Professional software development
Great software is created through continuous, iterative, test-driven improvement — within the existing context, not against it.
I am a software and systems developer, DevOps and SRE expert, and consultant — and I help teams and organizations collaborate better on a technical level. I develop software with heart and soul and, besides German and English, I'm especially fluent in Python.
What I'm thinking about
Climate catastrophe
The climate catastrophe is the biggest problem that we as humanity have to solve. If your project wants to contribute to that and needs a senior developer, please contact me!
Digital sovereignty
Technological independence is not a luxury — it's a strategic necessity. I rely on architectures and technologies that safeguard your ability to act and do business, regardless of individual vendors, platforms, or geopolitical uncertainties. Free software and open standards are key building blocks.
Open source
I'm both a big fan of free software and an active contributor to a wide range of open-source projects. That gives me a solid overview of which problems can be solved well with open-source software.
What I offer
Software
On the basis of free software, I've been developing and modernizing the frontends and backends of complex web- and desktop-based software systems since 1998. I'm convinced that quality is best achieved through an iterative process ("inspect & adapt") and test-driven development.
AI integration
Artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing software development — but not every use case makes sense. I know the strengths and weaknesses of current AI technologies and help teams capture the real benefits without taking on the downsides: from AI-assisted development in daily work to integrating language models into existing systems and automations.
DevOps & SRE
I run complex monoliths and service architectures as well as monitoring, backup, and load-balancing tools. I support operations in an automated and reproducible way on Linux — depending on requirements on bare metal, in virtual machines, or in containers.
Mentoring & team development
I work hands-on within teams and do mentoring in day-to-day work: pair programming for debugging, code reviews, and targeted improvements to tooling. Knowledge is anchored sustainably — through shared standards and a living collection of Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) — strengthening technical excellence step by step.
I have the patience to meet every team member where they stand. That way, knowledge spreads evenly across the team — instead of disappearing into individual heads.
This also applies across team boundaries: when every team makes its own technology decisions, the result is a patchwork — Vue.js here, React+TypeScript there, htmx over there. The same pattern repeats with infrastructure as code, monitoring, or metrics. I help teams endure the pain of making shared decisions, and I build the organizational structures — such as cross-team architecture forums — in which these standards can emerge together.
Security
Secure software requires looking beyond your immediate scope in order to assess how seemingly small details can have major impact. Far too often, basic security measures haven't been implemented for years — or haven't been applied consistently.
A reliable network of experts
I'm connected to a stable network of colleagues working in many areas of software development, operations, and IT security. That enables me to quickly tap into expert knowledge when needed.
What I can do
Best at: Python, Flask, SQLAlchemy, Alembic, Jinja, pytest, automated testing, unit tests, refactoring, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, reproducible infrastructure, Nix, NixOS, nix-darwin, Docker/containers/Kubernetes, Helm, API design, REST APIs, Nginx, Postgres, MySQL, SQLite, AI-assisted development, shell, Git.
Currently learning: Machine Learning & Deep Neural Networks, Data Evaluation, Data Pipelines, Data Visualization.
Strong: Pyramid, Django, PyPy, ruff, black, uv, pre-commit, devenv, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Ansible, Terraform, Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Icinga, CockroachDB, InfluxDB, Redis, Sealed Secrets, sops, 1Password CLI, cert-manager, LDAP, OpenID Connect, OAuth, HAProxy, Caddy, microservices, strace, Wireshark, Linux administration (Red Hat/CentOS, Debian, NixOS, Ubuntu), shell power tools (direnv, zoxide, fzf, bat, jq, yq, jless, …), Jupyter, LLM integration, Scrum/Agile development (Scrum Master, iterative and incremental, Lean Management), open source/free software, …
Long ago: NumPy, pandas, Tornado, Selenium/WebDriver/Playwright, Ruby, Capybara, Apache HTTPD, Objective-C, Cocoa, XCTest, Core Data, Xcode, C/C++, Java, Smalltalk, Jenkins, Matplotlib, Font Awesome, Bootstrap, CSS, Sass/SCSS, HTML5, JavaScript, R, TypeScript, JavaScript (Vue.js, jQuery, Backbone.js, Angular.js, D3.js, Bokeh, Jasmine, JSON Editor, Ember.js, SproutCore.js), CoffeeScript, Make, LESS, Autotools, Vagrant, Puppet, RabbitMQ, ZeroMQ, XML Schema, XPath, networks and P2P systems, concurrent programming, assembler, usability, Mercurial, Bazaar, SVN, CVS, ZODB, Zope, MongoDB, Eclipse, Trac, Bitten, SyncML, Bluetooth, RDF, ontologies, 3D modeling, Maya, Arduino, IBM Db2, Oracle Database, MSSQL Server, …
Work
I work for mkk as a Solution Architect and Senior Developer in the areas of backends, system automation, DevOps, and Site Reliability Engineering — a role that has increasingly evolved into a cross-team tech lead. There I develop backend services and workflow engines in Python/Flask, run the infrastructure on Kubernetes (Helm, Prometheus, Grafana, Loki), and drive the migration from legacy systems and click-ops toward GitOps and infrastructure as code — including in the context of KRITIS certification, where resilience and operational capability are paramount. A particular focus is the introduction of AI across the entire organization: from evaluating and hosting our own language models, to developing AI-powered document classification, to training a broad group of multipliers from the business departments. As a technical coach and driver of the architecture forum, I work to establish cross-team standards and strengthen technical excellence across all teams through mentoring, code reviews, and Architecture Decision Records.
For SNTL-Publishing I work as a Full-Stack Developer, DevOps and SRE expert, and Software Architect. My focus is the predictive learning analytics tool yeepa, which I significantly co-developed. yeepa enables live learning games against other people and evaluates the results using Item Response Theory (Rasch model) — the same method underlying the PISA studies — to deliver quantitatively robust comparisons of knowledge levels and training effectiveness. The architecture comprises a Tornado-based async backend for real-time game logic, a Pyramid application for administration and evaluation, and background jobs for statistical computations. Beyond that, I operate the entire server infrastructure (~30 servers) fully via Ansible — from yeepa to CMS systems with hot standby, mail, Nextcloud, and monitoring. In addition, I consult and train SNTL's clients — from Nginx coaching to container deployments to setting up complete production environments.