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Profileimage by Niklas Fink Cloud Solution Architect & Full Stack Developer from Langen

Niklas Fink

Langen
partly available

Last update: 24.12.2023

Cloud Solution Architect & Full Stack Developer

Graduation: B.Eng. Software Engineering
Hourly-/Daily rates: show
Languages: German (Native or Bilingual) | English (Full Professional)

Keywords

Skills

Focus areas:
» Cloud Architectures (planning, optimization, maintenance)
» Full Stack Development (focus topics: eCommerce, CMS, complex backend systems)
» Technical Project Lead (requirements engineering, stakeholder comms, decision making)

Tech stack (rating 1-10):
» Azure 10
» Terraform 9
» Kubernetes 8
» AWS 7

» JavaScript 10
» Java 9
» VueJS/React 8
» Python 7

» CI/CD Pipes 10
» New Relic 9
» Splunk 8
» ELK Stack 7

Project history

05/2020 - Present
Azure Technical Lead
DVAG (Banks and financial services, 1000-5000 employees)
DVAG is a financial consulting company operating in the DACH-region with over 2000 back-office employees which are responsible for the further development of the financial systems and applications for the field sales force (> 22k financial advisors). In 2020, a Cloud First strategy was adopted, which is why all new and successively also existing projects will be migrated to the cloud.

My role involved:
  • Supervision of a large number of projects: Architecture consulting, Cloud automation, infrastructure deployment, cost planning.
  • Development of concepts that combine Azure best practices and existing DVAG organizational structures and working methods.
  • Onboarding of colleagues into the cloud through presentations, workshops and guidelines.
  • Implementation of a company-wide Terraform modules library and automation infrastructure on Azure DevOps and GitHub (Actions).
  • Development of a central monitoring and logging infrastructure.
  • Administration of an Azure multi-tenant structure and setup of privileged access workstations (PAWs).

Tech Stack: Azure (AAD Domain Services, AAD-Connect, Alerts, App Registrations, App Services, Application Insights, ARM Templates, Automation Accounts, Azure Active Directory (AAD), Azure Advanced Threat Protection (ATP), Azure SQL, Bastion Hosts, Bicep Templates, Conditional Access, Container Registry, Cosmos DB, Dashboards, Data Factory, DevOps Repos/Pipelines, DevTest Labs, Functions, Hybrid Identities, Key Vaults, Kubernetes Service (AKS), Kusto, Lighthouse, Load Balancer, Log Analytics, Logic Apps, Managed Identities, Monitor, Multi-Tenant Architecture, Policies, Privileged Identity Management (PIM), RBAC Concepts, Security Center, Storage Accounts, VM Scale Sets, VNets, VPN Gateway), GitHub Actions, Grafana, LeanIX, Microsoft Endpoint Manager (Intune), O365 (Microsoft 365), Power Automate, PowerShell, Prometheus, Stormspotter, Terraform.

06/2019 - 04/2020
Solution Architect & Technical Lead
Bosch Power Tools GmbH (Industry and mechanical engineering, >10.000 employees)
With around 300 colleagues in the department Business Digital Organization (BDO), we're ensuring the digital success of Bosch Power Tools. All Bosch PT brands are going through the BDO to have their eCommerce platforms built, mobile apps created or tools enhanced by IoT functionalities.

My role involved:
  • Tech Lead for a €5M budget platform migration project.
  • Built and onboarded a near-shore 8 person development team.
  • Set up an operations team for 24/7 monitoring of the platform.
  • Software Architect for existing 10 person front- & backend team.
  • Became an essential interface between business and implementation.
  • Led integrations of various Bosch-internal projects involving many different technologies and complex infrastructures.
  • Regularly consulted domain experts for best practices.
  • Defined the technological strategy and future of the project.
Tech Stack: Azure (Kubernetes, Functions, Cosmos DB, Verizon CDN, Event Hub, Application Gateway, Blob Storage, VM, DevOps), Elasticsearch, Kibana, New Relic, Splunk, Terraform, Ansible, Bloomreach CMS, Kotlin, AngularJS, Apache Kafka, Hangfire, Jira Service Desk.

08/2018 - 05/2019
Full Stack Developer
diva-e Digital Value Excellence GmbH (Internet and Information Technology, 500-1000 employees)
diva-e was founded in 2015 by incorporating 7 established digital agencies, whereof each was specialized on individual services. As a result, with over 500 employees, diva-e can holistically support customers on their digital transformation.

My role involved:
  • Developed a BloomReach CMS website integrating various external APIs and an Angular frontend.
  • Main responsibilities were the planning and management of the Azure and AWS cloud infrastructure and component development in Kotlin (with Spring) and Angular.
  • Total of 7 diva-e developers and 10 stakeholders on customer side.
  • Developed a Vue.js app with Vuex, based on a given design in Sketch & Zeplin and integrated it in Typo3 CMS.
  • Helped developing a Vue.js app with Vuetify built on Meteor and GraphQL.
Tech Stack: AngularJS, Apache Kafka, AWS (API Gateway, Elastic Beanstalk, Lambda), Azure (Application Gateway, Event Hub, Functions, Kubernetes, Verizon CDN, VMs), Bloomreach CMS, Bootstrap, CSS, Docker, Elasticsearch, GitLab, GraphQL, HTML, IaaS, Java, Javascript, JUnit, Kibana, Kotlin, Linux, Microservices, New Relic, Nginx, PaaS, RabbitMQ, REST, SaaS, Scrum, Splunk, TDD, Terraform, VueJS, Vuex.

09/2017 - 08/2018
Blockchain Developer
(own business) (Internet and Information Technology, < 10 employees)
  • Focused on masternode coins mainly forked from Dash and Bitcoin Core.
  • Developed a Masternode Management Platform which allowed a customer to remotely manage own masternodes with a comprehensive tool suite and thus lowered the entry barrier as no deep knowledge for setup and maintenance was required anymore.
  • Linked multiple systems together and developed a prototype with Node.js, Vue.js, MongoDB and various Bash Scripts for direct interaction with the server daemon RPC interface.
  • Eventually sold the prototype to a competitor who successfully went to market earlier, was able to improve server setup automation, and therefore reduce manual work and costs with the help of my code and ideas.

04/2017 - 03/2018
Full Stack Developer
Academy Xi, Sydney, Australia (Marketing, PR and Design, 10-50 employees)
Academy Xi is a Sydney based startup, founded in 2016. Xi offers short, skill-specific courses to companies and individuals looking to upgrade their capabilities in design and innovation - Changing the world through purpose-driven education.

My role involved:
  • Completely reinvented and planned their IT systems by gathering requirements from stakeholders.
  • Co-developed their student management system with React, NodeJS and MongoDB.
  • Built a new learning management system based on WordPress.
  • Integrated multiple systems into one comprehensive, easy-to-use system and unified their APIs.
  • Optimized the old Xi public website based on WordPress, developed plugins in PHP/JS and analyzed the system for speed improvements.
  • Migrated Xi's online appearances from shared-webhosting to AWS: built a high-availability system and managed their cloud infrastructure.
  • Conducted job interviews.
  • Advised Xi in cryptocurrency affairs.
  • Managed 3 freelancers. 
Tech Stack: AWS (API Gateway, CloudFront, CloudWatch, DynamoDB, EBS, EC2, Elastic Beanstalk, Lambda, RDS, Rekognition, S3), Blockchain, Bootstrap, CSS, Hotjar, HTML, HubSpot, Java, Javascript, JUnit, LearnDash (LMS), Linux, Mixpanel, MongoDB, Optimizely, Nginx, NodeJS, PayPal Integration, PaaS, Pingdom, PHP, ReactJS, Redux, REST, SaaS, Segment.io, Spring, Spring Boot, Stripe Integration, Typeform, WordPress, Zapier.

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02/2015 - 08/2016
Full Stack Developer
USU AG (Internet and Information Technology, 500-1000 employees)
USU AG focuses primarily on digitalizing IT and customer services, offering own products and custom development with 600 employees.
  • Developed a complex testing suite for a FirstSpirit-to-Liferay adapter, built with Java.
  • Used Selenium for web automation and Python for image recognition.
  • Developed an Android App using Liferay Screenlets.
  • Developed an Ionic Hybrid App utilizing the Liferay-API.
  • Did a comprehensive comparison between developing a native Android App and a Hybrid App.
Tech Stack: Android native, AngularJS, Cordova, Image Recognition, Ionic, Java, Javascript, JavaServer Pages (JSP), Jenkins, JUnit, Liferay, Liferay Screenlets, Maven, Python, Scrum, TDD.

06/2013 - 05/2014
Java Web Developer
MARKANT Handels und Service GmbH (Consumer goods and retail, 500-1000 employees)
The MARKANT Group is a 1000 employee strong trading company, with around 300 IT employees, offering market research and various other B2B tools.
  • Developed the website design of www.markant.net using Liferay, which is still in use in 2020.
  • Developed a calendar tool for time management and meeting coordination using JavaServer Faces.
  • Developed several other Java tools and JSF/JSP portlets for in-house use running on IBM WebSphere.
Tech Stack: Apache HTTP Server, Bootstrap, CSS, Hibernate, HTML, IBM Websphere, Java, Javascript, JavaServer Faces (JSF), JavaServer Pages (JSP), Jenkins, JUnit, Liferay, Linux, Maven, MySQL, Photoshop, PostgreSQL, PrimeFaces, REST, SOAP, Spring, Swing, YUI.

Local Availability

Open to travel worldwide
  • Willing to travel within Germany.
  • Open for international remote jobs.

Other

Aggregation of technologies I've used in projects so far:
Android (native), Angular, AngularJS, AWS (Amazon Web Services), Azure, Bash, Bitbucket, Bloomreach, Bootstrap, CDN, Cloud Architectures, CMS, Commerce Connector, Confluence, Cordova, CSS, Datadog, DB2, Docker, Elasticsearch, ExpressJS, GitHub, GitLab, Google Analytics, GraphQL, Heroku, Hibernate, Hotjar, HTML, HubSpot, IBM WebSphere, Image Recognition, Ionic, Java, Javascript, Jenkins, Jira, Jira Service Desk, JSF (JavaServer Faces), JSP (JavaServer Pages), Kafka, Kibana, Kotlin, Kubernetes, LearnDash, Liferay, Liferay Screenlets, Mixpanel, MongoDB, Moodle, MySQL, New Relic, NodeJS, Optimizely, PayPal, PHP, Pingdom, Python, RabbitMQ, ReactJS, SAP Marketing Cloud, SCRUM, Segment.io, Selenium, Splunk, Spring, Spring Boot, Stripe, TalentLMS, Terraform, Typeform, VueJS, WordPress, Zapier.

Covered by Exali's professional indemnity insurance

Exali image

The freelancer is covered by a reliable insurance provider that offers protection against common risks associated with digital and IT professions (damage claims, third-party cyber damage, etc.).

Profileimage by Niklas Fink Cloud Solution Architect & Full Stack Developer from Langen Cloud Solution Architect & Full Stack Developer
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