platform and DevOps organization across UK, Germany, Romania, and Spain. Responsible for cloud platform strategy, cloud landingzone infrastructure, CI/CD, observability, SRE, and FinOps. I am on a mission to build a resilient, cost-effective platform that accelerates the entire engineering organization.
- Rebuilt the team from 6 to 12 engineers in 10 months after a restructure, filling skill gaps with a deliberate 1/5/6 junior-mid-senior mix while maintaining delivery and operational stability throughout.
- Established the FinOps function from scratch, achieving $84,000+ in monthly recurring savings within 6 months and reducing budget forecast variance from 20% to 3% through a structured cost planning process.
- Led the CI/CD platform modernisation and replacing Jenkins, Harbor, and Nexus with GitHub Actions and cloud-native tooling which cut new project initialization time by 16 hours and eliminating 10 weekly support tickets.
- Secured $150,000 in AWS MAP funding for a full datacenter-to-cloud migration by connecting the right stakeholders and reworking the vendor ARR model, which resulted in a signed contract within 7 months.
- Wrote and implemented the "You Build It, You Run It" operating model and a company-wide SRE strategy, clarifying ownership across all team types and standardizing incident management ahead of a security audit.
- Drove the observability strategy, standardizing on OTEL and Vector to reduce complexity and cost across 15+ engineering teams.
- Raised the Peakon engagement score from 7.2 to 8.3 and the DX score from 62 to 73 within one year.
Cloud DevOps Manager
Jan 2024 - Aug 2024Restructured the team and its operating model to remove systemic bottlenecks and clarify ownership using Team Topologies.
- Analyzed operational bottlenecks, defined a new department charter, and led a re-organization into distinct DevOps, Cloud Platform, and IT Ops teams within 7 months.
- Coached 3 senior DevOps engineers across Germany and Italy to successfully conclude the AWS landing zone for organizational adoption.
- Replaced Docker Desktop with open-source tooling, improving developer experience and achieving $18,000 in annual savings.
Security Architect & Security Officer
AVIV Group · Feb 2022 - Jan 2024
Recruited to establish and lead the security function for a newly merged group. I designed the cloud security architecture from the ground up and pioneered the group-wide Secure Product Lifecycle (SPLC).
Security Architect
Jul 2022 - Jan 2024Built and scaled a self-service Secure Product Lifecycle (SPLC) for AVIV's cloud-native products.
- Launched the SPLC and matured it into a self-service program (dynamic questionnaire and standardized risk reports) covering 50+ assessments in 9 months, uncovering 80+ unique risks.
- Reduced recurring findings by prioritizing platform-level fixes with preventative SCPs, automated responses, and notifications.
- Established KPIs (cycle time, completion rates, developer satisfaction) and used them to drive iterative improvements and leadership reporting.
- Raised security awareness across Product & Tech through presentations, architecture guidelines, and a newsletter embedded in team rituals.
Security Officer
Feb 2022 - Jun 2022Delivered merger integration and AWS security foundations that improved control coverage and audit readiness.
- Ran the security integration stream for the German businesses, aligned controls to CIS and group standards, and facilitated internal audits.
- Developed the security stream for the AWS landing zone covering IAM Identity Center, Transit Gateway hub-and-spoke network, and centralized security logging.
- Fortified the AWS security posture via SCPs, Prowler, and AWS Security Hub.
Cyber Security Specialist & DevOps Engineer
immowelt · Aug 2015 - Jun 2022
Cyber Security Specialist
Oct 2021 - Jun 2022Established the company's first cybersecurity function from the ground up, integrating "Security and Privacy by Design" principles into the development lifecycle.
- Improved cloud security posture by developing custom scripts and leveraging Prowler for automated scanning across 100+ AWS accounts.
- Established a NIST-based maturity model for continuous improvement and an ISO-aligned incident response process.
- Drove security culture by designing and leading a company-wide Capture-The-Flag (CTF) competition for all engineering teams.
DevOps Engineer
Aug 2015 - Sep 2021Pioneered a modern DevOps culture and rebuilt the main product with an AWS-native architecture.
- Modernized legacy config management by replacing Puppet with modular Ansible and introducing a Docker platform based on DC/OS Mesosphere.
- Managed and automated 3 datacenters with 50+ Linux and Windows physical servers (KVM, OpenNebula, Hyper-V).
- Engineered GitLab CI/CD with Terraform (later CDKTF), including ephemeral stacks to accelerate testing and releases.
- Shipped the AWS-native MVP in 8 months and completed the feature set 9 months later.
IT Support & Systems Technician
Goodgame Studios / tectumHOME · Sep 2011 - Jul 2015
Provided 2nd and 3rd level IT support for 800+ users in a fast-growing gaming company while managing Windows Server infrastructure and completing an apprenticeship in IT Systems Electronics.
- Managed Windows Server environments, Active Directory, and Google Workspace administration.
- Automated routine tasks using PowerShell and AutoIT scripts to improve operational efficiency.
- Planned and executed smart home projects including Crestron control unit programming.