Sole IT responsibility for two German sites of an internationally active group with around 170 employees; external service providers brought in as needed. Group IT sets the target; architecture planning, solution design, implementation and go-live are handled on-site. IT management and digital control of the network infrastructure at both sites — from a segmented VLAN environment through a cloud-based firewall to connecting the production areas. Administration of around 30 virtual servers on Windows Server 2022/2025, fully virtualized on VMware 8.x, with Veeam backups. Daily Active Directory administration: full-lifecycle user management plus creating and adjusting Group Policy Objects (GPOs). Support of the Google Workspace Enterprise environment and the Microsoft Office applications used alongside it. Handling of general IT administration tasks and responsibility for the ongoing digitization of administrative processes in finance, purchasing, sales and similar areas. Central point of contact for technical support, system control and administrative troubleshooting for users at both sites. Support and troubleshooting of production robots together with plant technicians in case of faults and exceptions. Ensuring cybersecurity and IT risk management, plus responsibility for data protection, IT procurement and IT budget. Advising management on IT matters and jointly developing strategic IT planning.

Projects: firewall migration from an on-premises appliance to a cloud-based platform (2024); network segmentation with dedicated VLANs for servers, print services, office clients and production clients; file server reorganization moving to DFS; a business-process and AI initiative evaluating AI tools by cost and time criteria.

Platform covering the full employee lifecycle from job posting through recruiting and onboarding to the personnel file. Job postings and candidate résumés arrive as PDF, Word or HTML documents; the text is automatically extracted and passed to an AI service that returns structured data, so applications no longer need to be captured manually. The system instructions for this extraction live in the database and can be adjusted without a code change; the AI endpoint, key and model are configuration values rather than hard-coded. Candidates move through a workflow with full history; for approved candidates a personalized employment contract is generated deterministically from department-specific templates with token replacement, reviewed in a visual editor, and stored as a versioned document. Further modules cover onboarding, personnel files, departments and locations, mobile phone contracts, productivity, and quality assurance.

Contribution: architecture planning, data model and stored-procedure layer design, integrating the AI service for document evaluation, building the template and token engine including contract generation and the visual editor, implementing a permission model down to individual UI controls, and rolling out the platform.

Technologies: C# (.NET 10, ASP.NET Core MVC, Razor), Microsoft SQL Server (Entity Framework Core, Stored Procedures), PuppeteerSharp/Chromium HTML-to-PDF rendering, PdfPig, DocumentFormat.OpenXml, HtmlAgilityPack, Quartz Scheduler, NLog.

Web-based platform for training and skills development, built out of the need to run employee training online instead of in person. Training content is organized into test packages that are assigned to departments and given a validity window, so each department only sees the training relevant to it and only while it's valid. Files can be attached to questions as supporting material. Employees work through a test in a session that tracks progress per question, can be paused and resumed, and is graded automatically on completion; results are stored per user and remain viewable.

Contribution: architecture planning, data model design for departments, test packages, questions, answers, sessions and results, plus building the application including the authoring area for training content, the session and grading logic, and the results display.

Technologies: C# (ASP.NET Core MVC, Razor), Microsoft SQL Server (Entity Framework Core).

Web-based booking platform for the company fleet. Employees reserve vehicles, log pickup and return including odometer readings, and keep a driving log; the admin area covers vehicle master data, bookings, maintenance records with service date, mileage and cost, user management, and a driving-licence check where uploaded licence images are reviewed and approved before an employee is allowed to book. Login runs through integrated Windows authentication against Active Directory, email notifications keep everyone informed, and the interface is localized in German and English.

Contribution: architecture planning, data model and stored-procedure layer design, building the application including the admin area and the licence-verification workflow, and deployment on IIS.

Technologies: C# (.NET 8, ASP.NET Core MVC, Razor), Microsoft SQL Server (Entity Framework Core, Stored Procedures), integrated Windows authentication, SMTP email notifications.

Client/server platform replacing paper-based production documentation with digital, template-based documents. Table-based templates with locked cells, import sets for external data, and virtual tables generated at runtime; document scanning; digital signing of completed documents via user certificates with RFID identification on the shop floor; work-in-progress tracking, versioning and a document archive. Access is controlled through a policy model based on process units and process users, the interface is multilingual, and a plugin mechanism allows extensions without touching the core.

Contribution: designed the overall architecture and built both layers — a WCF service layer and a Windows client. Implemented chunk-based transfer of large document, project, archive, import and plugin files, the data access layer with stored procedures and runtime-generated tables via SQL Server Management Objects, the certificate- and RFID-based signature and security model, and the integration of the spreadsheet engine that renders and locks the templates.

Technologies: C# (.NET Framework 4.7.2, WinForms, WCF), Microsoft SQL Server (Entity Framework 6, Stored Procedures, SQL Server Management Objects), SpreadsheetGear, TWAIN document scanning, RFID reader over WebSocket.

Web-based helpdesk and ticketing system for the German sites. No helpdesk system existed beforehand; support requests reached IT without defined intake, assignment, tracking or documentation. The application covers ticket capture and assignment, ticket categories with their own notification recipients, file attachments, ticket approvals, search, an archive for closed tickets, and monthly and overall reporting. Login runs through Windows single sign-on, with users auto-provisioned from Active Directory on first login; the interface and notification emails are localized in German, English and Italian.

Contribution: analyzed the existing support process, planned the architecture, designed the data model, built the application, and rolled it out into production.

Technologies: C# (.NET 8, ASP.NET Core MVC, Razor), Microsoft SQL Server (Entity Framework Core, Stored Procedures), Windows/Negotiate single sign-on, Active Directory, SMTP email notifications, HtmlSanitizer.

Consulting and delivery for smaller companies — software development, network administration, and early work on AI-driven automation. Distributed open-source, freeware and commercial software under an independent label.

Windows desktop tool that recursively reads a solution's source code and exports the selected files into a single, continuous text document. The purpose is to make an application's entire codebase available as one readable artifact — for code reviews, documentation, handoffs to other developers, and analysis by AI assistants that can only process a codebase as continuous text rather than a directory tree. The tool presents the solution as a selectable file tree, filters by configurable file extensions, skips build and third-party directories, shows the selected file with syntax highlighting in a preview pane, and remembers the path and extension selection of the last opened solution. Editor behavior, fonts, colors and the syntax-highlighting language profile are all configurable.

Contribution: sole developer — concept, architecture, UI, export engine and configuration management.

Technologies: C# (.NET Framework 4.8.1, WinForms), Telerik UI for WinForms including RadSyntaxEditor.

Windows desktop tool for archiving large folder structures. It addresses a task common packing tools handle poorly: a parent directory with many individual subfolders — projects, clients, years — shouldn't be packed into one large archive; instead, each subfolder should go into its own, so the individual holdings stay separately discoverable. The tool lists the subfolders of a chosen directory in a table with its own progress indicator per entry, compresses the selected folders in parallel with bounded concurrency, drops a log file next to the archives, optionally deletes the source folder after successful compression on explicit confirmation, and locks the UI during a run so an archive can't be corrupted by closing the app too early. Per-job logging, a multilingual interface, and remembering the last-used folder and window position round out the tool.

Contribution: sole developer — concept, architecture, UI, parallel compression engine with progress reporting, logging and localization.

Technologies: C# (.NET Framework 4.7.2, WinForms), System.IO.Compression, NLog, XML-based localization (DE/EN/FR/IT/PL).

Multi-tenant web application that makes a document library searchable, understandable and queryable. Documents are uploaded in all common formats; an AI service automatically classifies each document with category, document date, summary and keywords, and a retrieval-augmented chat answers questions across the whole library with source citations back to the relevant document. Deadlines and dates are extracted from documents, calculated against an anchor date, and can be sent to the user as calendar invitations. Further features include SharePoint-style document versioning with major and minor versions, content-addressed storage and non-destructive restoration of earlier states, internal sharing of documents with other users, external sharing via public links with password protection and expiry dates, a multilingual interface, email-verified registration, admin user management, an audit trail and application logging, subscription billing whose pricing model is stored as data rather than code, and encrypted storage of external API credentials. The product is deliberately positioned as a self-hosted solution: documents stay on the customer's infrastructure and are never handed to third parties.

Contribution: sole ownership of the product — architecture, data model, development, hosting, deployment automation, security, privacy and operations.

Technologies: PHP, JavaScript, MySQL (data access exclusively via stored procedures), REST APIs, LLM and embedding services, retrieval-augmented generation, SMTP, iCalendar, a billing API, PowerShell deployment automation, Git.

IT support and administration for a residential property management company — from the Active Directory infrastructure to user workstations to the applications used in day-to-day management operations.

Contribution: Active Directory administration, helpdesk and user support, hardware/software maintenance, and development of applications to streamline administrative processes.

Focus on software development in MS.NET (C#) as well as architecture, design and concept work. Responsible point of contact for the company's IT infrastructure, systems administration and federal data-protection requirements. Responsible for IT budgets and for developing new strategic concepts, aligned with and implemented alongside management.

Oracle-based ERP implementation with extension development for a state-level ERP system serving over 15,000 users. Led the development team (15 developers) and the infrastructure team (10 systems engineers). Built the architecture for both the extension development and the infrastructure, and set up and rolled out Azure DevOps. Project delivered using SCRUM. Developed the ERP extensions in C# and C++ for around 15,000 users. Development tools: Visual Studio 2017/2019 connected to Azure infrastructure.

Database: Oracle 19c Enterprise (Oracle Linux database server).

Introduced a cloud-based service management system, then migrated it to on-premises infrastructure, retiring the previous ITSM/ITIL service desk application.

Implemented a VMware ESXi server farm to replace existing standalone servers. The project required designing and building a new server-based infrastructure to replace and modernize the existing server systems, using a VMware-based virtual server farm to simplify maintenance and administration. Server scope: 5 VMware ESXi host systems with 10 Windows Server systems each. Service scope: 3 Active Directory domain controllers, 6 MS SQL database servers (production plus test/dev, with mirror and witness), 1 Oracle 19c Enterprise database server, 1 MS Exchange server, 2 enterprise ERP servers, 3 production development servers, 2 file servers.

Implemented an RDS server to deliver provisioned applications. The goal was to virtualize a set of applications with no local installation on workstations and provide user-friendly, web-based access. The RDS system also needed to support around 80 concurrent active user sessions. Integrated applications included Microsoft Office, Visio and Project as well as a range of customized software packages.

Developed a WinForms-based skill management application integrated with the Active Directory infrastructure to support local performance-review processes. A core part of the application is a skill assessment for preselected users. Built as a classic three-tier architecture (data, business, presentation) in C# (WinForms), backed by MS SQL Server with the data layer implemented via Entity Framework. Owned the architecture and led development. After successful testing, rolled out via the existing local RDS system. Development team: 5 developers.

Database: MSSQL Server 2016.

The client needed an inventory application that would integrate easily into the existing procurement and purchasing process. Scope also covered HR tasks around employee onboarding and offboarding, with the hiring process to be fully represented. The client opted for a custom build covering the full scope. Built the architecture, designed the application, and led the development team. Development team: 5 developers.

Database: MSSQL Server 2016.

Developed a WinForms application letting users install local printers on Windows workstations without admin rights. Alongside a web-based interface for choosing an available printer, the application shows the chosen printer's details — location, floor, printer type — before installation. A companion WinForms management application was also built for creating, maintaining and removing printers; the solution integrates with the existing Active Directory. Development team: 5 developers.

Created and rolled out unattended, ISO-based installation images for Windows 10, Windows 11 and Windows Server. The automated install had to set up Windows 10/11 on the local machine and then, after installing the OS and accompanying tools, join the machine to the local Active Directory. Developed a set of C++ tools to handle the Active Directory communication and assign a valid machine name. Owned the whole project and led a team of 1 developer and 2 systems engineers.

Automated user provisioning that also mirrors the hiring process. As soon as an employment contract is signed and approved, the application takes the user data from the HR system and automatically creates the user in Active Directory, provisions the user's home drive, sets up department- and resource-specific network drive mappings, creates the email account, and creates and licenses the Microsoft 365 account. The application runs entirely without administrator intervention. Development team: 3 developers, 2 systems engineers.

Database: MSSQL Server 2016.

Developed a service-driven, ITIL-compliant ITSM application for handling service requests in a secured government environment. Policy prohibited users from accessing any internet-based websites for service purposes; web access was strictly forbidden for security and privacy reasons. That ruled out mapping the government ITSM process onto a cloud-based online helpdesk. Built a system that processes template-based service requests and automatically assigns them to a specific helpdesk agent. At its core is a Windows service that processes incoming requests against predefined templates; the self-learning service decides which agent a request should be assigned to. Development team: 3 developers. Project management method: SCRUM.

Developed a self-service application for resetting Active Directory passwords, letting users change their password without a connection to the infrastructure — the most common case being a password expiring while the user is away and unable to connect to the corporate network. Server-side, a Windows service resets the password and immediately synchronizes the existing domain controllers after a successful change, since domain controllers sometimes failed to sync in reasonable time after a remote password change. Development team: 3 developers. Project management method: SCRUM.

CRM-to-ERP connectivity for an organization focused on innovation, technology and knowledge transfer. Designed, integrated and implemented web service bridges between a CRM system and an ERP system. The main goal was providing SOAP web services on the ERP side that connect to the CRM API; these were built in Microsoft .NET C#. Per client requirements, all operating steps had to remain within the CRM interface while using the CRM's full feature set.

Contribution: as lead software architect, planned and built the entire logic, use cases and UML models, mapped all existing business processes into the business logic, and translated the functional workflows into logical ERP workflows.

Responsible for the full systems administration process, including: SAN storage administration and development, backup and disaster recovery concepts and their implementation, Windows server administration, workstation administration, firewall and router administration and configuration, switch configuration and administration, LAN/VLAN/WLAN network administration, Microsoft 365/Office 365 administration, Microsoft Exchange administration, Microsoft SharePoint administration.

Focus on software development plus infrastructure, systems engineering and administration.

Projects: proposal and tender preparation, software development, systems administration, testing.

Server system migration from an older Linux distribution to a more current release, and from an older Windows Server release to Windows Server 2012. The project covered migrating various server systems across several European countries.

Contribution: as migration engineer, migrated server systems in multiple European countries.

Development of a complex, worldwide traffic information and tracking system — messaging development, application server development, continuous integration and deployment.

Contribution: developed Java-based messaging libraries and web dashboards for monitoring the performance of messaging, streaming and cloud services.

Technologies: Java/J2EE, JavaScript, shell scripting, Eclipse, Apache Maven, Rational Team Concert/Jazz.

Maintained business-critical Uniface applications with a development team in India and several business process analysts in Romania. Directed and controlled team activities, led the development team to meet deliverables and SLAs, and produced solution designs and prototypes.

Contribution: carried out maintenance work on a set of business-critical applications. Produced estimates and cost breakdowns for planned software projects. Created designs, prototypes and architectures for extensions and changes based on client requirements.

Methods: OO and UML.

Databases: Oracle.

Planned, designed and built a company-wide, strategically scalable RDBMS platform based on MSSQL 2K8 on virtualized servers across redundant data centers. Installed the application-dependent databases for business-critical applications such as Sophos SafeGuard, Citrix XenApp and Symantec Endpoint Protection. Rolled out IGEL systems to deliver virtualized Windows 7 desktops. Windows systems programming and development of further customizations in C#.NET (mostly WinForms) and Win32 C++. Partial network and Windows systems administration, plus smartcard updates via the identity manager.

Maintenance, troubleshooting and enhancement of a custom-built system for sequencing and scheduling vehicles on the production line. The system sequences production orders and determines production order while accounting for production and supplier constraints; it schedules production steps, responds to critical events before the first production step, and allows resequencing when the original plan can't be kept. The system is used across all assembly plants and runs on a client/server architecture with an additional Eclipse RCP application.

Contribution: maintenance, troubleshooting and enhancement — server side as a Visual C++ WinNT service with no UI, configured via a C# WinForms client application, connected to a DB2 database, plus a platform-independent Java RCP client. Supplementary reporting documents in Excel VBA.

Analyzed and extended .NET applications and transferred the information to global resources in India, working alongside Indian .NET specialists to hand over the accumulated knowledge of the company's .NET environment.

Contribution: gathered all relevant information on every existing .NET application in the software landscape, reviewed and analyzed the gathered application data, built a knowledge base, produced documentation for applications that had none, developed application extensions in C#, ASP.NET and VB.NET, and onboarded the Indian colleagues.

Also: OO, design patterns, GrapeCity FarPoint Spread, WPF, UML, .NET Reflection.

In the Business Intelligence area, two of the ongoing project tasks were developing and maintaining applications for risk management and for request/change management.

Contribution: as software architect, designed a new risk management application and redesigned a requirements application, distributed the workload across the development team, and planned releases and their cycles (test/UAT/production).

Built: a global WinForms-based C# application for risk management, a business intelligence tool for request/change management, a software deployment tool based on C++, C# and VB.NET, a standalone SQL query designer with multi-RDBMS support, and a database-driven graphical dashboard for business intelligence data.

Also: design patterns, Crystal Reports XI, Infragistics, WPF, UML.

Testing of a global tender and bidding platform connecting the company with its worldwide suppliers. Development was handled mostly abroad, testing domestically; a dedicated project covered all testing, maintenance and related work.

Contribution: created and executed test cases against the portal, and developed a tool for indexing large, multi-format test data sets that gave the team a better overview of testing.

Also: design patterns, remoting, iText, UML.

The webshop application is an ASP.NET web application run on the client's intranet. Because of the complexity of its configuration, a web-based configuration tool was built to simplify setting up the webshop.

Contribution: extended the application with new features, developed in ASP.NET with C#, and onboarded the new developers who later continued the work.

Testing and support of an internal support application, a key part of an internal software installation package.

Contribution: created test cases and bug reports; the test cases were executed by the test team, with bug reports logged in a Bugzilla database. After fixes from the international development team, the corrections had to be retested.

Main task was programming against Active Directory. Developed a range of methods for arbitrary modification of AD objects, as well as further methods for evaluating logs and reports from an internal directory service system.

Contribution: Active Directory programming and scripting for software distribution.

Technologies: Microsoft Visual Basic, Microsoft C# (WinForms), Windows Scripting Host, Microsoft Visual C++.

To deliver software from the company's application inventory, built packages of existing applications, including operating systems, office applications and finance applications. Each package then had to be verified and tested for correct function. Once a package passed testing, it went to the servers that distribute the software.

Contribution: software distribution, Active Directory programming, scripting and administration.

Main tasks were user support, bug tracking and enhancement of an internal solution-advisory application used to build concrete customer solutions from the current state of a customer's IT infrastructure. Also involved quarterly database releases supplying the official reference data the application uses for solution costing. Worked with an international development team on the extensions. Additionally built an application automating a large portion of otherwise manual work.

Contribution: user support, software development and maintenance of the internal application.

Technologies: Microsoft Visual C++, Assembler, Microsoft C# (WinForms), Rational Rose (UML), Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server 2000, Lotus Notes Designer, LotusScript.

Main task was analyzing the current state of a customer's IT environment and building a solution on top of it using an internal tool that maps the customer's current IT environment and shows how they could run their systems more effectively. Used mainly for building outsourcing solutions.

Contribution: solution design, IT analysis and cost analysis on the client side; used the tool to prepare proposals.

Administered networks and provided 1st- and 2nd-level support for employees. Installed and deployed a wide range of peripheral devices from various vendors and managed network resources in day-to-day operations.

Technologies: Legato Backup, pcAnywhere, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Photoshop, Oracle (backup and administration), SQL Server (backup and administration), PC-DUO, Microsoft SMS Server, Perl, TogetherJ, Microsoft Visual C++.

Administered a Microsoft network based on Windows NT and developed database applications. Built a database-backed Java application for maintaining and managing DHCP networks.

Technologies: PowerJ, Java RMI, Oracle 7/8, ArcServe, Sun Solaris, Microsoft Windows NT 4, ERwin, Microsoft Visual C++.

Supported and extended a heterogeneous network using TCP/IP, DEC Pathworks and NCR StarLAN. Set up a customer support center for internal staff and external customers, and built a tracking-and-tracing system for checking current shipment status. After the successful launch of the customer support center, supported project management.

Technologies: Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, DEC VMS, DEC Pathworks, Microsoft Networks, TCP/IP, Veritas BackupExec, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Visual C++.

Built and implemented a network based on Microsoft Windows NT 3.5 including users, groups and shares, with a later migration to Windows NT 4. Programmed hardware controls for conveyor systems and machinery.

Technologies: Microsoft Networks, TCP/IP, Microsoft C++, Microsoft Assembler, Assembler 808x, Kollmorgen MPH systems.