Florian Proksch
Verified Expert in Engineering
Cloud Architect and Developer
Berlin, Germany
Toptal member since February 13, 2023
Florian, a native German and English speaker, has 15+ years of experience as a full-stack developer and DevOps (SRE) specializing in cloud setups, web servers, and database management. Florian is passionate about building and leading a department of 20 FTEs and is multi-certified in cloud technology and security in AWS, Azure, Kubernetes, and Terraform.
Portfolio
Experience
- DevOps - 12 years
- Azure - 11 years
- CI/CD Pipelines - 10 years
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 10 years
- Elasticsearch - 10 years
- Kubernetes - 7 years
- Terraform - 7 years
- ChatGPT API - 6 years
Preferred Environment
Ubuntu, Windows, Slack
The most amazing...
...projects I've built bring real-time bidding to digital billboards; I designed a computer vision-based early warning system for Volkswagen's assembly line.
Work Experience
Cloud Architect
Moss
- Consolidated and secured application secrets in Azure Key Vault.
- Tracked and fixed deployment issues, including troubleshooting Github Ci/CD pipelines, container builds, and application runtimes.
- Consulted the client regarding the infrastructure for migration from Azure to AWS.
Azure/AWS Cloud Solutions Architect | Data Analysis Platform
Rw3
- Consulted the client regarding moving the legacy system infrastructure to AWS.
- Tracked and diagnosed latency issues on the ASP legacy system.
- Created cost estimation proposals for different AWS infrastructure build-outs for legacy and greenfield applications.
DevOps Engineer | Cloud Architect on Multitenant Architecture
DATAIT, LLC
- Retooled client's security infrastructure within Kubernetes with a multi-tenant setup.
- Moved the IaC architecture to Terraform with automated CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps.
- Reduced latency of mission-critical workflows from 10+ seconds to sub-two seconds by optimizing infrastructure, data-flow patterns, and security tooling.
AWS DevOps Engineer
XplorStem LLC
- Secured and consolidated application secrets and secret management.
- Containerized .NET back-end and React front-end layers.
- Moved application to AWS ECS with Fargate-based, on-demand scaling infrastructure.
DevOps Engineer
DATAIT, LLC
- Conducted research on GPT success vectors based on a set of criteria.
- Supervised an external DevOps team implementing multitenancy on Azure.
- Created an architecture roadmap for the client, scaling the GPT wrapper to 100+ users.
Elasticsearch/OpenSearch Architect
LotLinx, Inc
- Optimized Elasticsearch cluster to reduce latency from 10+ seconds to sub 500ms for mission-critical queries.
- Migrated entire client Elasticsearch to a new cluster with an optimized Node.js setup, including creating various proposals for different use cases.
- Reduced client AWS expenditure by a 5-figure amount by optimizing Elasticsearch cluster setup.
Tech Lead
Trust Lab Inc
- Created a TOS-compliant, generic, and automated solution to scrape and validate 100s of websites periodically.
- Developed an embedded Chrome extension including NLP-based fact-checking capabilities for social media content.
- Monitored cloud security posture and vulnerabilities via Amazon Inspector, Amazon GuardDuty, and Dependabot and initiated the SoC2 certification process.
Head of Technology
It Works Group
- Built tech department from three to 20 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees, on-site and remote, to bring real-time bidding out of the home.
- Architected microservice solution out-of-home advertising discovery, campaign planning, campaign optimization, and automated generation of customer presentation material.
- Retooled legacy pipeline for multi-stage payment processing and ensured stability.
- Oversaw the technical side of the company's move to 200 FTE employees.
- Planned and architected the move of on-premises systems to the cloud (AWS).
- Troubleshot issues ranging from deployment to application functionalities using Cloudwatch logs, ELK and PagerDuty to monitor large-scale applications.
- Delivered a working application that involved a highly available Kubernetes (EKS, AKS) cluster for a microservice architecture in the advertising space.
Solution Architect (Software Architect)
Argus Data Insights
- Designed cloud migration strategy on Azure for in-house line of business (LOB) application in media monitoring, including scan, optical character recognition OCR, and ML-based evaluation of 2t of newspapers and magazines daily.
- Designed and implemented UX (Angular) for LOB application used by 300 professional raters to evaluate content (media resonance analysis).
- Acted as part of a task force reorganizing the business structure of business process model and notation (BPMN) (Camunda). Implemented and tested workflows and integrated Camunda with the LOB application.
- Worked on performance optimization of deploying a distributed Java/Scala application hosting on Apache Tomcat and using self-hosted GitHub Action runners for creating and deploying containers.
- Deployed load balancing solutions like Nginx, Azure VMSS, AWS EKS, -ECS, -ASG, -NLB, -ELB on cloud and hybrid architectures.
Software Engineer
IMC Test & Measurement
- Designed, implemented, and maintained a C# scripting framework within a standard software for measurement and test automation with IMC Studio to cater to the specialized customization requirements of key customers.
- Undertook special responsibilities to deliver successful outcomes on different projects related to the IMC Studio software, demonstrating expertise in design, implementation, and maintenance.
- Added eight types of scripting environments from high frequency to panel-based to internal software suite.
- Specified a communication interface between the IMC Studio software and a competitor's product as part of a joint venture, ensuring seamless integration and compatibility.
Software Engineer
Fraunhofer-Institut für Fabrikbetrieb und -Automatisierung IFF
- Implemented a web-based software named STROBAS, which delivered aster analysis of tactile measurement data for the mobile robotic system.
- Designed and implemented a computer vision and physical manipulation workflow named ANNIE, successfully reducing the average processing time and lowering the error rate for the automotive manufacturing application.
- Designed and evaluated a novel approach for physical manipulation tasks in robotic systems, utilizing training-based prediction and sensory data classification strategies.
Lead Software Developer
Ice Bytes
- Developed simulator 3D video game, founding and kicking off simulator-based game series.
- Oversaw 3D model delivery and testing in a 3D engine context.
- Performed end user testing and validation for large-scale publishing.
Experience
VR Demo for Real Estate Showing | 360 Videos and Images
AWS Cloud Architecture for Real Estate Search Portal
Software Product Lines for FeatureIDE
https://featureide.github.io/Education
Certificate in Artificial Intelligence
Stanford AI Professionals Program - Remote
Master's Degree in Computer Science
Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg - Magdeburg, Germany
Certifications
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
Amazon Web Services
CKAD: Certified Kubernetes Application Developer
Linux Foundation
CKA: Certified Kubernetes Administrator
Linux Foundation
Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect Expert
Microsoft
HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate
HashiCorp
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional
Amazon Web Services
AWS Security Specialty
Amazon Web Services
CompTIA PenTest+ ce Certification
CompTIA
Microsoft Azure DevOps Engineer Expert
Microsoft
Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator
Microsoft
Elasticsearch Operations I & II
Elastic
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Back-end APIs, React, Node.js, ArcGIS, PyTorch, GitHub API, Vue, Leaflet, PCL, OpenCV, OpenGL
Tools
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Kibana, ELK (Elastic Stack), Jenkins, Amazon OpenSearch, Terraform, Amazon EKS, Amazon SageMaker, Logstash, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), GitHub, NGINX, Bitbucket, Sentinel, Confluence, Jira, Postman, Elastic, Slack, Bazel, AWS CodeBuild, AWS CodeDeploy, Camunda BPM, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), ABBYY, WPF 3D, Apache Tomcat, Apache, Azure Active Directory B2C (ADB2C), Apache Airflow
Languages
XPath, Python, C#, TypeScript, JavaScript, C++, Java, SQL, YAML, C, HLSL, GLSL, KUKA, C++17
Frameworks
Selenium, Unity3D, Next.js, Unity, Windows PowerShell, ASP.NET Core, Angular, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
Paradigms
DevOps, Azure DevOps, Continuous Delivery (CD), Continuous Integration (CI), Scalable Application, Microservices, Penetration Testing, DevSecOps, Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN), Out-of-home (OOH) Advertising
Platforms
Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS Lambda, Amazon EC2, Kubernetes, Docker, Ubuntu, Windows, Oculus, Samsung Gear VR, Eclipse, Windows Server, Mapbox, Kubeflow, Vercel, Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Storage
Elasticsearch, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Databases, Amazon DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, Redis, Azure Active Directory, SQL Server 2016, Database Security, Data Lakes, Azure Storage, Azure Cloud Services
Other
Cloud, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), SecOps, Solution Design, Amazon Kinesis, Web Scraping, CI/CD Pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Solution Architecture, Cloud Architecture, Architecture, DevOps Engineer, AWS Certified Solution Architect, AWS DevOps, Cloud Infrastructure, Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), Documentation, Infrastructure, Cloud Security, GitHub Actions, AWS Cloud Architecture, AWS Certified Developer, AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, AWS Certified SysOps Administrator, ChatGPT API, RESTFul APIs, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Amazon API Gateway, Amazon GuardDuty, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), Web Servers, TCP/IP, Build & Release Engineering, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Sharding, Security, Network Security, Multitenancy, Enterprise SaaS, IT Security, Serverless, Configuration Management, Startups, System Administration, Software, IT, Machine Learning, Amazon RDS, Chrome Extensions, Vulnerability Management, Virtual Reality (VR), HTC Vive, 360° Video, RICOH THETA, Eclipse Plugin Development Environment (PDE), Production Lines, AWS VPN, Real-time Bidding (RTB), Azure Virtual Machines, Tesseract, Nuance, Robotics, 3D, JumpCloud, JFrog, Authentication, Kubernetes Security, Large Language Models (LLMs), Large Language Model Operations (LLMOps), AI Model Training
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